Value theory is the systematic study of values. Also called axiology, it examines the nature, sources, and types of values. As a branch of philosophy, it has interdisciplinary applications in fields such as economics, sociology, anthropology, and psychology.
Value is the worth of something, usually understood as a degree that covers both positive and negative magnitudes corresponding to the terms good and bad. Values influence many human endeavors related to emotion, decision-making, and action. Value theorists distinguish between intrinsic and instrumental value. An entity has intrinsic value if it is good in itself, independent of external factors. An entity has instrumental value if it is useful as a means leading to other good things. Some classifications focus on the type of benefit, including economic, moral, political, aesthetic, and religious values. Other categorizations, based on the meaning and function of evaluative terms, discuss attributive, predicative, personal, impersonal, and agent-relative values.
Value realists state that values have mind-independent existence as objective features of reality. This view is rejected by anti-realists, some of whom argue that values are subjective human creations, whereas others claim that value statements are meaningless. Several sources of value have been proposed, such as hedonism, which says that only pleasure has intrinsic value, and desire theories, which identify desires as the ultimate source of value. Perfectionism, another prominent theory, emphasizes the cultivation of characteristic human abilities. Value pluralism holds that there are diverse sources of intrinsic value, raising the issue of whether values belonging to different types are comparable. Value theorists employ various methods of inquiry, ranging from reliance on intuitions and thought experiments to the description of first-person experience and the analysis of language.
Ethics is a closely related field focusing primarily on normative concepts about which behavior is right, whereas value theory explores evaluative concepts about what is good. In economics, theories of value are frameworks to assess and explain the economic value of commodities. Sociology and anthropology examine values as aspects of societies and cultures, reflecting their dominant preferences and beliefs. Psychologists tend to understand values as abstract motivational goals that shape an individual's personality. The roots of value theory lie in the ancient period in the form of reflections on the highest good that humans should pursue.