Q&A: Values and Meaning.
Values and Meaning.
Question
Hello Rabbi,
This is a somewhat confused question; I apologize in advance.
A rhetorical question: when a person sets out to examine whether something is meaningful or valuable, should he examine it on the philosophical level or the psychological level?
What is the value of a philosophical claim that something is valuable, if psychologically I feel that it has no value? After all, in the end what interests me is what "I" regard as valuable, since I am trying to discuss what value is according to my understanding, what value is for me, and that is seemingly a psychological question. If so, why discuss what value is on the philosophical level at all?
Answer
Exactly the opposite. The question of whether something has psychological value deals with self-interest (what benefits me psychologically). That is completely uninteresting on the value plane. What matters is only the philosophical value.
Or perhaps you mean a different question: whether what determines value is my feeling that something has value, or the objective truth. Here it is clear that the objective truth is what matters, but my feeling is the indication I have of that truth. If it were to become clear to me that I was mistaken, then obviously the objective plane is the important one. Unless you are presenting a skeptical position according to which we have no access to truth outside our own feelings; but then this is just the general issue of skepticism, which has been discussed here more than once.