Q&A: Deciding Between Values
Deciding Between Values
Question
With God’s help,
Hello Rabbi,
I wanted to ask how one can decide between values that are not on the same axis of measurement.
For example, when discussing whether to fulfill commandment X or do moral act Y—there has to be some way to decide what is preferable, but how can one decide between different values? After all, they are different…
It’s like asking what is preferable: to eat chocolate because it is sweet, or bread because it is nourishing. If you are looking for sweet things, then chocolate may be at the top of the scale, and if you are looking for nourishing things then matzah may be preferable to bread. But how can one decide between completely different scales?
Answer
There is no algorithm for how to decide. But that does not mean there is no decision—only that there is no algorithm. Intuition decides. An example of this, taken from an article by Shay Wosner: an actor consults his physician friend about whether to accept a job in a cigarette commercial. They will pay him a million dollars, and he will have to smoke ten cigarettes. His friend tells him that in his capacity as a doctor, he forbids it because smoking is unhealthy. But in his capacity as a friend, he strongly recommends it, because it’s a million dollars. The quantitative difference ostensibly should not matter, because these are quantities on different scales, and yet intuitively it is clear that the correct advice is to take the role.
But this is not unique דווקא to different scales; even a clash between two moral values cannot be decided. I have discussed this in several places (search for the incommensurability of values, although I think that is mainly in recorded lectures. Search in the series on ethics and values).
Discussion on Answer
In which lectures? Petach Tikva? Video or audio?
In the audio. I don’t know where it was recorded… I hardly know the video at all.
Audio isn’t recorded.
Thank you. I was looking for that term that I once heard you mention in passing. Thanks—when I finish the current series, I’ll have time to move on to the next one :).
By the way, in my opinion you need to improve your microphone placement in the lectures, because I have to set the volume almost all the way to the top to hear normally.