If something has value but you cannot convince anyone of it...

...does it have value at all?

I saw this question on another site and thought it'd make good discussion. My views on the matter follow.

There are three kinds of value: intrinsic, societal and personal. They can overlap.

Intrinsic value comes from the qualities or abilities of the object itself making it desirable. Gold is the classic example: its corrosion resistance and decent conductivity makes it valuable for manufacturing electronics, it has many medicinal uses, and looks pretty too.

Societal value is when a large group of people agree something is valuable, thus making it so. Case in point, paper money: it can buy goods and services within at least an entire country, but if you go elsewhere and the currency is not accepted, or the banking system that backs it were to collapse, it's just paper that's been printed on.

Personal value comes from when an object is special to you due to the memories or associations attached to it, but anyone else would classify as ordinary or even worthless. Anything you consider special and/or have owned for a long time can qualify; for me some examples are: the doodles I made at school, a rock I took from a McDonald's when I went out with a friend years ago, my 2004 custom-built desktop computer.

So, to answer the initial question: that something definitely has no societal value, if no one you come across considers it valuable. It definitely has personal value (since you are convinced it does) and it may have intrinsic value too depending on the object in question, although generally that and societal value correlate.

What do you think?

philosophy, I took that course in University. lol.

I think the human species as a whole revolve around the monetary value system. if you can't put a price on it, then it is sentimental. societal is also a given, since human beings are social always and without the social aspect, human become devoid of emotion.

maybe I put it too simple?

I think it is too simple. The simplicity might decrease "depending on the object in question" and then the kind of the value of the object starts to overlap. Although this highly depends on every community place, time, culture...etc. Objects with only personal value though are not generally and usually eligible to be valued for anyone but yourself.

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Originally Posted by anon

If something has value but you cannot convince anyone of it...

...does it have value at all?

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this was already answered in another thread: if it exists, it has a (manifested) value

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Intrinsic value comes from the qualities or abilities of the object itself making it desirable. Gold is the classic example:

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this is not intrinsic value: all material(istic) items have the same value level - gold merely reminds of the sun or of spiritual brightness and thus gets used as a symbol thereof, though it is still matter, just like iron or any other one from the periodic table of the elements

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Societal value is when a large group of people agree something is valuable, thus making it so. Case in point, paper money:

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the value of gold can also be viewed as a 'Societal value'

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something definitely has no societal value, if no one you come across considers it valuable

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'one man's trash is another man's treasure'

case in point: even the worst band on the planet has some people that think of it as a good/great/valuable band


to simplify: there are two kinds of basic values: absolute and temporary ones - the absolute values are always there, regardless of what is going on or who is observing (independent values), whereas temporary ones are all the others, which normally appear in the materialistic worlds and depend on the observer or the conditions at hand (dependent values)

btw. what we call 'laws of nature' (gravity, action-reaction, etc.) or even our own universe are materialistic, thus also temporary ones