Table of Contents
Major trains of thought
Philosophy
Trainwrecks
Value Judgement
Personal Preference
Nature of Things
Fact of the Universe
Tolerance
Ship of Theseus
I'm 14 and this is deep
Words
Claim
Court
Redemption
Philosophy/
Value Judgement
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Well now that's a value judgement.
“
A value judgement is an opinion derived from a belief system. Pointing something out as a “value judgement” often implies that either the statement in question was either inappropriate in the context (because in some situations a mere opinion is not enough, for example in a debate), that an opinion was not needed in the context, or that the underlying belief system leading to that opinion is flawed. Importantly, it's a value judgement because it is finite. In the line of thinking, the judgement is always the end result and all consideration ends along with it. In the context of a conversation, this is often premature.
Value Judgements in modern Philosophy
In real philosophy, value judgements are discrete, finite evaluations of things under an ethical system. It is about the ability of ethical systems to categorize things as good or bad, and these ethical systems can be used to judge the ethical value of all things. Example, my ethical system dictates that gay sex is a good thing. My ethical system is based on human pleasure, sex between two gay people has a net positive effect on them and society as a whole, therefore it is good.
Well, not quite, actually. To be nitpicky, Utilitarianism doesn't really care about gay sex. In the eyes of utilitarianism, gay sex is just a means to an end. Gay sex is a means towards pleasure, and it is that pleasure which this ethical system cares about. This is why utilitarianists can distinguish between consentual gay sex which does lead to pleasure, and unconsentual gay sex which leads to immeasurable suffering. The conclusion - like everything else, nothing is inherently good or bad, and gay sex is no exception.
Compare and contrast to Christianity, which proposes its own ethical system based on the Bible. The maxim here is “make god happy”, so using those values you will invariable come to make the judgement that gay sex is undeniably bad (because it makes god angry/sad/whatever).
Virtue ethicists may point at self-restraint as one of their maxims, so they may consider gay sex a good thing when you do it sparingly. Virtue ethicists will not make a distinction between gay or hetero sex, as long as you do both of them with restraint. (Honestly I have no clue what virtue ethicists would say about sex, but I can say with confidence it would include a lot of big, positive-sounding words like “charitability” which, after a long discussion, would boil down to just very confused utilitarianism.)