C. Thi Nguyen: 'Value Collapse' - The Royal Institute of Philosophy Cardiff Annual Lecture 2022

The Royal Institute of Philosophy Cardiff Annual Lecture 2022
C. Thi Nguyen (Utah)
Value Collapse
Something seems to go wrong when we take on, as our goals in life, some extremely explicit metric. As individuals, the metric might be making a lot of money, or getting the best grades, or getting into the top-ranked law school. Organisations do something similar with profits, pageviews, or, in education, learning outcomes.
How can such metrics cause problems?
Here’s one possibility: overly clear values enshrine an attitude of closed-mindedness towards value. Values drive attention: what we look at, and how carefully and intensely we look. Values control what we investigate. Hyper-clear values set firm boundaries on what matters. Those values narrow our attention, and make us less willing to pay attention to things outside those bounds. Hyper-clarity represents a value as finalized -- and the world as if there were nothing else to learn from it about what really matters.
Everyone is welcome. This event is produced by Cardiff University and the Royal Institute of Philosophy.
Chair: Liz Irvine
This programme is streamed live on October 17th, 2030 BST