Value judgment: Encyclopedia - Value judgment

Value judgment

A value judgment is a judgment of the rightness or wrongness of something based on a particular set of values or on a particular value system.

The term is usually employed, often in a disparaging sense, to imply that a statement is not objectively true, but is 'merely' a value judgment, distinguishing between an objective statement of fact or a conclusion reached logically through rational analysis, and a statement or conclusion reached owing to the specific values or value system held by the one asserting it. Since it can be argued that true objectivity is impossible, that even the most rigorous rational analysis is founded on the set of values accepted in the course of analysis. it is consequently argued (by some) that all such statements and conclusions are, of necessity, value judgments.

This might be compared to axioms in mathematics and geometry—for instance, Euclidean geometry is founded upon a different set of axioms than various forms of non-Euclidean geometry, and thus postulates proven to be true in Euclidean geometry may not be true in other forms of geometry (or vice versa). Postulates that are true in one geometry but false in another could be considered analogous to value judgments that declare something to be right given one value system but wrong within the confines of another.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Value judgment", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki