A Question of Values: Six Ways We Make the Personal Choices That Shape Our Lives

by Hunter Lewis

Describes six basic value systems, explains why ethical questions become complicated, and stresses the importance of a personal system of values

Genres: Philosophy

304 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1990

About the author

Renowned investor and author Hunter Lewis has written eight books on the financial issues of America, providing real solutions to turn the economy around.
He is the former CEO of Cambridge Associates, a global investment firm he co-founded after graduating from Harvard University. The company’s clients represent three-quarters of higher education endowment assets in the United States as well as other nonprofit groups and high net worth individuals. Lewis has also served on boards and committees of 15 leading nonprofit organizations, including environmental, teaching, research and cultural groups, as well as the World Bank. Lewis runs the successful watchdog website AgainstCronyCapitalism.org with fellow writer and political consultant Nick Sorrentino.
Reviewers across the globe have noted Lewis’ unique economic insights, and he’s shared his expert opinion on national television programs including CBS’ Money Matters and NBC’s TODAY. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, The Times of London, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Forbes.com and other media. The Charlottesville, Va. author’s newest book releases, “Free Prices Now!: Fixing the Economy
by Abolishing the Fed” and “Crony Capitalism in America: 2008-2012,” hit bookshelves on
September 1, 2013.

Reviews

[Levi Hobbs · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading this was like riding a roller coaster. More specifically, I’m thinking of the drop tower, where at first it only goes up, increasing my expectations with how well things are going, and then at some point it abruptly turns around and goes down, down, plummeting to the depths, crashing through the ground and continuing on all the way to China.

Ok, so I’m a little bit salty when a book lets me down.

My father was a philosopher. When he died two years ago, my most interesting task, by far, was taking on the hundreds of books I inherited from him. For a book junkie like me, it was a veritable pleasure.

Most of his books were on philosophy, and I accordingly sorted them out into the various branches of philosophy that he seemed to care for the most: Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Religion, free will vs determinism (and sundry science books that, if you know what you’re looking at, actually touch directly on that very philosophical question), and finally, business ethics. Of the final category, I trashed the lot.

There was one interesting book, though, which didn’t fit into any of the other categories: “A Question of Values.”

It immediately snagged my attention for a couple reasons. First, it was an advanced reader copy. That’s cool, I thought. I guess my dad somehow knew the right person or something to get this copy. I wonder if he was even solicited for input, although I doubt it—his philosophy career never got very far and ethics wasn’t his main field of study.

But nevertheless, it looked like an interesting book. “A Question of Values. Six Ways We Make the Personal Choices That Shape Our Lives.”That would be a fascinating topic. If someone could lay out for me a system that shows the different value systems and compare and contrast them and help me form a more coherent value system for myself, that would be really valuable.

If I was able to understand the book, that is. There’s the rub. I’ve read enough philosophy books to know that most of them are ponderous, impenetrable, and tedious. If you haven’t read scores of other prerequisite philosophical texts then you won’t be able to understand the peculiar ways in which these philosophers use words.

I can’t help but rant for a moment. Not only do philosophers like to make up their own words and make up new definitions of existing words, they’re also the kind of egocentric full-of-it blowhards who use the most obscure words they can think of for no other purpose than to show off their vocabulary. I remember one philosophy book I read in an ethics class where he used words like “ubiquitous” and “quotidien” in ways where you could have easily used the word “commonplace” and lost nothing in meaning. The deep irony of using an uncommon word for the word “commonplace” was lost on this educated moron.

Anyways! Suffice it to say that knowing all that I know about philosophy literature and that ethics is one of the branches of philosophy, I was both intrigued by this book but reticent. I decided to crack it open and glance at the contents, ready to, at the first intimation of pretense and stupidity, consign it to the trash heap.

So I opened the book. The first thing I looked at was the table of contents. You can usually tell by the titles of the chapters whether we’re going to quickly get into some esoteric sh** or not.

Part One: A Question of Values: An Introduction
1. The Initial Question
2. Sorting It Out: Six Ways That We Choose Values
Part Two: Six Basic Types of Value Systems
3. Value Systems Based on Authority
4. Value Systems Based on Logic
5. Value Systems Based on Sense Experience
6. Value Systems Based on Emotion
7. Value Systems Based on Intuition
8. Value Systems Based on “Science”
Part Three: Variations on a Theme
9. The Cross-Fertilization of Values
10. Four Examples: Karl Barth, Albert Einstein, Mohandas Ghandi, Golda Meir
11. Why Values Get So Complicated
Part Four: Using the Framework
12. A Moral Detective Story
13. Values in the Classroom
14. A Personal Note

I thought this looked like a very sensible layout, a logical progression I can easily follow that might guide me to the answers I seek.

I then began reading and noticed it was not the typical philosophical pretentious language. It’s really accessible language and a useful topic compared to any other modern philosophy book I've ever read. At this point my expectations where sky-high. I thought this was going to be my favorite philosophy read of the last couple years.

But then some things got to irking me. First, notable absent is any definition of what values are.

Second, when he gets into value systems based on authority, there’s much focus on Christianity, not enough in other religions, not any examples of authority used in any realm other than religion even though it is demonstrably used in all arenas of life.

The sections explaining logic and sense experience are tolerably good and I appreciated the reference to David Hume, who is foundational for understanding empiricism and whose school I currently fall into: the way we know anything that we know is based on experience, and nothing else.

Then we get to the chapter on the value of “emotion” and it turns out that what he means by this is “community.” First, I think this entirely ignores other ways that emotion is used in making values, second, I’m not sure I agree that valuing what your community thinks is purely emotional or tribal. It’s actually quite logical and a good survival instinct, so I must say I think he completely missed the boat on having a meaningful examination of that one of the values.

Next is the value of intuition, which actually has some great examples (unlike the rest of the book’s examples, more on that later). Excellent section. Then there’s an explanation of the value of “science” and an exploration of how that is different from actual science, how the true scientific method combines several of the values but usually when people think they are making decisions based on “scientific thinking” it’s only one or two parts of the scientific process. So that was worthwhile.

But now I need to talk about the biggest weakness of this book, and that is the case studies—if you can call them that—“examples” may be a better word for it. Overall there’s a focus on America which, admittedly, he made it clear from the beginning that he would be focused on America, nevertheless, I would have enjoyed it tremendously more if it were more representative of the world as a whole. But second and more importantly, he consistently picks examples of the most unrelatable people that you can come up with, sometimes even people best described as insane.

How in the world we are supposed to define a meaningful value system based on the weirdest examples of human beings is beyond me. It’s not very interesting to study crazy people if we’re trying to come up with a value system that is actually one we would want to live by. It doesn’t interest me in how insane people make decisions; I want to make them sanely. This bizarre pattern is repeated again and again and made it quite difficult to focus or see his points and continually sabotaged the whole thing, because without good examples, then what are we talking about?

And then there’s the part of the book where he encourages the reader, in the vaguest way, to combine different value systems and gives some “examples” of doing this…there is essentially no meaningful framework of how one would do this given at all, and this is perhaps the weirdest part of the book. There needs to be actual takeaways at the end of a book like this, but sadly there are essentially none. Instead it ends on a whimper, delving into specific topics that might interest a narrow crowd at best.

So, I was let down. In the end, what should have been a fascinating and even useful philosophical treatise on the values by which people make decisions turned out to be neither helpful nor comprehensive, not overly logical (to my view at least), and…I wouldn’t say a waste of time. Again, some of the chapters on the individual values were moderately useful. But suffice it to say, I will still be on the lookout for a book that can do this topic justice. I hope if someone ever finds one they’ll recommend it to me.

[Longfellow · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the process of searching for a copy of The Road Less Traveled, by M. Scott Peck, I discovered this book in a box of books I intended to weed from my shelves. The front cover, coincidentally, contained a plug from Peck himself. And the subtitle captured my interest: “Six Ways We Make the Personal Choices That Shape Our Lives.” It sounded educational and practical. It lived up to my educational hopes—in some sections quite well—but I think I’ll have a difficult time applying this gained knowledge.

The premise is this: there are essentially six different value systems, and we may be influenced by any one of these, though more likely we are influenced by various combinations of them. They are these:

1. Authority (most religions)
2. Logic (starting from a known truth and arriving at other truths based on the first)
3. Sense Experience (basically using our experience to arrive at our beliefs about the world)
4. Emotion (not what I expected—this one has to do with our loyalty to communities, causes, or about anything that binds us together with a specific group)
5. Intuition (yoga is provided as an example, meditation, connection to the unconscious)
6. “Science” (various theories of psychology)

The difficulty of application is this: the work involved in analyzing which value systems I operate by and when is tough enough. There is much information here and it is presented as a series of examples rather than as some simplified formula—justifiably so. But performing a “matching” exercise for self-evaluation is no easy task. If this work is done, then there remains the additional problem of discerning which value system I think I should be operating by in any given situation.

Practicality aside, I do believe this book was a decent investment of my time. In my experience (value system #3!), I’ve found that just being made aware of something may be the beginning of an evolution.

The epilogue, which for some reason is seventy pages long, is perhaps the best reason to re-file this book on my shelves. It is titled “Values in the Classroom Continued” and it covers the many different types of values-thinking that are taught at universities and colleges today (well, not exactly—this book was published in 1990). This section is sometimes difficult and tedious reading but essentially provides a survey of much of the philosophy of the last few centuries, consistently complete with points and counterpoints.

[Jimmacc · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book’s title set me up for something very different from what I got out of the book. The book provides relatively concise definitions for ethical/philisophical/ economic systems.

From the standpoint of definitions… I learned a lot. The definition of capitalism, for example is the clearest I have ever read, and helped me see at least some of the “morality” behind the conservative movement. From these definitions, you can start having conversations about how/why/who.

What I got out of this, in short, is that in any argument you should start with “how do you define…?” Or “what do you mean by..,?” Because we often use caricatures of each of these “values” to attack each other.

Once I got past my expectations, I really enjoyed the book.

[John Reis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book for the fact that it catalogs a variety of value systems that its author thinks are prominent in the history of mankind. He however does not want to say what values are for, if he has thought of the question at all. Also, he misrepresents nineteenth century progressivism as a species of classical liberalism, which he seems to disapprove of. He seems to tag certain values that are prominent within one of his systems and then disapprove of the value when he disapproves of the system or features of the system. He dislikes anything hinting of authority.

[Brian Connelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few good points here and there, but mostly just horseshit. After reading his most ill-informed analysis/critique of political, economic and philosophic value systems I just couldn't stomach it any more and quit.

[Dana · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great asset to anyone on a quest of values, needs, or other defining qualities that influence human action. Academic, inquisitive, and creative, this little gem treated me like an adult and refused to oversimplify while maintaining its clarity. Will read again.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author outlines six sources of the values we hold dear, and discusses how they differ from each other and how they interrelate. It's instructive. The six are authority, logic, experience, emotion, intuition, and science.

[L · Rating 3 out of 5]

good framework, the workbook parts of it were silly.