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Measure and Worth

I thought about translating the article about measure and worth, I thought about translating the article about measurement and value… Maß und Wert The difficulty begins with value and worth. These words can mean the same and different depend on how you use it. „This item is valuable“ , “ This item worth a lot“ both means the item is important. „What is the value of this item“ is usually means in price or what is good about it. „Is this item worth buying?“ means if it really good for one to buy it or not.

„I want to smoke a cigarette now and write something about it.“ „Please, if you do that, write sentences that are not like these.“ My wife is right as always. The „above“, of course, does not refer to the cigarette. I simply assume too much from the reader or listener of my statements. To Wilhelm Vossenkuhl’s question „What is worth?“ I once answered „I don’t know what is worth“, so I’m an idiot. Because the answer is wrong. Of course I know more about it than a „I don’t know“, but somehow I assumed, as a matter of course, that a professor of philosophy would have to be aware of the problem and thus my „I don’t know“. correctly interpreted. Here again I presupposed too much. When I say „We cannot measure“, then I am also such an idiot. Here, too, I assume that the fact that we measure is known and that I am not the fool who ignores that fact.

Here is a problem with the translation. „Was ist Wert?“ can also be translated with „What is value?“. Karl Marx wrote „Wert“ and in some contexts he meant the price in others the worth of labor. „Or should we take the intrinsic value, as it were, the intrinsic value of labor as such.“ this sentence is in german „Oder sollten wir die intrinsischen Wert stattdessen nehmen, also die Werthaltigkeit der Arbeit als solches.“ and you see „intrinsic value“ occurs twice in the translation for „Wert“ and „Werthaltigkeit“.

I stand like every thinker on the shoulders of giants, who neither denies all thoughts that have been thought and written down, nor claims of himself that everything he (thus I) writes has grown on his crap. My contribution is teeny tiny. It is impossible to think without preconditions.

The smaller a fact is, the more difficult it may be to explain it. Sometimes it may be the little things that change the world. More than one document will be necessary, but somewhere there has to be a first piece that tries to represent and explain what I am talking about.

Axiology is a neglected science, while it may be the most important thing we need. But this statement of mine is probably due to the fact that every thinker who deals with something that is important, otherwise he would hardly do it. Philosophy as such is an art without bread. Nobody pays you for it and nobody is worth anything except as Precht entertainment or Habermas devotional speech. We have degenerated into a worthless society (or should i say valueless society) that speaks of factual constraints and has no idea of the facts that determine our world.

There is also a problem with „Maß“. It can mean measurement, measure, fitting and size. The perfect size and it fits like a glove.

In my mind’s eye I see a physicist and a mathematician hopping up to the ceiling and vehemently contradicting it. Both „Measure“ and „Value“ are quantities that must not be arbitrary for this occupational group. For the physicist, arbitrariness is even more forbidden than for the mathematician.

Nevertheless, the emperor is naked. It is not about the statement of a three-year-old that the cup is full or empty. Every three-year-old child can measure and evaluate this. Physicists and mathematicians may do the same on a more complex level, but with the reflection of a three-year-old child. They are therefore the kings of our children’s society.

And like a three-year-old child who has his toy stolen, there is an outcry when they say „We can’t measure.“ and „We can’t evaluate objectively.“ And like a three-year-old child, society then covers its ears.

Let’s take the lexical sentence from Wikipedia: „An axiom or postulate is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Greek axíōma (ἀξίωμα) ‚that which is thought worthy or fit‘ or ‚that which commends itself as evident.'“
In the German Wikipedia stands instead something like „An axiom (from Greek ἀξίωμα: „appreciation, judgement, as a truthfully assumed principle“) is a principle of a theory, a science or an axiomatic system, which is not justified or deductively derived within this system.“

An axiom is an axiom only if it is recognized as such within human thought and receives a value. If this were not the case, then the axiom would be meaningless. Since we cannot go beyond our being human and beyond our thinking, the axiom has been founded within this system. It has also been derived within the system of human thought. In order to formulate an axiom, I must be capable of deriving meanings. I must be able to understand the proposition in whatever language. If these self-evident regulations and conclusions, even if they are only colloquial, do not exist, then there are no propositions. Anyone who denies this cannot read these sentences here either. Yes, he would not even be able to speak.

This self-evident fact, which is already known to a three-year-old child, we assume unspoken. And with this matter of course we also measure. But without these values we cannot measure at all. The quantity, the liquid in the child’s cup and the classification is so self-evident to us that even the mere assertion that we cannot measure must seem absurd to us.

The two sentences are not easy to translate now:

Ohne Wert haben wir kein Maß.
Ohne Maß haben wir keinen Wert.

Without that which is thought worthy or fit, we have no measurement or measure or fitting.
Without fitting or measure, we have nor value or worth.

And I’m not sure if that’s right now translated. If we cannot measure something, then it is due to the intrinsic values we have taken as a basis. Conversely, we can measure something that makes no sense if the underlying intrinsic values are wrong. The mathematical conclusions may then be correct, but the prerequisites may be wrong.

To my mind, this happens all the time in economic processes. The so-called constraints are only conclusions of wrong values or worth or intrinsic value, which have been calculated correctly, but the result is still wrong because the underlying worth have been chosen wrongly. The value of the human being is no longer set as a premise, because it is not easy or impossible to grasp in numbers. This then leads to an inhuman policy, because the relationship between measure and value is virtually unknown and has not been thought through.

Because now physics and mathematics are so successful, we have made ourselves slaves of a calculation without making an assessment more, which is logically fundamental. It is not the case that certain values cannot be proven – in the sense of being demonstrable, they just no longer play a role. A sentence like „The dignity of man is inviolable.“ is worthless if it is not consistently derived from this value. Here it could be called an axiom, but it is not so that this axiom „The dignity of man is untouchable“. is groundless and cannot be justified. It can even be derived from historical circumstances. An economic calculation that does not take this principle of our Basic Law into account is wrong. Although everything may have been calculated correctly, the calculation is still wrong.

Without that which is thought worthy or fit or evident, we have no measurement or measure or fitting. The perfect size and it fits like a glove. Without this size or fitting, we have no value.