ABSTRACT
Lewis always thought of ethics as an important branch of philosophy, but it was only in An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation that he laid out his theory of value in any detail. Lewis’s theory of value is modeled on his empiricist theory of knowledge: “red” and “good”’ should be understood in the same way. Just as sensory givens are the foundation of knowledge of the physical world, immediate value-experiences are the foundation of knowledge of value. The goodness given in immediate value-experience is intrinsic and is constitutive of most other types of value – inherent, instrumental, and objective; but Lewis later introduces a further type of intrinsic value, final value, which complicates his position. Lewis’s theory of value is an interesting experiment in empiricist theory of value. I argue that the experiment does not succeed – the emphasis on immediate value-experiences leads to hedonism and the introduction of final value subverts the empiricism and gives too much emphasis to the achievement of coherence in one’s life. But it is an important and neglected contribution to twentieth-century ethical theory.
