Values and Bioethics

Abstract

Valuing is an unavoidable activity of human mind. We can't perceive, think, imaging or remember anything without valuing it immediately in a positive or negatively way. Values are basic and essential parts of all human projects. Things and projects are only important for human beings when they value them positively. And because they judge them important, they think they are obliged to defend or promote them. This is the origin of the experience of duty, perhaps the most basic and important in Ethics. Duties are always related with values, dealing with the promotion or increase of the value of things. If we distinguish, as usual, between facts, values, and duties, it can be said that duties deal with the increasing of the value of facts or things. Values are, furthermore, the source of some other important languages, like these of rights and principles. Both are expression of the estimated value of things.