Charles Taylor draws
a distinction between weak and strong evaluations. They
are two kinds of evaluative attitudes persons can have
towards a variety of objects of evaluation. The possible
objects can vary from individual desires, emotions and acts
to whole ways of life. Strong evaluations are stable
preferences based on qualitative distinctions concerning
the worth of the options. Strong evaluations are responses
to the non-instrumental value of the options, and they can
be mistaken, because the value of the options is not based
on the response. By contrast, what Taylor calls "weak
evaluations" cannot be mistaken. Weak evaluations make
any of their objects weakly valued. This means that strong
evaluations are value-based, and weak evaluations desirebased
preferences. Taylor also says that strong
evaluations, unlike weak evaluations, are central to one's
identity. One's identity is constituted through a strong
adherence, a strong identification with and commitment to
the values. Thus strong evaluations are stable preferences
that are strongly adhered to, and which are based on
strong values

Laitinen, Arto

English

PhilPapers

  1 Arto Laitinen (University of Jyväskylä, Finland): Strong Evaluations and Personal Identity  Abstract: This paper examines Charles Taylor's claim that personal identity is a matter of strong evaluations. Strong evaluations are in this paper analyzed as stable preferences, which are strongly identified with and which are based on qualitative distinctions concerning the non-instrumental value of options. In discussing the role of strong evaluations in personal identity, the focus is on "self-identity", not on the criteria of personhood or on the logical relation of identity. Two senses of self-identity can be distinguished: identity as practical orientation and identity as self-definition in a more encompassing sense. The former consists of one's strong evaluations only, the latter is a more comprehensive notion, in which strong evaluations have a double role. Strong evaluations are first of all directly a constituent of self-definitions, and secondly, self-definition with respect to other features proceeds in the light of the strong evaluations.  1. Strong evaluations  Charles Taylor (1985a, 15-45; 1989, 25-52) draws a distinction between weak and strong evaluations. They are two kinds of evaluative attitudes persons can have towards a variety of objects of evaluation. The possible objects can vary from individual desires, emotions and acts to whole ways of life. Strong evaluations are stable preferences based on qualitative distinctions concerning the worth of the options. Strong evaluations are responses to the non-instrumental value of the options, and they can be mistaken, because the value of the options is not based on the response. By contrast, what Taylor calls "weak evaluations" cannot be mistaken. Weak evaluations make any of their objects weakly valued. This means that strong evaluations are value-based, and weak evaluations desire-based preferences. Taylor also says that strong evaluations, unlike weak evaluations, are central to one's identity. One's identity is constituted through a strong adherence, a strong identification with and commitment to the values. Thus strong evaluations are stable preferences that are strongly adhered to, and which are based on strong values.    2 Both "strong" and "evaluation" are potentially misleading terms. "Strength" does not refer to motivational strength: I can have very strong desires which I disapprove of. Values are "strong" in Taylor's sense if they are important, and the motivational strength derives from their importance to one's identity. Taylor (1994, 249) has also commented that the term "evaluation" is not an entirely happy one, because it might suggest that the value in question is dependent on the evaluations, or that the valuing must be reflective. It is also important that contrary to the suggestion of some commentators, like Owen Flanagan  (1996), the value in question need not be moral value, but it can be prudential or existential, aesthetic or "spiritual" (Taylor 1985a, 24). There is a broad spectrum of values which can be central to one's identity. Strong evaluations can be implicit or explicit, more or less articulate and more or less reflective.  Taylor's notion of weak evaluations seems to be a mixed bag. As we saw, in his definition, weak evaluations are desire-based preferences. Yet Taylor's examples of weak evaluations are best seen as value-based preferences, but ones which are of small value and not central to one's identity. Here the inflationary way that Joseph Raz (1999) uses the notion "value" is helpful in that it includes also what he calls "small values". These are not based on desires, but it would be odd to call them "strong" values either. Using Raz's notion of value, we can see that Taylor's (1985a, 17) examples of weak evaluations, namely "exhilarating holiday in the north" and "relaxing holiday in the south" in fact embody values. The value of exhilaration or relaxation is not dependent on one's taking them to be valuable. It is intelligible to choose either option, they are both eligible, whereas it would not be intelligible to spend the two weeks in the nearby wasteland wiggling one's toes in the mud. It has no value in it, and is an unintelligible option, and it would make no sense to desire it (Taylor 1991, 36). Thus, it seems that strong evaluations differ in degree from preferences based on "small" values, and they differ in kind from preferences based on desires.  To sum up, strong evaluations are stable preferences which are strongly identified with and which are based on important values as opposed to small values and as opposed to desire-based preferences.   3 2. The senses of "personal identity"   How should we assess Taylor's claim that personal identity is a matter of strong evaluations?   "Personal identity" can be discussed in many senses. First of all, the question of personal identity can refer to criteria of personhood i.e. the question of what features make something a person. The classical answers are that a person is a rational animal, a linguistic animal, a moral agent or a self-conscious being. We can say that the question in this sense concerns the universal "species-identity" of persons, not an individual's self-identity. When Taylor says that strong evaluations are central to one's identity he does not mean species-identity in this sense. Yet, it may be noted that one aspect of Taylor's answer to the question of criteria of personhood is that persons are actual or potential strong evaluators.  Secondly, identity can refer to the logical relation of sameness, or as Paul Ricoeur (1992) has called it, "idem-identity". Identity can refer to diachronic persistence in time, i.e. numerical sameness of an object at two different points of time. Or, identity can refer to the synchronous unity of an object at one point of time. Or again, identity can refer to the exact similarity of two numerically distinct objects. In this sense of "idem-identity", strong evaluations are not of help, and Taylor does not really discuss the problem at all. Taylor's analysis presupposes that issues concerning idem-identity are already settled. Most importantly, he does not suggest that if two people have exactly similar evaluative views, then they are the same person.  Finally, "personal identity" can refer to identity in the sense of selfhood, or as Ricoeur calls it, "ipse-identity". Human beings are self-interpreting animals, or "identity-forming animals", who have practical orientations and who can suffer from identity crises (Taylor 1985a, 15-76; 1989, 25-52). Everyone has their own subjective perspective and their own life to lead, and they pose and answer questions like "Who am I really? When am I really myself?".    4  Being a person or a self is an active business. Having a self in a full-fledged sense means having a conception of oneself, and having conceptions is an active business. People do not have beliefs like things have properties. As Sellars (1963) has stressed, the relation of two mental episodes has to be normative if it is to count as knowledge; it cannot be merely causal. And as the "transcendental tradition" from Kant onwards has stressed, being a subject is not merely a matter of having mental contents (which could possibly be caused by the world) but being aware of the reality, taking the mental contents to be about the world. In addition to normativity and intentionality, the activity of self-defining is one aspect of the spontaneity of the subject. One's self-identity does not rest simply on "having features", but on one's activity, on identification with some actual or possible features. In this sense, everyone's identity is self-made. Cultural and social mediations are of course intertwined in this self-definition, and the point in stressing the self-made nature of self-identity is not directed against these social and cultural mediations, but against the view that one's identity is a matter of given, natural features. Self-identity is a tentative result of an ongoing process of self-interpretation.  We can distinguish between a narrower and a broader notion of self-identity. First, Taylor (1989, 25-52; 1997) stresses that what we want to know when we ask "who am I" is our orientation in life. What kind of person do I want to be, what kind of goals do I have in life, what kind of things matter to me, towards what kind of things I want to have a developed sensibility? In an identity crisis, says Taylor, we need to fix the "moral map" by which we navigate our lives - we want to know where to go from here. "Practical identity" is an orientation concept. It is this "practical identity" which is wholly constituted by one's strong evaluations, by the important values that one has strong adherence to.  But there seems to be another, more comprehensive notion of self-identity, which includes more than one's orientation in life. It covers among other things one's success in living up to one's goals, and any of one's features that one identifies with. This broader notion is related to a metaphor of self-image and it includes all aspects of the self-  5 definitions, not merely the practical ones. Often Taylor talks as if everything related to personal identity would be a matter of practical orientation. Yet some of Taylor's discussions of self-identity in fact concern this broader notion, but he has not distinguished it from what I call here practical identity (see Taylor 1991, 31-53; 1985b, 221-5, 1989, 43-52). I call this broader notion one's "self-interpretation" or "self-definition". Self-definition consists of one's identifications with one's actual or possible features.  It is important that not all the features that one actually has are constitutive of one's identity. The central concept here is "identification with" (Frankfurt 1988, Taylor 1985b, 221; Ricoeur 1992). The paradigm example is addiction: I cannot help having these desires, but yet I do not identify with them, they are not really "mine". The same process of identification is possible in relation to any of my features. The function of strong evaluations in this process deserves a closer look.  3. The role of strong evaluations in self-definitions  Strong evaluations have a double role in one's self-interpretations. In addition to the direct role they have in constituting one's practical identity, strong evaluations provide the framework in the light of which other features are evaluated, and possibly identified with or disowned.   Identification does not start from scratch, it always presupposes something given that I identify with. What are these other features? We can distinguish different ways of having a feature:  "first nature", value-identifications, habitual "second nature", voluntary effort and social attribution.  First, as embodied beings, we have some biological characteristics that are given in birth. These are not merely linked to our physical features but also our mental capacities. Also events after our birth can affect our natural features, our first nature: one can lose one's sight in a traffic accident, for example. These natural features are optional raw-material for one's identity.    6 Secondly, at the core of our self-identity is our practical identity, our identifications with culturally mediated values and goals. As we saw, these acquired identifications play a double role in our self-definitions: indirectly our value-horizons mediate our other identifications-with. It depends on our value-identifications, which aspects of our first nature, experiences or habits we identify with and which not. But my value-identifications affect also directly the kind of person I am: there is an aspect of identity, which directly consists of value-orientations. We can call this aspect also the "ideal self", which consists of the ideal values and goals that I would wish to be able to live by. There is an element of imagination here, the goals and features that I include in my ideal self need not be something that are already I am, they are appropriated from the surrounding world.  Thirdly, persons have a second nature, a character consisting of acquired dispositions. What we do and learn by doing affects the kinds of dispositions and habits we have. Our "second nature" is different from what we were at birth, and what we would like to be, but nevertheless, this is what we have become. Theorizing one's self-identity more narrowly in terms of one's value-orientations only loses this dynamic aspect of identity-formation.  Fourth, one's habitual second nature, once formed, does not require much attention and voluntary striving. But some features belong to me through voluntary effort. Paul Ricoeur (1992) illustrates this with keeping one's word: when the time comes to keep one's word, I may have lost all the inclination to do it, but yet I may voluntary stick to my word.   Finally, some features belong to me merely through attributions from others. "Being famous" or "being out of fashion" may be things that I have not striven to be or even paid any attention to. I may be aware of such socially attributed labels without identifying with them. The influence of these social attributions to one's self-image is at the basis of much discussion concerning recognition.    7 All these features, one's first and second nature, one's ideal self, one's voluntary strivings and one's social appearance are raw-material for identity, they are something I can identify with. Through these identifications, something that is merely a given part of first nature, second nature, voluntary effort or social attribution is transformed into my identity. There is a process of selection as to which features are significant enough to belong to my identity. The significant features are either positively identified with or negatively "disowned".  This process of identification implicitly relies on the framework of strong evaluations: if I value, say, courage and see myself as courageous, I may identify with some of my aggressive impulses, but if not, I may see these impulses as a feature that is not genuinely "mine".  Thus, to sum up, strong evaluations are stable preferences which are strongly adhered to and which are based on important values. The role that they have in one's self-identity depends on whether we talk about practical identity or self-definitions in the more encompassing sense. Practical identity is entirely constituted by one's strong evaluations. In self-definitions strong evaluations play a double role: they are directly a constituent of one's self-definitions, and indirectly they provide the value horizon in the light of which one's other features, (natural, acquired and socially attributed) are evaluated and either identified with or disowned.  Literature  Flanagan, O. 1996 Self-Expressions: Mind, Morals and Meaning of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frankfurt, H. 1988 The Importance of What We Care About, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Raz, J. 1999 Engaging Reason, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ricoeur, P. 1992 Oneself as Another, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Ricoeur, P. 2000 The Just, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Sellars, W. 1963 Science, Perception and Reality, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Taylor, C. 1985a Philosophical Papers 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.   8 Taylor, C. 1985b Philosophical Papers 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  Taylor, C. 1989 Sources of the Self, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, C. 1991 Ethics of Authenticity, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.  Taylor, C. 1994 "Reply and Re-articulation" in James Tully (ed.): Philosophy in an Age of Pluralism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, C. 1995 Philosophical Arguments, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Taylor, C. 1997 "Leading a Life", in Ruth Chang (ed.), Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reasoning, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. 

Strong Evaluations and Personal Identity

Name not available

  127Strong Evaluations and Personal Identity  Arto Laitinen, Jyväskylä   1. Strong evaluations Charles Taylor (1985a, 15-45; 1989, 25-52) draws a distinction between weak and strong evaluations. They are two kinds of evaluative attitudes persons can have towards a variety of objects of evaluation. The possible objects can vary from individual desires, emotions and acts to whole ways of life. Strong evaluations are stable preferences based on qualitative distinctions concerning the worth of the options. Strong evaluations are responses to the non-instrumental value of the options, and they can be mistaken, because the value of the options is not based on the response. By contrast, what Taylor calls "weak evaluations" cannot be mistaken. Weak evaluations make any of their objects weakly valued. This means that strong evaluations are value-based, and weak evaluations desire-based preferences. Taylor also says that strong evaluations, unlike weak evaluations, are central to one's identity. One's identity is constituted through a strong adherence, a strong identification with and commitment to the values. Thus strong evaluations are stable preferences that are strongly adhered to, and which are based on strong values. Both "strong" and "evaluation" are potentially misleading terms. "Strength" does not refer to motivational strength: I can have very strong desires which I disapprove of. Values are "strong" in Taylor's sense if they are important, and the motivational strength derives from their importance to one's identity. Taylor (1994, 249) has also commented that the term "evaluation" is not an entirely happy one, because it might suggest that the value in question is dependent on the evaluations, or that the valuing must be reflective. It is also important that contrary to the suggestion of some commentators, like Owen Flanagan  (1996), the value in question need not be moral value, but it can be prudential or existential, aesthetic or "spiritual" (Taylor 1985a, 24). There is a broad spectrum of values which can be central to one's identity. Strong evaluations can be implicit or explicit, more or less articulate and more or less reflective. Taylor's notion of weak evaluations seems to be a mixed bag. As we saw, in his definition, weak evaluations are desire-based preferences. Yet Taylor's examples of weak evaluations are best seen as value-based preferences, but ones which are of small value and not central to one's identity. Here the inflationary way that Joseph Raz (1999) uses the notion "value" is helpful in that it includes also what he calls "small values". These are not based on desires, but it would be odd to call them "strong" values either. Using Raz's notion of value, we can see that Taylor's (1985a, 17) examples of weak evaluations, namely "exhilarating holiday in the north" and "relaxing holiday in the south" in fact embody values. The value of exhilaration or relaxation is not dependent on one's taking them to be valuable. It is intelligible to choose either option, they are both eligible, whereas it would not be intelligible to spend the two weeks in the nearby wasteland wiggling one's toes in the mud. It has no value in it, and is an unintelligible option, and it would make no sense to desire it (Taylor 1991, 36). Thus, it seems that strong evaluations differ in degree from preferences based on "small" values, and they differ in kind from preferences based on desires. To sum up, strong evaluations are stable preferences which are strongly identified with and which are based on important values as opposed to small values and as opposed to desire-based preferences.  2. The senses of "personal identity"  How should we assess Taylor's claim that personal identity is a matter of strong evaluations?  "Personal identity" can be discussed in many senses. First of all, the question of personal identity can refer to criteria of personhood i.e. the question of what features make something a person. The classical answers are that a person is a rational animal, a linguistic animal, a moral agent or a self-conscious being. We can say that the question in this sense concerns the universal "species-identity" of persons, not an individual's self-identity. When Taylor says that strong evaluations are central to one's identity he does not mean species-identity in this sense. Yet, it may be noted that one aspect of Taylor's answer to the question of criteria of personhood is that persons are actual or potential strong evaluators. Secondly, identity can refer to the logical relation of sameness, or as Paul Ricoeur (1992) has called it, "idem-identity". Identity can refer to diachronic persistence in time, i.e. numerical sameness of an object at two different points of time. Or, identity can refer to the synchronous unity of an object at one point of time. Or again, identity can refer to the exact similarity of two numerically distinct objects. In this sense of "idem-identity", strong evaluations are not of help, and Taylor does not really discuss the problem at all. Taylor's analysis presupposes that issues concerning idem-identity are already settled. Most importantly, he does not suggest that if two people have exactly similar evaluative views, then they are the same person. Finally, "personal identity" can refer to identity in the sense of selfhood, or as Ricoeur calls it, "ipse-identity". Human beings are self-interpreting animals, or "identity-forming animals", who have practical orientations and who can suffer from identity crises (Taylor 1985a, 15-76; 1989, 25-52). Everyone has their own subjective perspective and their own life to lead, and they pose and answer questions like "Who am I really? When am I really myself?".  Being a person or a self is an active business. Having a self in a full-fledged sense means having a conception of oneself, and having conceptions is an active business. People do not have beliefs like things have properties. As Sellars (1963) has stressed, the relation of two mental episodes has to be normative if it is to count as knowledge; it cannot be merely causal. And as the "transcendental tradition" from Kant onwards has stressed, being a subject is not merely a matter of having mental contents (which could possibly be caused by the world) but being aware of the reality, taking the mental contents to be about the world. In addition to normativity and intentionality, the activity of self-defining is one aspect of the spontaneity of the subject. One's self-identity does not rest simply on "having features", but on one's activity, on identification with some actual or possible features. In this sense, everyone's identity is self-made. Cultural and social Strong Evaluations and Personal Identity - Arto Laitinen    128 mediations are of course intertwined in this self-definition, and the point in stressing the self-made nature of self-identity is not directed against these social and cultural mediations, but against the view that one's identity is a matter of given, natural features. Self-identity is a tentative result of an ongoing process of self-interpretation. We can distinguish between a narrower and a broader notion of self-identity. First, Taylor (1989, 25-52; 1997) stresses that what we want to know when we ask "who am I" is our orientation in life. What kind of person do I want to be, what kind of goals do I have in life, what kind of things matter to me, towards what kind of things I want to have a developed sensibility? In an identity crisis, says Taylor, we need to fix the "moral map" by which we navigate our lives - we want to know where to go from here. "Practical identity" is an orientation concept. It is this "practical identity" which is wholly constituted by one's strong evaluations, by the important values that one has strong adherence to. But there seems to be another, more comprehensive notion of self-identity, which includes more than one's orientation in life. It covers among other things one's success in living up to one's goals, and any of one's features that one identifies with. This broader notion is related to a metaphor of self-image and it includes all aspects of the self-definitions, not merely the practical ones. Often Taylor talks as if everything related to personal identity would be a matter of practical orientation. Yet some of Taylor's discussions of self-identity in fact concern this broader notion, but he has not distinguished it from what I call here practical identity (see Taylor 1991, 31-53; 1985b, 221-5, 1989, 43-52). I call this broader notion one's "self-interpretation" or "self-definition". Self-definition consists of one's identifications with one's actual or possible features.  It is important that not all the features that one actually has are constitutive of one's identity. The central concept here is "identification with" (Frankfurt 1988, Taylor 1985b, 221; Ricoeur 1992). The paradigm example is addiction: I cannot help having these desires, but yet I do not identify with them, they are not really "mine". The same process of identification is possible in relation to any of my features. The function of strong evaluations in this process deserves a closer look.  3. The role of strong evaluations in self-definitions Strong evaluations have a double role in one's self-interpretations. In addition to the direct role they have in constituting one's practical identity, strong evaluations provide the framework in the light of which other features are evaluated, and possibly identified with or disowned.  Identification does not start from scratch, it always presupposes something given that I identify with. What are these other features? We can distinguish different ways of having a feature:  "first nature", value-identifications, habitual "second nature", voluntary effort and social attribution. First, as embodied beings, we have some biological characteristics that are given in birth. These are not merely linked to our physical features but also our mental capacities. Also events after our birth can affect our natural features, our first nature: one can lose one's sight in a traffic accident, for example. These natural features are optional raw-material for one's identity. Secondly, at the core of our self-identity is our practical identity, our identifications with culturally mediated values and goals. As we saw, these acquired identifications play a double role in our self-definitions: indirectly our value-horizons mediate our other identifications-with. It depends on our value-identifications, which aspects of our first nature, experiences or habits we identify with and which not. But my value-identifications affect also directly the kind of person I am: there is an aspect of identity, which directly consists of value-orientations. We can call this aspect also the "ideal self", which consists of the ideal values and goals that I would wish to be able to live by. There is an element of imagination here, the goals and features that I include in my ideal self need not be something that are already I am, they are appropriated from the surrounding world. Thirdly, persons have a second nature, a character consisting of acquired dispositions. What we do and learn by doing affects the kinds of dispositions and habits we have. Our "second nature" is different from what we were at birth, and what we would like to be, but nevertheless, this is what we have become. Theorizing one's self-identity more narrowly in terms of one's value-orientations only loses this dynamic aspect of identity-formation. Fourth, one's habitual second nature, once formed, does not require much attention and voluntary striving. But some features belong to me through voluntary effort. Paul Ricoeur (1992) illustrates this with keeping one's word: when the time comes to keep one's word, I may have lost all the inclination to do it, but yet I may voluntary stick to my word.  Finally, some features belong to me merely through attributions from others. "Being famous" or "being out of fashion" may be things that I have not striven to be or even paid any attention to. I may be aware of such socially attributed labels without identifying with them. The influence of these social attributions to one's self-image is at the basis of much discussion concerning recognition. All these features, one's first and second nature, one's ideal self, one's voluntary strivings and one's social appearance are raw-material for identity, they are something I can identify with. Through these identifications, something that is merely a given part of first nature, second nature, voluntary effort or social attribution is transformed into my identity. There is a process of selection as to which features are significant enough to belong to my identity. The significant features are either positively identified with or negatively "disowned".  This process of identification implicitly relies on the framework of strong evaluations: if I value, say, courage and see myself as courageous, I may identify with some of my aggressive impulses, but if not, I may see these impulses as a feature that is not genuinely "mine". Thus, to sum up, strong evaluations are stable preferences which are strongly adhered to and which are based on important values. The role that they have in one's self-identity depends on whether we talk about practical identity or self-definitions in the more encompassing sense. Practical identity is entirely constituted by one's strong evaluations. In self-definitions strong evaluations play a double role: they are directly a constituent of one's self-definitions, and indirectly they provide the value horizon in the light of which one's other features, (natural, acquired and socially attributed) are evaluated and either identified with or disowned. Strong Evaluations and Personal Identity - Arto Laitinen    129References Flanagan, O. 1996 Self-Expressions: Mind, Morals and Meaning of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frankfurt, H. 1988 The Importance of What We Care About, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Raz, J. 1999 Engaging Reason, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ricoeur, P. 1992 Oneself as Another, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Ricoeur, P. 2000 The Just, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Sellars, W. 1963 Science, Perception and Reality, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Taylor, C. 1985a Philosophical Papers 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, C. 1985b Philosophical Papers 2, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  Taylor, C. 1989 Sources of the Self, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, C. 1991 Ethics of Authenticity, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.  Taylor, C. 1994 "Reply and Re-articulation" in James Tully (ed.): Philosophy in an Age of Pluralism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, C. 1995 Philosophical Arguments, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Taylor, C. 1997 "Leading a Life", in Ruth Chang (ed.), Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reasoning, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. 170-83.    

Elektronisch archivierte Theorie - Sammelpunkt

  127
Strong Evaluations and Personal Identity 
 
Arto Laitinen, Jyväskylä 
 
 
1. Strong evaluations 
Charles Taylor (1985a, 15-45; 1989, 25-52) draws 
a distinction between weak and strong evaluations. They 
are two kinds of evaluative attitudes persons can have 
towards a variety of objects of evaluation. The possible 
objects can vary from individual desires, emotions and acts 
to whole ways of life. Strong evaluations are stable 
preferences based on qualitative distinctions concerning 
the worth of the options. Strong evaluations are responses 
to the non-instrumental value of the options, and they can 
be mistaken, because the value of the options is not based 
on the response. By contrast, what Taylor calls "weak 
evaluations" cannot be mistaken. Weak evaluations make 
any of their objects weakly valued. This means that strong 
evaluations are value-based, and weak evaluations desire-
based preferences. Taylor also says that strong 
evaluations, unlike weak evaluations, are central to one's 
identity. One's identity is constituted through a strong 
adherence, a strong identification with and commitment to 
the values. Thus strong evaluations are stable preferences 
that are strongly adhered to, and which are based on 
strong values. 
Both "strong" and "evaluation" are potentially 
misleading terms. "Strength" does not refer to motivational 
strength: I can have very strong desires which I disapprove 
of. Values are "strong" in Taylor's sense if they are 
important, and the motivational strength derives from their 
importance to one's identity. Taylor (1994, 249) has also 
commented that the term "evaluation" is not an entirely 
happy one, because it might suggest that the value in 
question is dependent on the evaluations, or that the 
valuing must be reflective. It is also important that contrary 
to the suggestion of some commentators, like Owen 
Flanagan  (1996), the value in question need not be moral 
value, but it can be prudential or existential, aesthetic or 
"spiritual" (Taylor 1985a, 24). There is a broad spectrum of 
values which can be central to one's identity. Strong 
evaluations can be implicit or explicit, more or less 
articulate and more or less reflective. 
Taylor's notion of weak evaluations seems to be a 
mixed bag. As we saw, in his definition, weak evaluations 
are desire-based preferences. Yet Taylor's examples of 
weak evaluations are best seen as value-based 
preferences, but ones which are of small value and not 
central to one's identity. Here the inflationary way that 
Joseph Raz (1999) uses the notion "value" is helpful in that 
it includes also what he calls "small values". These are not 
based on desires, but it would be odd to call them "strong" 
values either. Using Raz's notion of value, we can see that 
Taylor's (1985a, 17) examples of weak evaluations, 
namely "exhilarating holiday in the north" and "relaxing 
holiday in the south" in fact embody values. The value of 
exhilaration or relaxation is not dependent on one's taking 
them to be valuable. It is intelligible to choose either 
option, they are both eligible, whereas it would not be 
intelligible to spend the two weeks in the nearby wasteland 
wiggling one's toes in the mud. It has no value in it, and is 
an unintelligible option, and it would make no sense to 
desire it (Taylor 1991, 36). Thus, it seems that strong 
evaluations differ in degree from preferences based on 
"small" values, and they differ in kind from preferences 
based on desires. 
To sum up, strong evaluations are stable 
preferences which are strongly identified with and which 
are based on important values as opposed to small values 
and as opposed to desire-based preferences. 
 
2. The senses of "personal identity"  
How should we assess Taylor's claim that 
personal identity is a matter of strong evaluations?  
"Personal identity" can be discussed in many 
senses. First of all, the question of personal identity can 
refer to criteria of personhood i.e. the question of what 
features make something a person. The classical answers 
are that a person is a rational animal, a linguistic animal, a 
moral agent or a self-conscious being. We can say that the 
question in this sense concerns the universal "species-
identity" of persons, not an individual's self-identity. When 
Taylor says that strong evaluations are central to one's 
identity he does not mean species-identity in this sense. 
Yet, it may be noted that one aspect of Taylor's answer to 
the question of criteria of personhood is that persons are 
actual or potential strong evaluators. 
Secondly, identity can refer to the logical relation 
of sameness, or as Paul Ricoeur (1992) has called it, 
"idem-identity". Identity can refer to diachronic persistence 
in time, i.e. numerical sameness of an object at two 
different points of time. Or, identity can refer to the 
synchronous unity of an object at one point of time. Or 
again, identity can refer to the exact similarity of two 
numerically distinct objects. In this sense of "idem-identity", 
strong evaluations are not of help, and Taylor does not 
really discuss the problem at all. Taylor's analysis 
presupposes that issues concerning idem-identity are 
already settled. Most importantly, he does not suggest that 
if two people have exactly similar evaluative views, then 
they are the same person. 
Finally, "personal identity" can refer to identity in 
the sense of selfhood, or as Ricoeur calls it, "ipse-identity". 
Human beings are self-interpreting animals, or "identity-
forming animals", who have practical orientations and who 
can suffer from identity crises (Taylor 1985a, 15-76; 1989, 
25-52). Everyone has their own subjective perspective and 
their own life to lead, and they pose and answer questions 
like "Who am I really? When am I really myself?".  
Being a person or a self is an active business. 
Having a self in a full-fledged sense means having a 
conception of oneself, and having conceptions is an active 
business. People do not have beliefs like things have 
properties. As Sellars (1963) has stressed, the relation of 
two mental episodes has to be normative if it is to count as 
knowledge; it cannot be merely causal. And as the 
"transcendental tradition" from Kant onwards has stressed, 
being a subject is not merely a matter of having mental 
contents (which could possibly be caused by the world) but 
being aware of the reality, taking the mental contents to be 
about the world. In addition to normativity and 
intentionality, the activity of self-defining is one aspect of 
the spontaneity of the subject. One's self-identity does not 
rest simply on "having features", but on one's activity, on 
identification with some actual or possible features. In this 
sense, everyone's identity is self-made. Cultural and social 
Strong Evaluations and Personal Identity - Arto Laitinen 
 
 
 128 
mediations are of course intertwined in this self-definition, 
and the point in stressing the self-made nature of self-
identity is not directed against these social and cultural 
mediations, but against the view that one's identity is a 
matter of given, natural features. Self-identity is a tentative 
result of an ongoing process of self-interpretation. 
We can distinguish between a narrower and a 
broader notion of self-identity. First, Taylor (1989, 25-52; 
1997) stresses that what we want to know when we ask 
"who am I" is our orientation in life. What kind of person do 
I want to be, what kind of goals do I have in life, what kind 
of things matter to me, towards what kind of things I want 
to have a developed sensibility? In an identity crisis, says 
Taylor, we need to fix the "moral map" by which we 
navigate our lives - we want to know where to go from 
here. "Practical identity" is an orientation concept. It is this 
"practical identity" which is wholly constituted by one's 
strong evaluations, by the important values that one has 
strong adherence to. 
But there seems to be another, more 
comprehensive notion of self-identity, which includes more 
than one's orientation in life. It covers among other things 
one's success in living up to one's goals, and any of one's 
features that one identifies with. This broader notion is 
related to a metaphor of self-image and it includes all 
aspects of the self-definitions, not merely the practical 
ones. Often Taylor talks as if everything related to personal 
identity would be a matter of practical orientation. Yet 
some of Taylor's discussions of self-identity in fact concern 
this broader notion, but he has not distinguished it from 
what I call here practical identity (see Taylor 1991, 31-53; 
1985b, 221-5, 1989, 43-52). I call this broader notion one's 
"self-interpretation" or "self-definition". Self-definition 
consists of one's identifications with one's actual or 
possible features.  It is important that not all the features 
that one actually has are constitutive of one's identity. The 
central concept here is "identification with" (Frankfurt 1988, 
Taylor 1985b, 221; Ricoeur 1992). The paradigm example 
is addiction: I cannot help having these desires, but yet I 
do not identify with them, they are not really "mine". The 
same process of identification is possible in relation to any 
of my features. The function of strong evaluations in this 
process deserves a closer look. 
 
3. The role of strong evaluations in self-
definitions 
Strong evaluations have a double role in one's 
self-interpretations. In addition to the direct role they have 
in constituting one's practical identity, strong evaluations 
provide the framework in the light of which other features 
are evaluated, and possibly identified with or disowned.  
Identification does not start from scratch, it always 
presupposes something given that I identify with. What are 
these other features? We can distinguish different ways of 
having a feature:  "first nature", value-identifications, 
habitual "second nature", voluntary effort and social 
attribution. 
First, as embodied beings, we have some 
biological characteristics that are given in birth. These are 
not merely linked to our physical features but also our 
mental capacities. Also events after our birth can affect our 
natural features, our first nature: one can lose one's sight 
in a traffic accident, for example. These natural features 
are optional raw-material for one's identity. 
Secondly, at the core of our self-identity is our 
practical identity, our identifications with culturally 
mediated values and goals. As we saw, these acquired 
identifications play a double role in our self-definitions: 
indirectly our value-horizons mediate our other 
identifications-with. It depends on our value-identifications, 
which aspects of our first nature, experiences or habits we 
identify with and which not. But my value-identifications 
affect also directly the kind of person I am: there is an 
aspect of identity, which directly consists of value-
orientations. We can call this aspect also the "ideal self", 
which consists of the ideal values and goals that I would 
wish to be able to live by. There is an element of 
imagination here, the goals and features that I include in 
my ideal self need not be something that are already I am, 
they are appropriated from the surrounding world. 
Thirdly, persons have a second nature, a character 
consisting of acquired dispositions. What we do and learn 
by doing affects the kinds of dispositions and habits we 
have. Our "second nature" is different from what we were 
at birth, and what we would like to be, but nevertheless, 
this is what we have become. Theorizing one's self-identity 
more narrowly in terms of one's value-orientations only 
loses this dynamic aspect of identity-formation. 
Fourth, one's habitual second nature, once 
formed, does not require much attention and voluntary 
striving. But some features belong to me through voluntary 
effort. Paul Ricoeur (1992) illustrates this with keeping 
one's word: when the time comes to keep one's word, I 
may have lost all the inclination to do it, but yet I may 
voluntary stick to my word.  
Finally, some features belong to me merely 
through attributions from others. "Being famous" or "being 
out of fashion" may be things that I have not striven to be 
or even paid any attention to. I may be aware of such 
socially attributed labels without identifying with them. The 
influence of these social attributions to one's self-image is 
at the basis of much discussion concerning recognition. 
All these features, one's first and second nature, 
one's ideal self, one's voluntary strivings and one's social 
appearance are raw-material for identity, they are 
something I can identify with. Through these 
identifications, something that is merely a given part of first 
nature, second nature, voluntary effort or social attribution 
is transformed into my identity. There is a process of 
selection as to which features are significant enough to 
belong to my identity. The significant features are either 
positively identified with or negatively "disowned".  This 
process of identification implicitly relies on the framework 
of strong evaluations: if I value, say, courage and see 
myself as courageous, I may identify with some of my 
aggressive impulses, but if not, I may see these impulses 
as a feature that is not genuinely "mine". 
Thus, to sum up, strong evaluations are stable 
preferences which are strongly adhered to and which are 
based on important values. The role that they have in 
one's self-identity depends on whether we talk about 
practical identity or self-definitions in the more 
encompassing sense. Practical identity is entirely 
constituted by one's strong evaluations. In self-definitions 
strong evaluations play a double role: they are directly a 
constituent of one's self-definitions, and indirectly they 
provide the value horizon in the light of which one's other 
features, (natural, acquired and socially attributed) are 
evaluated and either identified with or disowned. 
Strong Evaluations and Personal Identity - Arto Laitinen 
 
 
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References 
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Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
Frankfurt, H. 1988 The Importance of What We Care About, 
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Raz, J. 1999 Engaging Reason, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 
Ricoeur, P. 1992 Oneself as Another, Chicago: The University of 
Chicago Press. 
Ricoeur, P. 2000 The Just, Chicago: The University of Chicago 
Press. 
Sellars, W. 1963 Science, Perception and Reality, London: 
Routledge & Kegan Paul. 
Taylor, C. 1985a Philosophical Papers 1, Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press. 
Taylor, C. 1985b Philosophical Papers 2, Cambridge: Cambridge 
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Taylor, C. 1989 Sources of the Self, Cambridge: Cambridge 
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Taylor, C. 1991 Ethics of Authenticity, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard 
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Taylor, C. 1997 "Leading a Life", in Ruth Chang (ed.), 
Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical 
Reasoning, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. 
170-83. 
 
 
 


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