Working on an ethics paper, trying a new idea-cultivating strategy. Let's see what I can figure out about this. Context: established.
Some vocabulary, to start with. "Performance value" is the value a product retains as a direct result of the method of its creation. "Product value" is a value based on what the product appreciably is, regardless of history. "Living well" is living in production of a good life; a "good life" is one which we may find valuable on reflection, rather than just as it is lived.
To live well, then, is to generate performance value for your life. It is difficult to imagine a life as a product, something to be jostled about and traded for goods and services. But if we can manage this, think of a life as a concrete thing we can hold in our hands or even just heads, then one which was good would have high product value, because its future usefulness as a product would be greater.
I think the division between these ideas, performance and product value, is primarily a question of when you're evaluating from, as may be exemplified by getting away from the difficult concept of "a life." So let us instead use for these purposes a tangible work of art, as Dworkin does. I stand before a painting I've never seen and know nothing about, in the present moment, and I judge. From where I am, all I can determine is product value; balance of light/shading, symmetry in any figures there may be, my own ability to read meaning into the work as a whole, etc. But what do these qualities actually contribute to? If they and others like them compose and justify product value, and product value is to be understood in any broader context, it must be found to relate to something other than its own correlating of performance value.
Of what consequence, then, is the beauty of a painting, fr'instance? Appreciating something beautiful now produces a mixture of aesthetic pleasure and satisfaction with my ability to feel as much; this second part because an intellectual effort is required to appreciate beauty. If I leave it like it is, the degree to which such beauty contributes to the painting's product value is unchanged. If, alternatively, I alter the painting in some way to make it better(by restoring mild damage, say), I've increased both product and performance value: the product is improved in itself, made such that my feelings of pleasure in looking at is will be greater in the future than they were previously. Further, by participating in this improvement, I've contributed intelligently to its production; though I cannot claim the lion's share of credit for its eventual performance value on this basis alone, it will always be true that I did what I did and that product value increased as a result. However, what if I act to reduce its product value? Damage or deface the work itself, or worse, criticize it to others. I've still added to performance value, still inscribed the fact of my interaction with this object upon eternity with intention and intelligence.
How do these various influences I have on performance and product value play out in the future? If I increase the painting's product value, then someone else approaches it as I did, they will be able to appreciate only that change; performance value is virtually impossible to quantify unless you've been present for the entire creation process, as the creator is. Likewise, if I mess up the painting, the next to view it won't be able to say anything about the performance value of the work because they won't know why the damage took place, whether by accident or design. The performance value of an object is then inherently attached to its past, while the product value is attached to the future; additions to performance value may either add to or reduce product value, but no change in product value can reduce performance value. The past can only be added to, not altered or reduced, but the future is always shrinking and getting less shiny; on the long view, all product values approach zero, while performance value is always increasing.
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