Having pressed for a value-neutral account of freedom, I cannot but be impressed by the insistent demand for a central role for the notion of value or evaluation, if not in the analysis of freedom, then perhaps in that of autonomy of choice. (By definition, scope of autonomy implicates values, but that is not the notion we are currently trying to understand.) Even relativistic interpretations inevitably require that free or autonomous agents be essentially concerned to realize their values, no matter how silly, odious, or bizarre. There is no way to deal satisfactorily with this deeply ingrained view without a careful attempt to understand the nature of value and evaluation.

Values and desires

Even if we are sympathetic with the notion of objective value, it is clear that a person can have values that are not aligned with objective value; a person can be immoral, for example. Our project, then, concerns the difference between an individual's desires and her values.

We might describe this task as a search for the factor that forces a distinction between the two notions. For example, desires come in varying strengths. But since we certainly want to accommodate the thought that one state of affairs or goal is more highly valued or prized than another, we are not forced to distinguish and do not yet comprehend the difference between a strong desire for some goal and the placing of great value on that goal.