What is Value-driven Thinking?

Value-driven thinking is just a decision to pursue certain preferences. They may not be preferences that you favor and they may not be salutary from your point of view. Nazis and gangsters are driven by their own values.

Thank you for your response. I think values should be considered moral responsibilities rather than personal preferences. Gangsters are motivated by their 'world-destroying profession,' not by value-driven thinking.

You assume all values that drive people must be, according to your standards, morally positive values. Unfortunately some folks value conquest, acquisition, and status. Also, Old Norse religion regarded warrior values as especially worthy and their embodiment as a requirement for admission to Valhalla.

It's true that objective values, which have been morally accepted, carry less or no weight to some, expressing the contrasting nature of subjectivity. However, there are values, which are non-negotiable from the perspective of ethics, absolutist thinking, and epistemic obligations.

Amalya Sukiasyan

You wrote: "However, there are values, which are non-negotiable from the perspective of ethics,"

Maybe so, and in fact that's my position too. But you have now shifted the goal posts. Your question was "What is Value-driven Thinking?" and not "What is thinking driven by absolutist ethical values?" For sure, some values are better than others, but not everyone is driven by those better values. And there's a further problem, since some of those people driven by value systems you and I might disagree with nonetheless regard their values as ethical and obligatory. Although it's certainly true that gangsters may recognize but reject or ignore many ethical values and obligations, it is not obvious that the warrior values of Old Norse religion were a rejection of ethical values and obligations they recognized rather than constituting an ethical system based on different values.

Karl Pfeifer, I agree that ethics does not have any authority for gangsters, especially given their self-made and morally unapproved philosophy. As said in The Human Comedy by William Saroyan: "The wicked people of the world don’t know they are wicked. That’s why they are wicked. And that’s why they come to be kind."

The right direction in life is found by following the compass based on eternal truth and undiminishable values, which are objective and exist independent of consciousness.