Values: complementary to knowledge and competence

I was reflecting more on what values are.

I come back more and more strongly to the position that values are what people have in common when they would make the same choices in the same situations. But of course what you do is most often affected by what you know, and certainly also limited by what you are capable of doing, or indeed what you are competent at doing. And yet, the way we use the concept of values indicates that we imagine that we may share values with people of quite different knowledge and skills.

So I think it is perfectly reasonable to say that we share values with people who would make the same choices in the same situations, given the same knowledge and abilities. Because we don't share the same knowledge and abilities, we can never be absolutely certain, but we can imagine, and I think with good reason. Values are complementary to knowledge and ability. It is the three of them together that determine choices of action, to the extent that they are determinable (which is never perfectly.)