SELF-ESTEEM & WORTH CONCEPTS

F. Richard Singer III Current Edition: 10/2011

website: www.conceptualstudy.org      email: richardsinger3@sbcglobal.net

The Concept of Self-esteem: This present paper gives a paradigm case formulation of one type of a low self-esteem concept that is more a way of acting than a kind of belief. Before this occurred to me, it seemed that low of self-esteem was some vague belief that a person had about being inferior. As an outsider, having never experienced low self-esteem my self, I could not seem to understand such a belief. Moreover those plagued by low self-esteem could not clarify it for me. It was the attitude concept (as formulated in PNDP) that suggested to me that self-esteem is primarily an attitude that a person P directed towards P rather than any clear beliefs P had about P. Attitudes are types of behavior with patterns of occurrence that are context-specific, in that they are directed towards an object or activity or institution or practice or other more narrowly defined focus of attention.

I will first indicate how to conceptualize self-esteem as an attitude and then discuss how this could relate to beliefs. I will then indicate the general strategy for developing a higher level of self-esteem that occurred because of this conceptual analysis. However while conceptual analysis can suggest paraceptual conjectures it cannot provide evidence for them. I make no paraceptual claims about the utility of this strategy. To determine it utility it must be tested, and results of the testing seem likely to depend on how it is implemented. Moreover this may vary considerably from person to person.

As just indicated, an attitude has an object. The attitude is indicated by a pattern of behavior towards that object. The object of P’s attitude of self-esteem is P. The pattern is the way in which P treats P as if P’s wellbeing is important. P has normal automatic self-esteem if P usually acts as if P’s wellbeing and the wellbeing of other were of the same importance. Automatic self-esteem may involve actions in which P intentionally sacrifices P’s interests for the interests of others, especially for ethical reasons, but except in cases involving significant values, automatic self-esteem is incompatible with P sacrificing P’s basic wellbeing. P has low self-esteem if P acts as if P’s own interests do not have the level of priority one would normally expect them to have. Low self-esteem is often linked to a vague belief of being in some sense inferior. I call this belief vague because the concept of inferior being used is often vague. Before discussing this, I present an account of a fictitious person Lou who developed extremely low self-esteem. I start with some background. I follow this by a paradigm case analysis of this concept. The preceding background is not part of the low self-esteem concept, but is given in order to place Lou’s actions in a broader setting.

Background: Lou is 35 years old. His brother Jim is 2 years older. Jim made good grades but Lou did not. In general, Lou felt that Jim was able to do everything better than he could. His sister Ann is only 31. Ann was cute, and Lou felt that everybody doted on her. Lou did not feel important to anyone and as a result developed a vague belief that he was unimportant and inferior and even worthless. As Lou grew up he tried to retreat into his own private world. However this did not seem possible since when he was about thirteen years old he felt that his most private thoughts were apparent to his parents. At age 10, he had been severely punished because he had walked into the bathroom when Ann was taking a bath. Although this was accidental, he felt that he had done something really bad. Furthermore Lou uses pornography to fulfill his sexual fantasies. He knew that this was evil, but he could not resist the temptation. He felt that this proved that he was guilty of looking at his sister, and that he deserved all the pain he was suffering. Because he felt that his parents knew his thoughts he felt that he was being punished.

A Specific Case of Retiring Low Self-esteem: The Sunday before Lou’s 35^th birthday, they were at Ann’s house for dinner. Ann congratulated Jim being on promoted to a partner in his law firm. Lou later told his counselor that Ann said this in order to remind everyone that Lou had no professional status. Later Lou said that he walked into the living room Jim was laughing at something his father had said. Lou believed that they were laughing at him. The only evidence Lou could give for this was the vague statement to the effect that they always laugh at him. Lou then told his counselor that he knew that his family would feel obligated to do something for his birthday, and what he wanted was for them to take him to dinner and a movie for his birthday. He wanted to go to the Elm Avenue Steak House and later see a new comedy that had just been released. However instead telling them this, he said nothing until his mother asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday. Lou thought to himself that of course she would not know what he wanted, and while he felt resentment, all he could say was that Dad likes steak so why don’t we go to a steak house. Lou said nothing when the steak house Jim suggested was not the one Lou had in mind. When Ann suggested they see a movie afterwards, Lou was pleased but responded by saying that since Ann liked comedies perhaps we should see the one that had just been released. While this could be interpreted as a polite way of indicating that he cared about her pleasure, it was part of a more general pattern, a pattern of acting as if his own interests are unimportant both to others and to himself. This is because Lou implicitly believes it would be foolish to expect anyone to care about the wellbeing of anyone as unimportant as himself.

Paradigm Case of Retiring Low Self-esteem: P denotes a person with retiring low self-esteem, Q denotes a person (or set of persons) whose action may affect P.

(1) P often acts as if P’s wellbeing is less important than the wellbeing of others.

(2) Instead of acting to assert P’s own goals and interests P usually defers to those of others

(3) P usually interprets any action taken by any Q that might affect P as not intended to enhance P’s wellbeing.

(4) To enhance P’s wellbeing in ways that involved support from any Q, P usually acts as if this support will not be freely given, such as acting as if Q must be catered to or fooled.

(5) P usually denies even to P that an action taken by P is intended to serve P’s wellbeing.

(6) P often takes any remark which is positive about some other person as indirect way of indicating something derogatory about P.

(7) P often assumes that any Q is thinking negative thoughts about P

(8) P often assumes that some unclearly heard remark involves a negative assessment of P.

Allowable Transformations:

Omit any 4 of the last 6 criteria.
Change one or more instances of usually to often.
Change one or more instances of usually to sometimes.
Change one or more instances of often to sometimes.
Change any Q to most Q in P’s family or many or most Q in some group significant to P.
Change any Q to many.
Change any remark to many remarks.

Non-Allowable Transformation:

Omit more than 4 of the criteria.
Any change that does not leave at least 2 instances stronger than sometimes.

Note: It sometimes said that a person may hide low self-esteem by acting in ways directly opposite (1) and (2). I call this compensatory low self-esteem discuss this at the end of this paper.

General Strategy: I now indicate a general strategy a person P might be able to use in countering low self-esteem. Self-esteem is an attitude which is indicated by a pattern of behavior towards that P takes towards P’s wellbeing.

· Let A be acting as if P’s wellbeing was just as important as the wellbeing of anyone else.

· P must deliberately and steadily work on replacing P’s old way of acting by A.

· Furthermore P must do this until A must become an automatic way of acting.

While this strategy is simple to articulate, it may be so difficult to implement that its utility for most persons with low self-esteem will be minimal. This strategy involves changing habits that have often been automatic for years. To make A automatic, P needs to deliberately choose A on a multitude of occasions. Since any such choices may raise in P a level of anxiety in a way that P finds onerous, this may need to be done gradually. The easiest way P can reduce such anxiety is by reverting to P’s old way of acting. P must recognize this, try to avoid self-deception. P must also counter destructive self-criticism for reverting. However while accepting reversions to old way of acting; P should set goals for implementing A on a regular basis in some form or under some conditions where the anxiety can be managed. It might be useful to journal these efforts.

Since deliberately choosing of A will involve anxiety, P will need to learn ways to overcome this anxiety. The most powerful way to overcome anxiety is to take it as a challenge to be dealt with courageously. To do this it is important to bring any feeling of danger into focus. Consider the worst things that are at all likely to happen, and decide if you can tolerate them if they happen. Beyond this, consider the worst thing that could possibly happen and your ability take this risk? Fearfulness Concepts gives a detailed analysis of my ways of overcoming anxiety, however not specifically in relation to the anxieties that relate to cultivating greater self-esteem.

Having conceptualized self-esteem as an attitude, I now consider how this attitude could relate to inferiority beliefs. Let B denote the tendency P has to believe that P is inferior or worthless. To the extent that B is prevalent, A will be hard to implement. P needs to be liberated from B. With effort, a possible action can be chosen. This is not the case with most beliefs. One way to challenge B is to choose actions that can result in experience that may make B less plausible. Engaging in P’s old way of acting will merely reinforce B. To counter B, P must risk doing A. In doing A, P may tend to interpret the result as a failure. This will continue to reinforce B. To avoid this, P must focus on the fact that any such act took courage, and think of even the smallest step in learning to live with more courage as a success.

A second way to challenge a belief is bring it into sharper focus. Being inferior involves some kind of scale and some belief that there is some place one ought to be on that scale. This is somehow associated with a notion of personal worth as an attribute along with a belief that different persons differ in their worth. All of this seems both strange and vague to me, probably because I see no way to formulate coherent evaluation concepts for making such judgements. Furthermore I have never known anyone with a belief in personal inferiority whose relevant evaluation concepts did not seem extremely vague. I discuss evaluation concepts in detail in Part 3 Chapter 3 of A Personal Approach to Conceptual Philosophy. Here I merely sketch some reasons I find the concept of evaluating a person’s worth both conceptually vague and extremely counterproductive.

Persons are simply who they are, and I find their reasons for being so are far too complex to judge. I act on the conjecture that persons have usually done about as well in shaping their own characteristics as a reasonable judge would expect, assuming that this judge understood all the factors involved. All of us could have done better had we exercised more exceptional powers of will, but then most of the time we do about as well as could be reasonable expected given our state at the time and the situation we were encountering.

The only value judgements that I find applicable to persons are those that relate to specific actions or characteristics. It makes senses for me to say that as a musician I would be worthless or that I am the best mathematics teacher that some of my students have ever encountered. Neither these nor any more comprehensive set of evaluations that I or anyone else could make constitute criteria I would use to judge my worth. Nor would I in any way evaluate the worth of any other person. Therefore we are dealing with the basis for the person’s reactions to those changes or possible changes. Thus, we have here a general basis for understanding why people do what they do.

Status: In working with status concepts we are primarily working with the effects of changes or possible changes on something’s overall place in the scheme of things. What follows about status is taken from The Behavior of persons by Peter Ossorio.

“A place for everything and everything in its place”

This familiar slogan carries a heavy connotation of spic and span orderliness and efficiency. However, we can take it merely at face value, without the connotation.

The world has a place for everything, even such untidy things as disasters, horrors, accidents, and tragedies, and episodes of ecstasy, transcendence, and revelation, as well as fifteen seconds of fame and peculiar statements by quantum physicists, Existentialists, and political commentators.

And of course, in that world, everything is in its place. However, what place any given thing has in the scheme of things is not, in general, a “given.” Objects, processes, events, states of affairs and, above all, people, do not come with transcendental labels on them which specify where they fit or what their place is.

The place that a thing has in the scheme of things is something that is decided, not merely discovered. This holds both for my scheme of things and for our scheme of things. The concept of a “status assignment” is the concept of giving something a place in a scheme of things. We will approach it through the important special cases of degradation and accreditation.

Worth Concepts: Persons are the creators of worth in the sense that they make a status assignment of some type of worth to some aspects of the world. Moreover any type of worth involves a status assignment, and any person has the capacity to make such assignments. For instance, I can assign myself the status of being a competent to choose my educational goals, even if that status is rejected by others and is factually questionable. Of course, self status assignments can vary widely in their utility.

According to my ideals, persons are too important to have their worth evaluated or to be assigned a status involving their worth as a person, altho other status assignments of a person by a person are legitimate, including a self-status assignment by a person. Not everyone shares my ideals in this regard, altho I find it highly plausible that Jesus did. If I did make a status assignment involving the worth of persons, I would merely assign each person has the same personal worth and ideally treat them as if this worth is infinite. If the word infinite seems misleading, I would substitute without measure. However my preference is to merely say that worth is not a concept that I apply to persons as persons.

I next supplement my explanation of why I do not understand the concept of worth being used when a person says that they are worthless. I develop several types of worth concepts that I do understand. I indicate why they are not applicable to evaluating personal worth, but why they might still relate to the tendency P has to believe that P is inferior or worthless. In particular positive feeling in relation to these types of worth can be an asset in countering this belief tendency. For each of these concepts, the worth of something is a relation that it bears rather than an attribute of it.

Preferential Worth: Consider some situation in which P can think about choosing between T₁ and T₂. T₁ has preferential worth over T₂ for P in this situation to the extent that P would choose T₁ over T₂ while this situation. If this remains the case for various situations then T₁ has preferential worth over T₂ for P. T has high preferential worth for P if T has preferential worth over most other things it would be relevant for P to think about choosing instead of T. Note that such worth always involves a status assignment by a person.

Example: Let T₁ be a pound of almonds and T₂ be a five dollar bill. Let S be a situation in which P₁ has a pound of almonds to sell and P₂ has a 5 dollars bill. Both of the following status assignment could occur, and in fact must be occur for an exchange to happen.

(1) T₁ is currently worth more than T₂ for P₂. (2) T₂ is currently worth more than T₁ for P₁.

Suppose the sale takes place and P₃ says that P₁ got a better deal because T₂ is really worth more than T₁. That P₁ got the better deal might be true, if for instance someone else had almonds available at a cheaper price or if P₁ was willing to sell at a cheaper price. However suppose P₂ has a strong desire for almonds and cannot find them at a lower price. It is not clear to me what real worth means, unless P₃ means that in situation S most people would value T₂ more than T₁. However (1) is still true and the use of some concept of real worth does not seem useful. I would say instead that T₁ is generally worth more than T₂, meaning that in most situations that are likely to occur most people would be likely to chose T₁ over T₂. If I were to use a concept of ‘really worth more’ then I would change this to all possible situations and all possible persons. However I fail to see much utility in such a concept.

Preferential Worth of Persons: Now suppose T₁ and T₂ are persons. What is meant by choosing T₁ over T₂? The simplest way to interpret choosing is as choosing in order to possess. Unless one is thinking in terms of slavery, this is not appropriate for persons with ideal similar to mine. Instead choosing a person relates to some role or purpose. P might choose T₁ over T₂ when choosing a football coach but do just the opposite when choosing a basketball coach.

Consider how to relate this preferential worth concept to the belief tendency B that P has in relation to feeling worthless. Let us separate the feeling in relation to B to what seems like a claim in B, namely the claim C that P is preferentially worthless. For C to be literally true would mean that in any situation S each person would choose any other person Q over P regardless of role or purpose. Since the vastness of possible roles alone makes this is seem highly implausible, I doubt this is what anyone could mean by C. If C has cognitive meaning at all, it means something else. Perhaps it means something like in most situations that P remembers most persons that P has encountered have chosen some other person over P in many of the roles that P cared about. While this is somewhat vague, suppose we take it as the meaning of C. If so C would be better stated as P currently has little preferential worth to others. Given C, P has reason to feel discouraged, but it also gives P a place to start challenging B and as a result choose a different self assigned status. If P realizes the vagueness C, perhaps P can stop treating C as an absolute and realize C can be modified by taking a multitude of small steps that help P experience some preferential worth. For example, P can cultivate personal characteristics that P values and choose to be around people who value these characteristics. The goal is to learn to think of C as a situation rooted in limitations of P’s relational experience, a situation that can be changed.

Other Worth Concepts: Feelings about preferential worth are not the only feelings about worth that may be relevant to B. The others, while often related to preferential worth, can be can be cultivated independently.

Transformational Worth: X has transformational worth in situation for transformation T to the extent that in this situation X is useful for implementing T. If this remains the case for various situations then X has durable transformational worth for T. X has multifaceted transformational worth to the extent that X has durable transformational worth a multitude of transformations.

Example: Consider a situation in which I want a log with a knot to be split. My friend Steve has a mechanical splitter. If available, both he and his splitter would have considerable transformational worth. However I and my hand tools have enough transformational worth to do the job.

Cultivating Transformational Worth: To cultivate durable transformational worth P needs to select transformations that P can value. P might choose to transform one of P’s own personal characteristic. If P feels a lack of personal integrity P might work at becoming a person of high integrity. Similar remarks apply to cultivating traits of self discipline or courage. However low self-esteem is often paired with perfectionism, i.e. a feeling only by being exceptional can P’s worth be established. Thus P may set unrealistic goals, judging results in a way that undermines P’s efforts. P may need to focus primarily on one characteristic to transform and also try to cultivate the attitude that it is the effort rather than the results that has transformational worth. Even with persistent quality effort, long established characteristic may take time to change. Furthermore, just feeling some sense of transformational worth is only a start. To develop automatic self-esteem, a person needs to have a sense of multifaceted transformational worth.

Altho transforming ones personal characteristics may be the most powerful way to experience durable transformational worth, this is not the only type of situation that can be transformed. I experience transformational worth by something as simple as making a rock path, as editing this paper, as teaching Angela a game playing strategies. There are many manifest types of transformations that P can choose to participate in, and for many of these, results come quickly without undue effort. There are also a number of more remote matters that P could chose for transformational efforts. The way I taught mathematics was guided not only by its fairly immediate transformational effect on my students, but also by my desire to be part of a radical transformation in our educational system. While becoming involved in transformation of remote states can enhance P’s sense of transformational worth, there is a danger if P’s self-esteem is low. Remote states may be unlikely to be transformed by the efforts of an individual. To experience transformational worth in relation to remote states, P should take great care focus on effort rather than on results. Feeling of failure in regard to the transformation of remote states is likely to produce a sense of futility that will reinforce P’s tendency to feel worthless.

Functional Worth: This concept relates to functional systems, such as the solar system, the engine of a car, the human body, the executive branch of a state government, the European Union, etc. The functional worth of something is a relation between it a functional system FS. Something has functional worth in a situation for FS to the extent that it is important for the maintenance FS while in that situation. If this remains the case for many situations then it has broad functional worth for FS. Another aspect of functional worth relates to the way in which the functional system FS is regarded by P. Something has significant functional worth for P to the extent that P has significant functional worth for some FS that is significant to P.

Example: My tail light has no functional worth for my bicycle during daylight hours. It has functional worth at night but not as much as the chain. When my hip prevented walking for exercise, I used my bicycle extensively for this purpose. At that time the chain had more significant functional worth to me than it currently has.

Most of my comments on transformational worth can be modified to fit functional worth. However there is one aspect of functional worth on which I want to focus special attention, namely functional worth thru employment. This is one of the main ways that persons in our society experience significant functional worth and persons employed in low paying jobs may have a tendency to feel that they are worth less than those employed in higher paying jobs. If P has low self-esteem then feelings of low functional worth in connection to employment can be a major barrier to developing greater self-esteem. This is especially the case if P is not employed for pay. One way to counter this is to challenge the primacy of economics in human life. Suppose P thinks that an elementary teacher has at least as much functional worth for our society as a ball player making several million dollars a year. P can probably find a multitude of such relevant examples in relation to other people, and should do so when feeling economically worthless.

The Primacy of Personal Worth: Using transformational or functional worth concepts, P’s characteristics can be evaluated according to various standards, and this can be important to P and may affect P’s self-esteem. However, as with preferential worth, I would not regard this as relevant to P’s worth as a person. A person’s characteristics are merely valuable in relation to whatever purposes are at hand. I recommend cultivating a perspective that regards personal worth as deeper than this. Perhaps the most powerful thing P can do to counter P’s vague belief in P’s worthlessness and is to repeatedly reinforce this way of valuing all persons, thus including P. I repeat the essence of what I said earlier.

Persons are the creators of worth and are too important to have their worth evaluated.
If I was to assign worth to person as persons,
I would merely say that in using my ideals, I would ideally treat each person has infinite personal worth. If the word ‘infinite’ seems misleading, I would substitute ‘without measure’.

John Stuart Mill said that if the happiness of all of humanity could be obtained by condemning one person to misery it would ethically wrong to make this decision. While not deduced this way by Mill, this follows from the evaluation principle that assigns infinite worth to each person. Some of our most fundamental traditions suggest this principle: the Declaration of Independence, the ideal of equality before the law, ideals of universal love. This is also the essence of the most basic form of choosing, namely choosing to save. In the Christian tradition this can be epitomized by the parable of the hundred sheep, one of which had gone astray. From a more humanistic perspective this principle can be typified by so called lifeboat questions. According common human ethics, choosing whose life to save is an ethical dilemma. Possible solutions might involve volunteers or saving children, but it cannot be decided by asking who has more personal worth, and for a carefully designed lifeboat question there may be no ethically valid solution. Various religious perspectives would deal with such a lifeboat question in similar ways,

Compensatory Self-esteem: Suppose P’s behavior fits with several of last 6 criteria of the paradigm case analysis for low self-esteem but seems to be directly opposite of the first 2 criteria. Thus P often acts as if P’s wellbeing is more important than the wellbeing of others and usually acts to implement P’s own goals and interests with little regard to the goals and interests of others. Clearly this attitude is more like low self-esteem than automatic self-esteem, and I classify this as another form of low self-esteem. I conceptualized it separately as compensatory self-esteem. It sometimes manifests itself as what is sometimes called Passive aggressive behavior. Perhaps compensatory self-esteem and low self-esteem are rooted in the some of the same types underlying person characteristics, but this is not relevant to this conceptualization. The self-esteem concepts I am using are attitude concepts, with attitudes being conceptualized as a way of acting. Thus whatever the underling reason may be for these ways of acting, what I have called low self-esteem and compensatory self-esteem are different patterns of action. As such, there is good reason that to imagine different ways of dealing with them. In particular a person with retiring low-self may be more likely to want to change than a person with compensatory self-esteem.