It's important to look at the ideas set forth by William James, because there is hardly a piece of writing on the topic of values and preferences that doesn't make reference to the basic premise presented in this thesis.  In short, he says that the value of everything is what we make it; that there is no pre-existing good or bad or obligation.

James makes the case that all of our obligations, all of what we call good and what we call bad, do not exist as good and bad per se.  They are our constructions and are for each of us but a product of each individual's wants, needs and desires.  The value one places on any given thing -- the goodness or badness of it -- is purely the product of each heart/mind.

James posits that  "obligation, good and ill"  have no relevancy in a world without sentient life.  If a world is purely material and exists without a God or even one interested spectator, "would there be any sense in saying of that world that one of its states is better than another?"  If you argue that some thing is good for another thing, he asks "what in a purely physical universe demands the production of that other fact?"  "Goodness, badness, and obligation must be realized somewhere in order really to exist."

Then, he says, you add one sentient being.  Now there is a chance for good and evil to exist because moral relations can align themselves in that being's consciousness.  If that being feels something as good, then "he makes it good.  It is good, for him; and being good for him, is absolutely good, for he is the sole creator of values in that universe, and outside of his opinion things have no moral character at all."  In this universe, then, the only conflict of values would be for that individual being who would eventually have conflicts within his own set of ideals. " Nothing can
be good or right except so far as some consciousness feels it to be good or thinks it to be right."

This, then, is the crux of the discussion, and the basis for all further thinking about what we choose as ideals and values.  It is also the point that has been adopted as a premise for subsequent treatises on values and preferences.  But it is not all that James has to say in this essay.

His premise is a foundation for encouraging us to consider how we go about selecting and organizing our own ideals.  He says that since our idea of morality is an abstract order in which the objective truth resides,  each of us,  "tries to prove that this pre-existing order is more accurately reflected in his own ideas than in those of his adversary."  The tragically practical reality of living is that even if we are not in conflict with the goods established by others, we will always be caught in a squeeze between opposing goods within ourselves.  Ideally, instead, we would establish our scales of good and bad and obligation based upon achieving the greatest path to peace.  And he calls upon us to  "invent some manner of realizing" our own ideals which will also satisfy the ideals of others.
 
 Links that relate to William James:
  

William James (a really comprehensive site)   Rhetoric and Pragmatism   William James on the Web   A big list of resources and references   A View of William James

   
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