Strong Evaluations and Personal Identity

Charles Taylor draws
a distinction between weak and strong evaluations. They
are two kinds of evaluative attitudes persons can have
towards a variety of objects of evaluation. The possible
objects can vary from individual desires, emotions and acts
to whole ways of life. Strong evaluations are stable
preferences based on qualitative distinctions concerning
the worth of the options. Strong evaluations are responses
to the non-instrumental value of the options, and they can
be mistaken, because the value of the options is not based
on the response. By contrast, what Taylor calls "weak
evaluations" cannot be mistaken. Weak evaluations make
any of their objects weakly valued. This means that strong
evaluations are value-based, and weak evaluations desirebased
preferences. Taylor also says that strong
evaluations, unlike weak evaluations, are central to one's
identity. One's identity is constituted through a strong
adherence, a strong identification with and commitment to
the values. Thus strong evaluations are stable preferences
that are strongly adhered to, and which are based on
strong values.