Of course, Wikipedia is neither authoritative nor internally consistent—no surprise there. But, having encountered the word axiology, I checked out the article of that name, which asserts that “it is also closely related to value theory and meta-ethics.” But based on the sense that I was beginning to form of axiology, the term value theory seemed like a perfectly apt synonym (so, I wondered, why merely “closely related“?). And when I clicked through to that article I was rewarded with the assertion that “within philosophy, it is also known as ethics or axiology.”
Clearly, a philosopher might come at these matters differently than, say, an economist. But is there any consensus on the (intensional or extensional) meanings of the pair of terms axiology and value theory? Or, to phrase my question differently, is there a resolution of the partial discordance between the two Wikipedia articles on which most philosophers along with specialists in the other relevant disciplines would agree? Indeed—hitting closer to home—how would this very site explain the relationship between its tags axiology
and value theory
?
I have seen this site’s question, What is the branch of philosophy concerned with such questions? but the relevant answer has received only a single upvote and focuses only on the terminology within philosophy.