- Values did man only assign to things in order to maintain himself- he created only the significance of things, a human significance! Therefore, calleth he himself "man," that is, the valuator.
(Zarathustra - of the Thousand and One Goals)
If, as Zarathustra says, fundamental to mans being is his valuing, then logically this valuing he must do in terms of himself, for it to amount to his consistent being-man. By such consistently specific valuing, man assimilates material and grows as himself. By this valuing in terms of himself he does not, from the moment of his conception disintegrate by the laws of entropy that seem to govern the universe, but grows, from human cell to human emryo to human being. This was already understood, in a rudimentary form, by Nietzsche. But with this understanding a new question arose: how is a consistent valuing possible? The simple answer would be: by being a consistent subject. But this only createa a circular argumen, and leaves open the question: how there can be a valuing, a being? How does a subject maintain its perspectival consistency, its structural integrity, whereby it values in terms of itself? To explain this we must posit a self-valuing, which is to say, a holding-oneself-as-value, whereby this “oneself” is nothing else than this consistent holding-as-value, in engaging the outer world. This consistency of a self-holding standard-value, is what amounts to being, the accomulation of more and more material to feed and sustain a structurally consistent growing, “a becoming”.
With this logical deepening of the concept valuing, we are faced with the problem of identifying technically what this self valuing is. At this point, this holding-oneself-as-consistent in the face of otherness, the outer, to which I will refer as self-valuing, has been inferred as a necessity to the possibility of valuing, which amounts the activity of manifest being, i.e. interacting with “the world” and thereby assimilating materials to grow while maintaining structural integrity. Other than such this inferring, it may not be possible to directly define self-valuing. We may not be able to describe or define it in the terms we are used to, in which we like to acquire knowledge, the terms which are developed to describe the manifest in exact measurements. The collection of these terms and their proper logic, that of mathematics, is what we refer to as exact science.
Observing the manifest world in scientific terms, we use principles such as quantity, causality, energy-tranferring and interacting, motion, temporality. All these are enabled and interconnected by the laws of mathematics, which is the logic of objective equalies. It relies on given and exactly determined values, which can be defined in terms of each other. It is here that the philosophy of value ontology posits a break with the method of science. The philosopher is not satisfied with positing values as if they are unquestionably given, it is his task to investigate why, or more precisely, how they are given. Mathematics can not provide an answer to this, as such would go directly against the axioms of this science, which include always the word “if”. If A is given as A, then A is given as A. It does not posit that A is given as A. Since the root-logic of science must keep from answering the question why or how, the sciences following from this logic must also keep from this. Science can therefore only describe, not explain.
Philosophy wants to venture where mathematics and its children the sciences, can not go. It wants to posit a value not predicated by an if, it wants to posit that A is given as A. The great philosophersof the modern age have attemped such positive statements in various ways, beginning with Descartes, who posited the certainty “I think therefore I am”, or, read properly in context, “I question that anything is, therefore I am”. Nietzsche and others observed that this “I” who questions is not actually given as an exactly understandable unit. What is this “I” who is, and who questions that anything is, and who posits that he is because he questions that anything is? Descartes accomplished bringing himself the logical certainty that he exists. He does not bring the certainty that anything else is, in fact he calls this very much into question. If the only ground for knowledge of what is (ontology) is to cognate in the way Descartes was doing, then only philosophers can be known to exist, and only by themselves. Clearly this is not a useful definition of being. It is also not an exact application of logic, as it assumes the “I” both in I think. And I exist. The terms “I”, “exist” and “think” are not a mathematical terms: “I exist” can not mathematically be inferred from “I think”.
To correct Descartes logic, we must draw back to the meaning of the word “Am” in “I Am”. We must correctly observe the meaning of the verb “To be”. We must logically be satisfied with the given that what we call “being” by definition exists / is –this is the only meaningful and correct way to employ the verb at all. The correct phrase would be: “I am, therefore I am”. By this phrase, “I” is defined, namely, as that which, apparently, is said by itself to exist. What have we come to know by this? Nothing. We must start all over.
It is here that philosophy must break from science, from the pretense to be able to define the terms “I” and “exist” and “cognate” in terms of each other by exact inference. We must simply be honest, and admit that all three of these terms are simply understood by us, to mean precisely – what we understand by them. No further explication is necessary, no more exact explication is possible. The terms were called into being to describe exactly what we mean when we use the terms. They hold no deeper meaning than what they were invented to convey.
But fear not for the sake of philosophy, it will still find a way. What the terms “I” and “think” and “exist” were invented to convey may possibly be explicated further, deeper, more exact than these terms. To see how this is the case, observe that these terms all three of them refer to the very same thing. “I”, “think” and “am” are all words indicating the same, which also includes the things to which other terms refer, such as “eat” or “walk”. As true as “I think, therefore I am” is, is also “I eat, therefore I am”. By the correction of Descartes logic, we see that the “I” is posited as a condition of “think”, as much as “think” is a condition of “I”. Therefore, when I posit that “I eat”, I posit an “I” which, by common interpretation of grammar, means that I posit that (an) “I” exist(s).
We see that “I” simply means “existing” and that this existing can be expressed in the endless variety of verbs that may pertain to a posited I. Now, the question becomes simply, what do all these verbs, by the grace of which the “I” can be explicated, have in common?
I will cut to the chase and propose that they are all functions of the the verb “valuing”. There is no other activity that propoerly explicates an “I” that is not directly the result of this one. Whether I walk, talk, think, eat or pray, I do so because I move towards an aim. In other words, I act because I seek to obtain a value. I seek to obtain a value because I have established this value to myself, in the form of an object (in the sense of “thing” and/or “goal”) And since all that I actively do is predicated by a value I have established to me, and since “I” can only be explicated in terms of such activites, the I is nothing besides this establishing-value-to-me (this “I”).
Furthermore, in all cases wherein this value-establishing to this “I” lead to a continuation of experience as this I, this I must be understood as a constant, which, as it is explained in terms of value establishment, means a standard value, which is constantly re-established with every act of and following from the act of valuing, as itself, which means that its consistency must itself be understood as an activity.
We can see that this does indeed describe physical reality accurately if we look at the periodic table, at what makes for a consistency of an elements. We may consider the most consistent to be those which are least influenced by other elements or energies. Thse are the “noble elements”, in case of the metals, platinum, gold, silver. What make as an element “noble” is that all of its electron rings are filled. It holds little potential for change, for interaction, but in itself it holds the greatest potential relative to the “atomic infrastructure”. Gold is, considered as itself, relatively extremely active, in that it holds in its structure the maximum amount “activities”. By this maximization of activity within a given structure, amounts to a maximal consistency.
Contemplate now the correspondence between activity, "noble elements", consistency, and value.
