No i meant something actual! I have already said what i think the problem with that is…
What is ‘self-valuing’? Does the statement mean that it values itself or that it has value? Does the ontology consider valuing to be mental, or of the world?
If it is simply stating that matter has values then that’s all anyone says anyway, its not saying anything new. If however, ‘value ontology’ is imagining the world to be a mental construct, and values in that sense, that’s the opposite of saying it has values e.g. Mathematically/scientifically.
Patronising! :-" You haven’t earned the right to speak like that, because you haven’t engaged in the philosophy and outwitted me. i have asked fundamental questions which clearly contain an understanding. valuing as the ontology, as if valuing is something [that brings into being, the act of doing that] = the act of valuing as the means of manifesting an existence. ~ almost a religion eh!
Why isn’t existence just existence, rather than ‘a valuing of’ which is a function of mind or of a given thing concerning another thing and not the thing itself. That’s what valuing is, two or more parties making an assessment of the other [or both do], as opposed to them having a value themselves. Is there something unclear about the two distinct variations of the term value?
The rest is psychobabble ~ has nothing to do with the value nature of existence ~ unless you think the act of valuing is like magic or something.
That is what it boils down to. VO seems to assert that the apprehension of facts is a theory-laden activity… and the apprehension of theory is a value-laden activity.
It seems VO is arguing that one cannot understand the world neutrally or indifferently. You’ll see in Saully’s sig box the axiom stating:
“Valuation is a rational value, as the disvaluation of it would disvalue itself, too.”
I think he is essentially saying that even to deny VO is an application of VO itself; in the above fact/value distinction terms provided (if they are true) one would not be able to separate one’s critique of VO from one’s acceptance of it. In either case, facts about VO cannot be separated from one’s belief in the value of VO… whether it is true or not isn’t really the question.
If one says ‘VO is false’, one does not say so indifferently, but rather in a position of active engagement with it as one evaluates it, and so is understanding it from the perspective of its pragmatic use to them.
There is a close relation between contemporary pragmatism, Nietzsche’s notion of “taking possession of the world through interpreting it”, and VO.
Yeah I just nailed it. Zoot Allures can do in one post what others cannot do in five. My above post shall be immortalized on the first page of the Introduction to Value Ontology if it is ever written, and I will get a percentage of the proceeds.
Well the enthusiasm is admirable, in any case. But some time around the campfire would be required. To say: on this forum Sauwelios is still the only one who has gotten hold of it.
It is a weird thing to say but perfectly true; all those that did grab hold of it became greater. That would explain in a chemical way why it comes at a high price; at least at the price of great concentration and creative gusto.
It becomes a question of assessing who can theoretically afford such a price.
I recall when I contacted Saully after my release from prison last year he had mentioned your VO theory, and while he was very enthusiatic about it, there seemed to be some ambivalence there in his tone… or maybe I got the wrong impression.
In any case you certainly have the right personel. Saully is like a philosophical contractor and can make just about anything work. He will prove to be a great secretary of VO defense, I think.
We have always been struggling with and skeptical of each other, and yet inevitably drawn as well. Star-friends as he put it to me in 1999.
After I developed VO in 2011 it took him 3 years to ‘get it’, to be blunt. When he did, recently, he did so majestically.
VO has a way of assembling what is already there in terms of potential. But yeah I see that now; it also fundamentally requires pretty vast potential to begin with.
When he came around to VO I knew the most grueling intellectual work Id ever have to do in my life, was done.
That is not a joke. S is the most scrutinizing critic there exists and the work of creating something that could satisfactorily direct even his thinking took 15 years virtually non stop logical labor. And that labor would not have been possible without his knives to sharpen mine against in the first place.
He will however not be the defender of VO but the propagator of VP, which is his own creation and power. But the time that he and I were bound to jump at each others throats is gone. A period of conquering side by side is begun. Honestly I couldnt be happier about what philosophy has done with my life.
Never to have to wonder what ‘the point’ is… to have it so perfectly out-standing, this alone! I do pity when I see the stares of civilians and the vacuus, lurching thoughts they fail to hide.
Thought you would want to meet the challenge head on? ~ then you will earn the right to mock me [in the lightest terms].
Its relative values can be ascertained to a high degree of accuracy, and that is not a valuing, it is what information is. Value ontology is attempting to make a connection with the way we value as the means to an existence. No doubt this is the base of the n force and will to power.
Alas again you did not engage in the points made. I am only trying to get to the truth here.
Reality would exist without humans and was here before us, it does not require our valuing of it. Things have values they are not brought into being by the act of valuing.
No, I wasn’t being lazy with this at all. I read and re-read the two sentences trying to understand how something without human/animal consciousness could possibly self-value. but I just couldn’t wrap my mind around it. Perhaps I was being too literal with the words self-value.
These two quotes, at least for me, seem to contradict one another. Perhaps if you used different terminology, I might get it. I understand both self-valuing and striving. The latter can in the case of the rock or anything else with no human/animal consciousness simply mean being part of a process.
But I am a human being, Jake, capable of thought, reflection, discernment, valuing.
Why do you say this? A human being IS capable of choosing their values. Values do change over time based on our experiences, how we have changed our perceptions of things, how we have matured through learning, based on our relationships with other people and how they affect us and yes even how we have affected them.
We can choose our values - we reflect on them, evaluate them and either choose to see them as logical/practical/ethical or we can choose to discard them. This doesn’t mean that we have total free will in doing this but at some point, we do have the freedom to choose what best serves us and others…including those things which we hold dear to us.
How do we choose not to be racists but rather choose to see all people as equal at least insofar as the writers of the Declaration of Independence used the term?
How do we choose not to look down on gay people simply because others feel they are different than they are – why do some go along with the ignorance of the biblical writers?
This is true. On the other side of that coin, I feel that our thinking also determines our values.
Yes, there is a very strong mind/body connection. The body almost has a mind of its own according to some.
We can experience this ourselves when we are happy, sad, irrational - you name it.
True. That’s part of that mind/body function - that’s an automatic fuction designed by evolution.
Yes, indeedy, I do see this. It also would depend on the consciousness of the individual.
And if my consciousness served my valuing, please tell me just how a rock or a tree or a leaf can self value without our kind of consciousness?
I don’t have the knowledge which you and many others in here do but you can tell me when.
Actually our values are much more than simply a product of our consciousness. They are a product of everything in our world which we encounter, which we see and feel with our intellect and our emotions - it is our consciousness which then interprets these things and transform them into our values. Of course they are not always set in stone. As we continue to observe, to evaluate, interpret, they change. It is as Heraclitus said or whoever it was who said it.
I can’t recall if this is your signature and I don’t have the time to go back and look.
But isn’t it wonderful that we humans are like the iceberg. Most of what is not seen lies beneath what we see. This is why it is necessary to question and to reflect. I think that every philosopher needs also to be a psychologist. Needs to learn the workings of the human mind - at least bit by bit.
True consciousness does “go down”. It descends deeper and deeper than what can be seen on the surface.
It evaluates, re-evaluates, it takes another look. We are all people who like to lie to ourselves, or as humans, we can be prone to it, who enjoy the denial.
So how can a rock do these things? How can a rock self-value --even though we are to an extent, a process, just as the rock is.
Perhaps you can point me in the direction of some philosopher, I mean a dead one, lol who I can read so that I may understand better what you mean by a rock self-valuing.
Maybe it would be more a scientist though who might point this out to me in a way that I could grasp it with my mind.
Or maybe I just need a different phrase to understand what you mean by some unconscious thing self-valuing.
Maybe the word “unconscious” also needs to be defined or re-defined as you mean it.
I think you only say that because that IS part of human perception, subjective perception.
Many things have been brought into existence through the act of valuing - one of them is human beings their selves. We see the value and the intelligence and wisdom of children so we have children.
We see the value of getting there from here so much quicker so airplanes were brought into existence through the seeing of value.
But can things really have value except through human perception/reflection/discernment, et cetera?
No, i mean that value ontology is nonsense. Reality may have other things, but the act of valuing doesn’t change much in causal terms, and is anthropic/conscious/mental. Its like if the artist paints something from their mind, then qualia in that minds eye has been made real, ~ similar thing with many kinds of thoughts. So in some areas ‘valuing’ and other mental and intellectual processes, can have measurable effect, but there isn’t a situation where the act of valuing is what makes something physically real. Valuing is thus not a universal ‘force’ by which all things are brought into existence by the magical power of the mind [value ontology].
Its like expecting music to make sound happen and not vice-versa. The quality to produce the material reality, and not the reality which produces the qualia. We may only be able to observe and measure relative positions [VO basis/complaint], but for those values to be true there must exist correlating info they pertain to. More importantly, our failure to observe reality with absolute accuracy, does not mean that our minds make reality come into existence by valuing, especially when the reality measurably precedes us.
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That is all Value Philosophy, Sauwelios creation. It deals with humans and ethics, not physics.
VO is ontology, not psychology. It deals in logic, in bare logical necessities. It explains how causation-interaction could logically be possible, rather than simply be considered given and unquestioned.
People usually dont come up with that question though so they dont see the merit of solving it or the logic of the solution.
Dear others, Arc and Amorph, Ive answered all your questions so many times it has become too tiresome to me to repeat them. Amorph, good. “vo is nonsense”; good, you are thus unworthy of it. Get thee hence, kiddo. No hard feelz.
Arc, if you just read all my replies to anyone in this thread you will have all your answers. Easzy duz it.
elemental units of matter come into existence as they come into valuing existence, simultaneously, therefore all which exists, values, and all which does not value does not exist.
Or
‘elemental units of matter come into existence’. Why add on + ‘as they come into valuing existence’ ? How do you know they didn’t already have a value especially in potential.
what< is ‘coming into’ a ‘valuing existence’; if it doesn’t have a value? [what establishes the value, and why isn’t that something making an observation and hence changing the value [measurably]?
Here we are speaking about the values of things and not the valuing, secondly we have not added anything which by the mighty power of >valuation< is brought into being! The act of valuing only changes something in the third party ~ as like with an artist and their painting.
Is this similar to Wittgenstein’s point about language, that we make use of assumptions and we don’t even know we are doing that? Maybe you are drawing a parallel from this to how we use the idea of causality and assume its logicality, but we don’t really know we are doing that.
Does “VO” explain how causality is logically possible or logically necessary?
No, I wasn’t being lazy with this at all. I read and re-read the two sentences trying to understand how something without human/animal consciousness could possibly self-value.