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conceptual inquiry regarding meaning » value » nature / the intrinsically valued

 
The question regarding what is valued in itself (by nature) might immediately lead us to notice that survival/homeostasis is a value hard-wired into living organisms. In fact, informed by the theory of evolution, this is the basic value from which pragmatism operates. We're organisms ever-adapting to ever-changing environments. What is valued (in accordance with evolutionary fitness) is our ability to adapt well, survive, and thrive. What is valuable is that which will continue to help us adapt, survive, and thrive moving forward in an ever-changing and ever-more complex world.

Pleasure is another example of something that can't help but be valued, even if it often isn't valuable. It's not always helpful to seek pleasure; quite often it's unhelpful. Pleasure as a secondary consequence of pursuing that which is valuable is welcome. Evolutionarily speaking, we needed to be hard-wired to seek sex and certain foods for the survival of the species. Given that the current circumstances in which we live are radically different from those in which our species evolved, the inherent disposition toward pleasure-seeking has become dangerous. Craving sugar when sugar is readily available, for example, is natural but dangerous.

We might also include under this node an examination of values inherent in (natural to) certain social structures. This can overlap with the X-node regarding cultural values, or it can examine structures like, let's say, capitalism, and notice the values coded into its logic. Capitalism works across cultures to condition us in fundamental ways, given the values inherent in its logic: competition, perpetual growth, market motivations, (ultimately) consumerism, and so on.

 
In the I and O-phases, the V-node refers to experienced facts, events, and states of affairs. The connection between facts and that which is valued in itself isn't immediately evident. Typically we think of facts and states of affairs as being utterly value-neutral. They're neither good nor bad in themsleves; they just are. But as experienced, facts do have value. When we imagine facts to be utterly value-neutral, we're imagining the facts as not experienced—i.e., as facts, events, and/or states of affairs that occur with no reference to any experiencer for whom they might occur. Yet to truly imagine them in this sense is to not notice them at all. An event that can never be noticed is value-neutral. But insofar as it's noticed—insofar as it's experienced—it has some basic value. Insofar as anything noticed or experienced is meaningful in some sense, that basic-most meaning lays a basic-most foundation for all other values. That's not to say, however, that the only things we notice are our own inventions. Quite the contrary. Nature determines the foundational facts that condition our lives independently of our noticing them, and maybe that's how the values of facts should be said to be in-themselves.

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