Value is exactly isomorphic with Meaning. Borrowing from Wittgensteins analysis of meaning:
Something gains value when someone finds a "game" to play with it. Thus a stone has no value until this particular type of stone becomes part of system of rules (or a game). It thus gains meaning at exactly the same time.
Previously value was given some intrinsic nature so that for example a piece of music by Mozart was actually valuable in itself. To a chameleon lizard the value might be something under which to hide, or as happens in lots of Buddhist stories, the manuscript might provide urgent tinder for a fire. The point is that there is no intrinsic "value" or "meaning" because there is no self-defined system of rules on how to play with it. The idea of intrinsic value equates then with the notion that objects come with instruction sheets on how they are to be extraneously interpreted. On one hand there must be a relationship between an object and its environment - a metal ball is going to end up in different games to a sheet of original Mozart score - but on the other hand the environment is not entirely dictated by the qualities of an object. The first hand leads to ideas of intrinsic worth, respect and obedience of objects while the other hand leads to freedom and liberation.
This last bit needs clarification. An individual who does not see intrinsic value in something like a sheet of original Mozart score may feel that they have complete entitlement to do whatever they want with it. The problem however is that, at the same time, they lose any appeal to intrinsic value they had and so must accept the environment treating them with alterity (as a complete outsider, stranger and other) also. This would be true origin of Durkheim's alienation rather than anything intrinsic to society - altho Membership itself (as analysed in depth before) arises from ego. This is the crisis of ego - where we demand some freedom over our environment and then find to our distress the environment taking liberties with us. Bentham and Mill famously resolved this by defining freedom as long as it didn't upset the freedom of others - but everything is interconnected so it doesn't work... and what of someone who buys the works of Mozart and then burns them all for firewood - isn't that affecting the freedom of others? It doesn't work. I lamented the neighbour who cut down the lovely cherry tree that I had admired throughout my childhood and had memories of falling in love under one peaceful halcyon summer - they sold the house again just as quickly for a trivial profit. There is no way of establishing value that doesn't have winners and losers. My personal solution is to appreciate everything the way it is and only change it only if you absolutely have to and can see it being broadly beneficial to others apart from oneself... but that is because I appreciate Nature of which there is still stuff to write I know...
So if we let go the idea of intrinsic value we must be careful not to use it as a reason for alterity (absolute otherness) because that is where Karma comes in and we end up suffering due to the freedom of the world that I will call libertas alius (the freedom of the other) as opposed to libertas mei (my freedom) - forgive my poor Latin I hated!! it at school. These two freedoms are sides of the same coin, which those bound within the paradigm of ego (like myself) can't see.
It is therefore a requirement of the world that we do not treat it with alterity, as a stranger or as a less being. But the achievement in this post is to derive this without postulating the existence of something material within an object that instructs us to behave with respect. Value then arises as an implication of a greater structure which is the identity of libertas alius and libertas mei - isomorphic with tat tvam asi (tho which is art) in Sanskrit. Which is all just another way of saying that we cannot take ourselves to be separate from the world - No man is an island entire of itself etc [John Donne, Meditation 17].
Turning to the SRH if we were to somehow to be separate from the world by what mechanism would that separation exist? Isomorphic with the example circle in the post on SRH, the rules that define the set of points in a circle are not themselves within the R^2 euclidean plane. An isomorphism between the R2 and set constructor logic - so that each point (x,y) represented a sentence in logic (would have to be modulus(R2) because R2 has more points than logic has sentences) - would enable a set to define points that fell within "itself"... ok I'm spinning off the point of "value" for a bit to explore down this SRH path... so actually there is always a way of getting things to fall within themselves via isomorphism... make tea...think about next bit... but as already commented in prev. posts the isomorphism can only be established inter alia (between others) one cannot establish an isomorphism between oneself and another - this might be the essence of the SRH! So maybe it isn't to do with reference but rather isomorphism the self-isomorphic hypothesis. So what is the reason for the SIH. Rather than deal with an isomorphism like Godel Numbering (which I don't fully understand yet) I'll deal with encoded thing for computer. Bit sequences have a strong long established isomorphism with numbers which makes bit sequences easier to think about. When something is put on computer it is essentially converted into a number. Now if the SIH was false and self-isomorphism was possible (particularly in the case of establishing isomorphism between oneself and another) then it would mean that there was a computer program (a number) which could decode itself to become the thing which was encoded. An example:
A temperature transducer and AD (analogue-digital converter) converts the temperature into a bit sequence which is sent to a computer serial bus. A computer program has been written to get that number and plot it on the screen for someone to monitor. Famously the computer is just a dummy agent - it has no idea what it is doing. It is John Searle's Chinese Room argument against A.I. Now the user and programmer are the ones who are establishing the isomorphism between the temperature and the plot on the screen and also the bit data and the transducer's voltage... OK I am correcting myself... no they are not establishing the isomorphism! It is already there: they are discovering it! The shifts in thermistor resistance have always followed the temperature it was discovering the correspondence which led to electronic thermometers which came to have the same "meaning" and "value" as mercury ones because they could take part in the same games. Interestingly I'm at the Constructivism cross-roads again...
OK here is an important recurring point. The MIT lecture raised this question: what if Godel had never "discovered" his numbering and shown the flaws in mathematical logic. Would maths have sailed on happily unawares of the deep cracks? Godel Numbering is thus like a telescope. Without it you cannot see the parallels between numbers and logic. Without it you cannot construct the Incompleteness theorems. It is instrumental. Without deep space telescopes there are things we know about that would have been forever hidden. Occam's Razor (highly unsatisfactory) is used to strip away that which we don't need. I was always puzzled by Popper's "falsification". The example given college was: which is the best hypothesis (i) "there are vultures in Hyde Park" or (ii) "There are no vultures in Hyde Park" - I was alone in getting it wrong, through stupidity I think, but on reflection I never fully understood why. We go in search of vultures. There is no result until we find a vulture which proves hypothesis i true and hypothesis ii false. So you can prove something true. I think the point was that on available evidence we form the hypothesis that there are no vultures, but then it can only be proven false. And, that is based upon Occam's Razor that we don't create hypotheses that are useless because that leads to an unmanageable number of hypotheses. However evolution works the other way but creating hypothesis and just seeing if it works - so I may indeed live as though there are vultures in Hyde Park and it might just work! Popper was far too logical and analytical! But back to the point "available evidence" points to a "reality" which is limited to what we know now rather than what "really exists". What is the sound of a tree falling in a deep forest? Do things exist when no-one is looking at them? I think I answered these but can't remember or find the post. It seems that actually both are inadequate. Isn't the answer going to be a dialectic? The incompleteness Theorems neither exists without Godel Numbering nor entirely because of it. Is it fair to say that Godel Numbering exists equally because of deep implications of the incompleteness theorems?
Turning back to the computer the computer doesn't know that the graph it mechanically plots corresponds to the temperature - it has only data coming in which could be from anywhere. The user makes the link between the graph and the temperature. But even if the user wasn't there the computer would still produce a graph which correlated with temperature, just as fossil tree rings recorded growth rates long before anyone linked them to climate.... blimey the going has got tough... I'm pulling out and will return to this point. What is interesting to note is that "my mind has changed" and I now see Godel and the SIH in terms of discovering already existing entities while before I was thinking in terms of Godel actually creating the Isomorphism with his numbering tool. My ideas have changed! Have I discovered something or have I made something ;-)
Back to Value. I now side here with the Structuralists and Capitalists now and no longer with Pirsig (and the Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle maintenance) etc.
This fits with the previous analysis which eliminated the distinction between "need" and "want". People, it was observed, will quite happily die for their country which places status and membership higher even that life itself. Quite extraordinary but true.
However exchange value isn't everything because there is never-the-less the perceived relative value that a human agent experiences in a particular situation. It is the existential quality of value (and meaning) that causes such discomfort with Capitalism. Being told that the market value of an ordinary house is £250,000 is stretching its price beyond its value ... but because we live in a society which has only one game here and that includes houses the value is going to be potentially infinite ... except you can live in garages and tents and even "rough" like a lot of people still chose so there are many other games to play and much value to find in things seemingly worthless.
It is this possibility that the absolutely worthless can become completely valuable which struck home today. Oil must have been worthless at some stage, as was uranium. One wonders what is worthless today that will find its game one day.
Now is it dangerous to relativise Nature? Can Nature become worthless? There is something still to say about Nature will return to this one day.
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