Having examined multicellularity as the relational grammar of biological potential, we now turn to the domain of value. Just as cells actualise potentials within a collective, so too do organisms instantiate and individuate value potentials within social collectives. Yet the logic of value diverges from biology: it operates without recourse to meaning, intention, or teleology, and it is instantiated through coordination and alignment rather than mechanistic processes.
Defining Value Potential
Value potential refers to the field of possibilities for coordinated action within a collective. It is a system of relational capacities: what the collective can achieve or maintain through the distribution of individual actions. Unlike biological potential, which is instantiated in cells and tissues, value potential is instantiated in behaviour, cooperation, and functional alignment.
A colony of ants, for example, exhibits a structured distribution of foraging, defence, and reproductive tasks. Each ant is individuated by the collective value potential: its role and actions are actualisations of what the colony can do, constrained by relational necessity rather than conscious choice.
Distinguishing Value from Meaning
It is crucial to distinguish value potential from meaning. Value is about coordination and capacity; it is not about signification or symbolic interpretation. While semiotic systems construe meaning, value systems distribute potential for functional effect. Coordination occurs because relational alignment affords it, not because it is “understood” or “intended.”
This distinction preserves clarity in relational ontology: biology actualises physical potential, value actualises functional potential, and semiotic systems later actualise symbolic potential. Each operates within its own domain, though the relational structure remains analogous.
From Organism to Colony
The analogy with multicellularity is instructive. Just as cells differentiate and align within a multicellular organism, organisms differentiate and align within a value collective. A superorganism — whether an ant colony, bee hive, or coordinated human network — embodies collective value potential, distributing individuated roles across its members.
Individuation in this domain is perspectival: each organism’s potential is realised relative to the collective field. Coordination emerges through local interactions and reflexive adjustment rather than central design. Roles and behaviours are actualisations of what the collective affords, not prescriptions imposed from above.
Coordination without Intention
The emergence of functional alignment does not require conscious intention. Value potentials shape behaviour through relational constraints, feedback loops, and affordances within the collective. Actions are coordinated because some configurations of activity sustain coherence, while others are incompatible. The collective “construes” what is possible, and individual agents instantiate these possibilities in context.
Implications for Social Systems
Understanding value systems as relational grammars illuminates the dynamics of cooperation and collective function. Colonies, cooperative networks, and other superorganisms are not merely aggregates of individuals; they are fields of distributed potential, in which individuation, alignment, and reflexive adjustment produce coherent function. These systems demonstrate that collective effects can emerge without invoking meaning, intention, or teleology, highlighting the deep continuity between biological and value domains.
Conclusion
By extending the relational framework from biology to value, we see how collective potentials structure the individuation and actualisation of agents. The colony, like the multicellular organism, is a grammar of potential: a relational system in which coordination, differentiation, and reflexive alignment operate to produce coherent, adaptive behaviour.
In the next post, Coordination as Value Instantiation, we will examine how actions themselves instantiate collective value potentials, further elaborating the grammar of the social collective.
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