Before there are symbols, norms, or reasons, there are fields in which capacities align or fail to align. Nutrients circulate. Energy is conserved or wasted. Bodies synchronise, diverge, or collapse. This is value at its most basic level: the differential distribution of readiness within a field.
Value is not “what matters” in a reflective sense. It is what modulates viability. A value flow increases the capacity of a field to continue coordinating; a blockage reduces it. Hunger, oxygen, trust, proximity, attention — these are not meanings but pressures, shaping what is possible next.
This is why value systems predate semiotic systems by billions of years. Cells coordinated long before they signified. Colonies adapted long before they narrated. Herds move without explanation. Their success or failure is registered not in interpretation but in persistence, reproduction, and breakdown.
Meaning enters later, and only under specific conditions.
When coordination becomes complex enough that local responsiveness is no longer sufficient, semiotic systems emerge as regulatory overlays. They do not generate value; they attempt to manage value flows indirectly, by stabilising expectations, compressing time, and aligning behaviour across distance.
But the priority relation matters.
This is why moralisation so often misfires. Moral language presumes that value is something to be declared or justified, rather than something already operating at the level of coordination. It mistakes a pressure for a principle.
The diagnostic test is simple:
Meaning becomes relevant only when it helps do that—and pathological when it pretends to replace it.
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