The Becoming of Possibility: 4 Value Systems and the Weighting of Possibility

If knowledge stabilises possibility, value explains why some stabilisations matter more than others.

This claim is deceptively simple — and routinely mishandled. Value is often treated as a kind of meaning (“what things signify to us”) or as an inner attitude (“what we care about”). From a relational ontology perspective, both moves are mistakes.

Value does not reside in minds, and it does not consist in meaning.

Value operates by weighting possibility.

Possibility Is Not Neutral

Not all possibilities are equal.

Some are encouraged, resourced, protected, and reproduced. Others are discouraged, starved, punished, or rendered invisible. This asymmetry is not semantic; it is practical and material.

Value systems are the mechanisms by which a system biases the field of possibility — making some paths easier, safer, or more likely, and others costly or fragile.

What a Value System Is

A value system is a pattern of constraint that:

• prioritises certain outcomes

• allocates resources unevenly

• rewards some behaviours and penalises others

• stabilises preferred trajectories over time

Crucially, a value system need not mean anything. It only needs to function.

Biological organisms, ecosystems, economies, institutions, and technologies all exhibit value systems in this sense. None of these systems require interpretation to operate.

Value Without Meaning

This distinction matters.

Meaning is semiotic: it involves construal, differentiation, and symbolic articulation. Value is not semiotic. It does not consist in signs, interpretations, or representations.

A heart values oxygen. An economy values liquidity. An institution values compliance. A predator values successful capture.

In none of these cases is meaning required. The system does not “interpret” the world; it weights it.

Meaning may later be layered on top — especially in human systems — but value operates first, silently shaping what is possible before anything is said about it.

Social Value Systems

Social systems are saturated with value, but not reducible to belief.

Grades, salaries, reputations, legal statuses, metrics, rankings, and credentials all function as value-weighting devices. They do not describe the world; they configure trajectories.

A value system does not tell you what is true. It tells you what is rewarded.

This is why value systems can stabilise knowledge without guaranteeing truth, and why truths can be ignored when they fail to align with dominant valuations.

Power as Weighted Possibility

From this perspective, power is not located in agents. It is located in the structure of the field.

A system has power where it can:

• amplify some possibilities

• suppress others

• enforce asymmetries of risk and reward

Power is exercised whenever the cost of pursuing one possibility is systematically higher than another — regardless of anyone’s intentions.

This is why power can persist without villains, and why good intentions do not neutralise structural effects.

Human Values Revisited

When humans speak of “values,” they usually mean articulated commitments: fairness, freedom, care, truth. These are second-order semiotic overlays on deeper value systems.

The real work of valuing happens elsewhere:

• in incentive structures

• in institutional design

• in affordances and barriers

• in feedback loops

Stated values matter only when they successfully reweight possibility.

Conflict Between Meaning and Value

One of the most important sources of social tension arises when:

• meaning systems say one thing

• value systems reward another

We praise honesty but reward compliance. We celebrate creativity but fund conformity. We teach critical thinking but penalise dissent.

These are not moral failures of individuals. They are mismatches between semiotic meaning and systemic value.

Understanding this distinction dissolves a great deal of misplaced blame.

Value Is Not Normative (Yet)

To say that a system values something is not to say it ought to.

Value systems describe how possibility is weighted, not how it should be weighted. Normativity — ethics — comes later, and requires an additional cut.

For now, the point is this: value is real, operative, and causal without being meaningful, representational, or interior.