The previous post argued that organised systems cannot be understood simply by listing their possible behaviours.
Possibilities are not equally available.
They are differentiated through patterns of constraint.
This suggests a further question.
What organises those constraints?
What differentiates one possibility from another?
Why do some possibilities become more readily actualised while others remain unlikely or inaccessible?
To answer these questions, we must turn to the concept of value.
Behaviour and its limitations
Behaviour is often treated as the primary object of analysis.
An organism approaches a food source.
A bird takes flight.
A predator pursues prey.
A colony allocates workers to a task.
The focus falls upon what the system does.
Yet behaviour alone cannot explain why a particular action occurs rather than another.
Any actual behaviour represents only one possibility among many.
To understand behaviour therefore requires understanding the organisation of possibilities that precedes it.
Behaviour is an outcome.
It is not the organisation that produces the outcome.
Value as differential organisation
The concept of value provides a way of approaching this problem.
A value system does not directly generate behaviour.
Rather, it differentiates possibilities.
Some possibilities become more attractive.
Others become less attractive.
Some become strongly favoured.
Others become strongly inhibited.
Value therefore operates upon possibility before behaviour occurs.
Its role is not to determine a specific action.
Its role is to structure the field within which actions become more or less likely.
Value is thus neither behaviour nor representation.
It is a principle of differential organisation.
Possibility before action
Consider a simple distinction.
An organism may approach a stimulus.
It may avoid it.
These behaviours are often described as opposite actions.
Yet from the perspective developed here, the important question is not the actions themselves.
The important question concerns the organisation of possibilities preceding them.
Before the organism approaches or avoids, both possibilities are available.
A value system differentiates these possibilities.
One becomes more likely.
The other becomes less likely.
The behaviour that eventually occurs is an actualisation of this prior organisation.
The crucial phenomenon therefore lies not in the action but in the structuring of possibility that precedes it.
Value and selection
This perspective resonates strongly with Gerald Edelman's conception of value systems.
For Edelman, value systems do not function as representations of the world.
Nor do they operate as explicit decision-making mechanisms.
Instead, they bias the selection of behavioural possibilities.
They regulate what is more likely to occur under particular conditions.
This insight can be reformulated in a broader way.
Value systems organise possibility through differential constraint.
Some possibilities are amplified.
Others are attenuated.
Some are stabilised.
Others are destabilised.
The resulting behaviour emerges from this organised field.
Value therefore operates prior to actualisation.
Organised possibility as potential
At this point, possibility begins to appear in a new light.
Possibility is not simply a collection of options waiting to be selected.
It is a structured potential.
Different possibilities occupy different positions within that structure.
Some are highly accessible.
Others are remote.
Some are continuously reinforced.
Others remain marginal.
Value is what produces these differences.
It organises potential before potential becomes actuality.
Beyond representation
This perspective also helps avoid a common misunderstanding.
Value systems are often interpreted as if they contained representations, intentions, or meanings.
Yet none of these notions is required.
A value system need not represent possibilities in order to organise them.
It need not assign symbolic significance to alternatives.
It need only differentiate them.
The distinction is important.
Organisation of possibility precedes representation of possibility.
Value therefore belongs to a domain that is more fundamental than semiosis.
A new perspective on organisation
The implications are significant.
If value systems organise possibilities rather than behaviours, then behaviour becomes only the visible surface of a deeper process.
The primary phenomenon is not what the system does.
The primary phenomenon is how possibilities are structured before action occurs.
Actual behaviour reveals only a single path through a much larger organised field.
The organisation itself remains largely invisible unless possibility becomes the object of analysis.
This shift in perspective transforms how organised systems are understood.
The focus moves from actions to potentials.
From behaviour to possibility.
From outcomes to the organisation that makes those outcomes possible.
Summary
The previous post argued that possibilities are structured through constraint.
This post has proposed value as the principle through which such structuring occurs.
Value systems do not simply produce behaviour.
They differentiate possibilities, making some more available than others.
Behaviour is therefore an actualisation of a prior organisation of possibility.
The organisation of possibility precedes the actualisation of behaviour.
This observation opens the way to a broader question.
If value systems organise possibilities within individual organisms, what happens when multiple organisms become coupled together?
Can the behaviour of one organism contribute to the organisation of possibilities available to another?
To answer this question, we must move from individual systems to collective ones.
The next step is therefore to explore how possibility becomes socially organised.
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