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The origin and conception of value

University of British Columbia

The goal of this project is to attempt a logical unfolding of one basic idea -that value emerges out of the chaos of energy through natural selection. The goal of the first chapter is to attempt to determine the origin of value. The goal of the second chapter is to attempt to determine the origin of the conception of value. A s a first approximation, it can be said that the first chapter seeks for an objective and the second for a subjective account of the origin of value. There is a paradox in this description, however. The objective gives rise to the subjective, but the subjective then constructs the objective. Objects give rise to subjects, but subjects then construct their objects, and different subjects may construct the world into different objects. This thesis shall attempt to resolve this paradox by describing the course of the emergence of value from the objective into the subjective and then back into the objective, without falling into the vicious circle that results from seeing the world as a juxtaposition of the objective and the subjective. As I hope to show, in the course of the first two chapters, and the ones to follow, the objective and the subjective are idealizations. They are two asymptotes which knowledge approaches but cannot touch. Knowledge ranges between objectivity and subjectivity, without attaining either. Knowledge is knowledge of something and is to that extent objective. Knowledge is knowledge by someone and is to that extent subjective. Because knowledge has an element of subjectivity, it cannot be purely objective. And because knowledge has an element of objectivity, it cannot be purely subjective. The resolution of the juxtaposition between the objective and the subjective, will allow us to describe the emergence of value out of the objective into the subjective and back in terms that do not presuppose either. Subjects arise out of reality that is undivided, and only then divide it into objects in accordance with their constitution, provided to them by undivided reality.

Thesis/Dissertation

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2009-07-09

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/10465

Interdisciplinary Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

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