The Structure of Valuation

Becoming A Values Architect

Abstract

This discussion addresses issues concerning the formalism of a scientific axiology and its applications to value with emphasis on subjective valuation. I comment on some of the recent articles and books by Rem B. Edwards, Gary Gallopin, Cliff Hurst, and Mark Moore, from a group of writers who present the best known representations of the math or logic structure intended to ground the formal aspects of Robert S. Hartman’s scientific axiology. In this essay, I discuss four major issues from my own perspective. 1. Sets and especially very large sets are subject to partitioning; 2. The richest value formation is [I > E > S] for objective value, but, for valuation it is [I = E = S], where the “I” superscript is a notation of holistic emphasis in the process of valuation by a human mind; 3. The axiological frame of reference for valuation must include emotional conditioning habits with room for change through experience and education; and 4. I redesigned the frame of reference for axiological value to a process of value enrichment in valuation, as developed in the Meta Axiological Pattern (known as the MIND MAP), first published in my dissertation. I end the discussion with my own approach, first made clear to me by Dr. Roy Cebik, a member of my dissertation committee. I summarize my own method to ground and explain the valuation side of the science of value, based on the notion of meaning emphasis which is based on an asymptotic structure. The import of the asymptotic structure is that people will take just a few confirmed properties or points from one or more axiological dimensions and ignore all the other properties and these may be connected with an asymptotic curve. This may help to explain why individual persons are the richest, highest value, yet we can go to war labeling some persons as enemies and kill them. I attempt to show that the structure of meaning emphasis best illuminates the structure of valuation. I close the discussion with a case showing the potential work of a values architect in business and in life. I characterize this essay with a quote from a currently popular Delta Airlines advertisement, “We highly praise those who have gone before us, but we cannot create the future by clinging to the past.”