The Paradox of Value?
Matjaž Potrč

Value has two sides to it: the sublime and the emotional. This coming together of the rationally elevated and of the emotional, close to the animal nature side of value, makes for an incendiary mix. In the name of value high sublime feelings are invited and atrocities are committed. This tension of the sublime and of the emotional inside the value and constituting it comes from the role that value plays in judgment-falling, as opposed to the deliberation that is in the background causing of the judgment. Judgment-falling needs to be quickly triggered in the face of emerging situations that require passage to action. So judgment-falling relies on the thin (without content) nature of value and upon its emotional triggering push, proper to the system 1. The cause of judgment, which underlies the judgment, to the contrary relies upon the cold (non-hot) system 2. At the time of judgment-falling, its result is momentarily consulted by the value estimation. The deliberation however is previous to it, and it accumulates during some time in the cognitive background. That cognitive background during time forms the character through the shaping of a limited plurality of contentful thick moral concepts, which in the shape of reasons provide motivation for falling of judgment, that however succeeds through the emotion driven system 1. Why is the tension between its (a) sublime and (b) emotional sides a paradox – of value?

The sublime and emotional sides of value
Value has two sides to it: the sublime and the emotional.
	Value is the most elevated, morally appreciated feature. If something is valued, it is morally good, and it draws one towards sublime feelings. The phenomenology of the value judgments shows that the experiences of value are felt as being objective. This means that we want to share with others the value judgments and estimations that we endorse. Even more pointedly, we feel that somehow others are obliged to follow our value assessments. For value, as we realize it, is something objective, and so it should be universally shared, so that there could be a better world. However the sad thing is that others are not always ready to share our value insights, and that sometimes they even stick to the values that may be opposed to the ones that we choose. One should just recall utilitarianism as a value based theory in order to realize that values may not always be shared by everybody, as consequentialists suppose to be the case. This is why utilitarian examples, such as trolley cases, test our intuitions in the environment of cruelty. Indeed, despite being cold and sublime, value has also an emotionally hot side to it. Values don't leave us cold. They are linked to our emotions, to our emotional life more than perhaps we realize while we rationally attend to its sublime part.
Value's incendiary mix
This coming together of rationally elevated and of emotional closer to the animal nature sides of value makes for an incendiary mix. In the name of value high sublime feelings are invited and atrocities are committed.
Value as we just said, is a rationally elevated feature. If we value something, this is then morally good. We have a feeling that, if people would be rational, if they would act in a rational idealized manner, they would strive for valuable things. Many moral thinkers, starting with Plato and Aristotle perhaps, share this feeling. And deity, the highest sublime entity, is attributed the maximum of goodness. But sometimes values fail to be shared. In such cases it happens that, in the name of values, atrocities are committed. The perpetrators of such atrocities feel that they should defend their values, whatever it takes. It is not just the hatred, it is the value based hatred that may ensue. Value, as it seems, presents an incendiary mix. On the one hand it invites sublime feeling of community sharing certain values. People in a community feel that they have a common pool of values that they share. And if necessary, they are ready to ferociously defend these values, if the need arises. Atrocities are then committed in the name of value. It seems that value is an incendiary mix that it happens to be just because it somehow brings together the elevated and the cruel, the lower instincts in man. On the one hand, value is more than rational, it is the elevated supererogatory instance of rationality. On the other hand, however, value is tied to the lower, emotional, almost animal desires. This state of things certainly deserves to be explained. But just how should we start approaching it?
Value and judgment-falling
This tension of the sublime and of the emotional inside the value and constituting it comes from the role that value plays in judgment-falling, as opposed to the deliberation that is in the background causing of the judgment.
Value invites to admire and it invites to action. It goes together with the more than rational and with the deep down emotional. A way to explain this mixture is to look at the role of value in judgment. If we fall a judgment, we are often valuing something. As I take a look at this painting, I immediately value it as being aesthetically valuable, beautiful. For some other painting, I may fall an opposed judgment, denying the value to it. There is not much of a wiggle room here, because it seems that these other paintings that leave me neutral and do not invite my judgment, are rather close to my denial of attributing value to them. So value seems to be exclusivist, and disjunctive in its nature: either something is valued as good (good in the aesthetic sense in the just discussed case), or something is valued as bad (not beautiful). The indifference is not really important, from the valuing perspective: valuing tends to be exclusivist. Value thus comes with the sublime and with the emotional sides somehow bound together and intertwined. Just why cannot value and its related valuing be more indifferent than it happens to be? The answer seems to reside in the role that the value and valuing play in the judgment-falling. What is judgment-falling? As we fall a judgment, this happens in the blink of a moment, and it seems to be directed into a passage to action. The value that is implied into the judgment falling pushes to decision how to behave, how to act. This may not be very important for a judging organism at the time as it looks at a painting. But the possibility to react quickly and momentarily, reflex-like, may be important for that organism in many an environment. This goes for the case as a mouse notices a cat and as the driver sees a stop light. It is then important for each of these to react immediately, and in a certain direction. The mouse, we will say, has that kind of behavior direction built into its cognitive system, and the driver has learned the traffic rule, improving her reflexes during a skillful practice through some period of time. These are cases of judgment, if they are indeed, and not of moral judgment. Both mouse and driver value their staying alive and act upon this basis. This has to be done quickly and so a rather quick reaction is triggered by values that preside over the judgment falling. This is different though from the thing that causes the judgment to be fallen at all, and into a certain direction. The background that causes a judgment is interspersed by deliberation, which happily extends over time, preparing organism in question for the eventuality of judgment-falling in a certain direction. So value triggers judgment-falling, but the basis of judgment uses a lot of time, it shapes the person's moral character. Judgments are fallen momentarily, reflex-like. But they use a background that causes that momentary decision, and which uses all the available time to settle down in the judger's or actor's cognitive background. The way the moral judgment will be fallen thereby depends upon the judger's moral character. The deliberation is in the background that causes a judgment. How may these two matters, the momentary judgment falling and the long winding deliberative and settling process be explained?
Judgment-falling and system 1
Judgment-falling needs to be quickly triggered in the face of emerging situations that require passage to action. So judgment-falling relies on the thin (without content) nature of value and upon its emotional triggering push, proper to the system 1.
As we already hinted at, the judgment-falling, in many cases, needs to occur momentarily, in many situations into which organism or a person happens to be implied. Judgment, in such cases, leads as the triggering of passage to action. One needs to react in a certain way, quickly, as the situation requires, either to avoid a conflict or to act in a proper fitting manner given the circumstances. At the moment of judgment falling, the creature does not have a lot of time to spend. It needs to react in one or in another manner, quickly. The situations that require valuing, the binary decision to do one or the other thing, to execute passage to action, effectuate this through the value that is implied into judgment falling. As there is the need to react quickly, in such situations, the organism does not need to deliberate. It just has to decide: yes or no, go into this or go into another direction. This implies that the valuing that is implied into such judgment falling does not need to have any substantial content interwoven into it. Value deals just with binary yes or nothing thin concepts decisions. This however is typical for what psychologists call system 1, namely the emotions gut-level driven system. It is the system that has ontogenetic and phylogenetic priority. This is why values are emotion bound, all in also being thin and therefore appropriate candidates for elevated sentiments. We started to approach the puzzling mix of elevated and animal nature emotional sentiments intertwined into the value. But people many times suppose that long winding deliberation and explicit representation of values is implied into valuing and into an appropriate resulting judgment. There is indeed something like that implied into the judgment, but not into the judgment falling, as the following cogitation intends to show.
Judgment supporting deliberation and system 2
The cause of judgment, which underlies the judgment, to the contrary relies upon the cold (non-hot) system 2.
So one needs to distinguish the falling of judgment and the cause or the background of judgment. Whereas judgment falling acts under the value driven emotionally hot and momentary triggering system 1, the cause of judgment or the background of judgment relies upon the system 2. This is a cold cognitive system, which takes a lot of time for deliberation. Deliberation may lay in the background of whatever causes the judgment, the balance of evaluation. It is in the background that leads to the judgment, but is not itself triggering the judgment. Values are triggering judgment, and values, as we said, are thin in their nature, without any substantial content. The background deliberation though, which supports the judgment, takes all the time that it needs, in order to shape the landscape from which the direction of judgment falling will emerge. The system 2 is taken to be a system of deliberation by psychologists. It is the cold system, where the deliberation takes time. Thought processes need a lot of time to shape up. As they form the basis upon which judgments are later fallen by value using system 1, they themselves rely upon the thought-process holistic-like procedures. Philosophical thought, as is well known, may take a lot of time, and cogitation that it requires is a slow holistic process. In a similar way, the background that causes judgment accumulates experiences in time that pile up in the cognitive background, shaping the character upon which the person's judgment and action will unfold. Such allegiance to system 2 is understandable once as we consider that the features which enter into that background are thick concepts, and that they therefore have a lot of content. These are features upon which people act, that shape their character, such as sincerity, self-improvement. These features are contentful and thick in their nature, but general enough that they allow application to a number of cases which the organism encounters and that require judgment to be fallen.
System 1 and system 2 interaction
At the time of judgment-falling, its result is momentarily consulted by the value estimation. The deliberation however is previous to it, and it accumulates during some time in the cognitive background.
What is the relation between the system 1 and system 2 that are both implied into the judgment? We can start to answer this question. One needs to distinguish the judgment falling from the deliberation that leads to such judgment falling and that figures as its cause. System 1 is emotion driven and modular; it acts in a reflexive manner. Falling of judgment is valuing, it is a binary decision, which goes into the direction of action. Value is supported by its emotional underpinning. System 2 is deliberative, a lot of time consuming enterprise, which slowly prepares the background landscape for the needed cases of judgment falling. Value is thin, it just pushes balance in this or that direction, without really engaging into content. Whatever supports the judgment and causes it, are deliberative proceedings. The deliberation is there because a lot of content has to be considered, and so deliberation and the time for it to take effect is needed. The results of deliberation accumulate in the cognitive background, from which the valuing then takes its momentary triggered direction. For moral judgment, that background may be called the background of someone's character. The character namely determines how the judgment happens to be fallen.
Morphological pluralism
Cognitive background during time forms the character through the shaping of a limited plurality of contentful thick moral concepts, which in the shape of reasons provide motivation for falling of judgment, that however succeeds through the emotion driven system 1.
In respect to what happens in the system 2, the moral deliberation as the cause and background of judgment falling, we take side with morphological pluralism. Morphology is understood here as the shape of the moral landscape background, which happens through many dimensions. It is close to dynamical cognition (Horgan and Tienson 1996). The background that accumulates during time and is as well innately present provides disposition to judge and to act as the follow-up to judgment, the direction to that. Thick moral concepts of a limited number, such as sincerity, form the guiding points at this background landscape. They invite the direction of judgment falling and valuing. In this sense, in the cognitive multi dimensional background, basic thick concepts, kind of prima facie duties, form the basis for character building. We talk about pluralism, because we take it that there is a limited number of such basic thick contentful concepts or reasons, underlying principles, involved into the forming of the character which will give the direction to the value triggered judgment falling. So morphological pluralism specifies the cognitive background that is needed for moral judgment: limited number of pluralist thick moral concepts underlying reasons and their principles, happening in the background, acting dispositionally. They chromatically illuminate forces that are needed for judgment falling, tipping the direction, without being explicitly present before the judger's conscious eyes, although being well grasped by the one who judges. Dynamical cognition needs to be supplemented by moral dynamical cognition project whose role is to spell out the emotional system 1 forces that push the values in direction of judgment falling. Moral dynamical cognition involves system 1 involving emotional side that is implied in the judgment falling.
Paradox of value?
Why is the tension between its (a) sublime and (b) emotional sides a paradox – of value?
At this time we may ask whether the value's bringing together of the (a) sublime and of the (b) emotional produces a paradox, or whether this just exposes a certain tension. The paradox would consist in bringing two incompatible features, (a) and (b) together, thereby supporting the judgment falling. Are we people condemned to achieve the elevated sublime system nature of ours just through the animal reflex-like emotional valuing? Do we need to act from this intertwining of the sublime and of the emotional? What would be the paradox of value? Is it in that the sublime is tied to the emotional, the elevated to the animal, and that our value gets constituted through this? That our moral life is constituted through this? Where do the (a) sublime and the (b) emotional sides of value as supporting judgment falling stand in respect to the system 1 and system 2? The emotional seems to be closer to the system 1. Whereas the sublime seems to be closer to the system 2 and rationality. But both are joined in valuing and in the related judgment falling. So there remains the task of formulating the paradox of value.
References
Horgan T, and Tienson, J. 1996. Connectionism and the philosophy of psychology. MIT Press.
Medved, A. 2012. Politični in drugi spisi. Koper: Hyperion.
Strahovnik, V. 2009. Moralne sodbe, intuicija in moralna načela. Velenje: IPAK.