5 GA. Are our values abstract or do some have more substance?

Values are similar to attitudes and beliefs in that they have cognitive, emotional, and behavioral parts.

“Construal-level theory” is a theory in social psychology that describes the relation between psychological distance and the extent to which people's thinking is abstract or concrete. The general idea is that the more distant an object is from the individual, the less detailed and more abstract it will be thought of, while the closer the object is, the more concretely it will be thought of.

A value can be defined as "an enduring belief upon which a person acts. (Are they seen best from afar?) Researchers suggest that values are more enduring and long-lasting than either beliefs or attitudes (Limthanakom, Lauffer, Mujtaba, & Murphy Jr, 2008).

End result values are about desirable end states (e.g., health, freedom, family security; Gibson, Greenwood, & Murphy Jr, 2009).

·         Freedom to engage with Mobility

·         Freedom to hold ideas, to develop them, including worship of God

·         Freedom to choose among options

·         Freedom to express opinions and point of view

·         Freedom to choose associations and choose a mate

·         Freedom to care for my family, and/or pets and animals

·         Freedom to work, and be paid

·         Freedom not to work, and be allowed to retire

·         Freedom to find affordable housing

·         Freedom to handle money, save, and borrow

·         Freedom from degradation of the money and the inflationary spiral

·         Freedom to hold title to assets.

·         Freedom to buy and sell

·         Freedom to Own and ability to care-for and preserve

·         Freedom to live without danger.

·         Freedom to count on the legal system

·         Freedom from theft without recourse

·         Freedom to count on a nation-state, to promote our needs

·         Freedom from the dangers of world turmoil

Instrumental values are more about desirable ways to act or behave (e.g., honest, responsible, loving).

I omitted saying a guarantee for privacy is a value. That probably explains why values like recognition and attribution are less important for me.

It is being said that societies are losing values. Maybe that refers to collective values that hold society together. It’s part of our collective “stereo-type” of behavior, (and thought) that permeates our culture. 

So perhaps our values structure is being shifted toward our individual values, (or rights), like personal freedom, mobility, free speech, free association, sanctity of the home, gun possession rights. These values, if out of balance with collective values, might be the cause of social instability.  It’s the collapse of the world as we know it.  Maybe things do need to change, but some people caution, not that fast.

Words like freedom and liberty are very abstract, and have many different meanings to whomever is hearing them.  Words like unobstructed, “not to be blocked”, permitted by the others, are more concrete, but depend on how I interact with other people’s boundaries. (And how they interact with mine.)  Also, being unobstructed may be due to how I have positioned myself.  My work is not in the most competitive category. My location is not in the most crowed area.  My associations are with people that I can relate to.

Some values we may hold in a special position by calling them sacred or holy.  They deserve veneration, and are too important to be interfered with.  Maybe those are more on the collective front.  Or we probably need collective agreement before we confer such an honor.

Actually, the seed of these ideas was from a paper by Robin Hanson,

“We See the Sacred from Afar”

https://files.theseedsofscience.org/2023/We_See_The_Sacred_From_Afar__To_See_It_The_Same.pdf

I am saying that “The Sacred” are a special category of values, and I am thinking more of all values, including the sacred.

Of course, distant things are less distinct, with less details and so more abstract. Hanson is maintaining they are more universal, because more people can share these “foggy ideas”. “We expect our theories to fit reality better for far things than for close”. We plausibly use near mode more to choose our literal direct actions, and we use far mode more symbolically, and to improve our social impressions.

In that paper he characterizes the sacred with 68 qualities.  Qualities are all abstract in themselves. I am not considering that list here.  Neither am I fighting against the abstract, but just noting that abstract can be construed very far away from your and my ordinary life needs, desires, and satisfactions. To see the world closer-to, “as it is”, rather than suffused with abstract principles, is not an effort to get along without ideals, aims, and aspirations; “it is an effort to make these purposes real, to make them attainable in concrete terms.”

Things can be close versus far in many ways, including via ✓time, ✓spatial distance, ✓social distance, ✓category breadth, ✓chance or (certainty is closer), ✓plans (constraints are close, goals are far), and ✓language (tone, style are close, general impressions are far). We presume that things which tend to be close (or far) in some ways are also close (or far) in other ways?

Close or far, concrete (relating to real world notions) or abstract, trying to ✓model a greater whole.  Are these also dualities?  You can check this list.

The following are some of the many axis and distinctions reported to correlate with this sense of duality.

1 near vs. far:

2 here vs. there;

3 now vs. then;

4 me or us vs. them;

5 important vs. unimportant;

6 past vs. future;

7 down vs. up;

8 warm vs. cold;

9 red vs. blue (politics?);

10 bright vs. dark;

11 awake vs. asleep;

12 morning lark vs. night owl;

13 taste or touch vs. see or hear;

14 slang or grunt vs. polite speech;

15 more vs. less politically polarized;

16 fast, detailed, repetitive vs. slow, echoed, novel music;

17 voice or picture vs. words or faces;

18 more vs. less intense affect;

19 fear or sadness vs. anger, guilt, shame, pride, or regret;

20 dislike or low mood vs. liking or high mood;

21 sex vs. love;

22 tempted vs. self-restrained;

23 dominance vs. prestige;

24 unsure, persuadable, seek info vs. confident, stubborn;

25 conforming vs. independent;

26 support authority vs. support underdogs (seek justice);

27 low power via acts vs. high power via associates;

28 math/logic analysis vs. creative analogy;

29 case-based comparable how “con”, the against-reasons vs. feature-based unique why “pro”, the for-reasons;

30 uncertain vs. overconfident;

31 theory/trend-breaking vs. following;

32 common, likely, real, local-event consequences vs. rare, unlikely, unreal, global event causes;

33 concrete, contextual, detailed, incidental relations vs. abstract, schematic, context-free, core, coarse, goal-related properties;

34 narrow vs. broad categories;

35 familiar vs. novel task/event;

36 feasible safe vs. desirable risky acts;

37 buy vs. sell;

38 conflicted, secondary, local, practical-plan constraints vs. coherent, central, global, symbolic, ideal, moral-plan concerns;

38 means or obstacles vs. ends;

39 strong female vs. weak male emotions;

40 socially-near folks with unstable traits in small groups vs. socially-far folks with stable traits in big groups.

Reported to be correlates of the sacred: (Septianto et al. 2021), ✓awe, ✓politeness, ✓self-control, ✓serenity, ✓symbolism, ✓high mood, ✓confidence, ✓creativity, ✓novelty, ✓good sleep, ✓prestige (vs. dominance), ✓world/universe (vs. smaller units), and ✓values (vs. decision constraints).

Coexisting explanations, how should we look at this? such as,

functional explanation

byproduct explanation,

evolutionary explanation,

developmental explanation,

or mechanistic explanations.

Construal-level theory says that more unlikely or impossible things are seen as further away. So, a habit of seeing sacred things from afar will tend to make sacred things seem a priori perhaps unlikely.  So, our see-sacred-from-afar hypothesis also helps explain why the sacred is often seen as able to defy the usual physical or animal constraints.

Note also that if we see the sacred-concept as itself sacred, then the usual norms of the sacred would disapprove of our analyzing that concept, using so much contextual detail, explaining the sacred as an instrumental, rather than ultimate value, or explaining it at all; instead of just leaving it as a deep awe-inspiring mystery. Thus, to study the sacred, we must to some degree defy it.

All of these values are in our acted-upon contexts, whether conscious or unconscious.  Let’s bring them to the surface and examine them.

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