Looking at the Nature of Complex Value:
An Integrated Understanding of the Phenomenon of Ecological Value*

0.   Introduction

	Among ecologists, as among philosophers, there is a scandal that cannot even bring itself to mention that is has no name! Among the philosophical what sure consensus is ever found? Even philosophers in the same school are want to argue… incessantly! Being ecologically minded is one thing, but, is there a consistent, meaningful inter-cultural way of doing an ecological appreciation of the environment that transcends both the specific cultural commitments and values of that commentator? Be reasonably understood by their audience? Find a way in which the many profitable strands of this type of discourse can be strongly woven together… give us good reason to be ecologically minded in this world of mindless proliferation and excessive consumption… an innocent world undermined by the abyss of unchecked exploitation… often to ends not commensurate with the true costs of the environment impinged upon? (0)

1.   Meta-Introduction

	The above paragraph was how I opened a recent lengthy paper dealing with complex value in general and ecological value in particular (i.e., ecological value in general). In this paper I would like to reflect on this previous paper in order to make my themes and strategies the focus of my attention and, hopefully, be better understood by my audience in this regard. To this end I will expose my motivation to your scrutiny and attempt to reveal my intentions rather than merely giving another version of this previous paper along with all its technicalities. To this extent we would be subjecting it to a meta-examination, i.e., looking at its intended presuppositions, intended suppositions and intended conclusions. And the best way of attempting to achieve this type of end means I am going to have to tell you the following story about why I wrote that previous essay.… (1)

2.   Developing A Deeper Sense of Phenomenological Perspective

	For many years now I have been practicing a phenomenological way of doing philosophy – a close attention to the distinctive features of particular phenomena, i.e., focusing upon and isolating the essential features regarded as specific to that type of phenomenal simulation. E.g., when we look at the phenomenon of salty water once we recognize the taste of brackish water extra salt in that solution merely reinforces that original perception/essential description of what it means-for-us as to what salty water would/should taste like. Then, in our eidetic imaginations, we can imagine something to be more salty or less salty to the taste and therein imaginatively explore the entire field of saltiness (as a distinctive phenomenon). (2)

*Latest version of paper: www.homestead.com/noelshomepage/noelshomepage3.html
	However, we live in the real world, and, in the real world, distinctive values usually come mixed with other types of value that may or may not be so distinctive. Indeed, we live in a complex world and in this world-for-us we are exposed to complexes of value, i.e., combinations of different types of value that may or may not be thought to interact in some form or other hence complex value when it can be shown that we have an apparent system of interacting values. Let me give an example of a system of complex value. (3)

	The designer of a bridge that will be built in the public domain has certain responsibilities, certain deontological duties of care. They must build a bridge that wont fall down, and, therein, will neither inconvenience nor injure people. They must build a bridge that can stand up to the normal range of extremes that might reasonably be experienced, say, over the course of a century or two. Here a deontological sense of necessity is exercised through applying certain pragmatically arrived at qualifications. There is no need to build a bridge to withstand 1000 kilometer winds whereas to build a bridge that would safely withstand 300 kilometer winds might make just as safe, yet more pragmatic, a bet in this regard. Here deontological necessity is scoped and qualified by pragmatic utility. Considerations dealing with these two distinctive types of value at the same time and their interaction/s require us to recognize and deal with complex value (in this instance through a negotiated interaction between the deontological and the pragmatical). (4)

	So how do we deal with complex value? Unfortunately, complex fields (of value) are notorious places for philosophers for they are sure to find interminable controversies! Thence endless debates about, e.g., the deontological versus the pragmatical, or, the descriptive versus the prescriptive, or, quantitative description versus qualitative description, or, individual rights versus communal rights, etc., etc. (5)

	Obviously, complex fields of value can easily be treated as philosophically controversial. On the other hand, defying philosophical ‘wisdom’, people in the world get on with living in a complex world without necessarily deferring to philosophical controversies. How is this feat of practical wisdom to be achieved when too often theoretical philosophers warn us of the controversial territory that must be first traversed whilst often arguing that such crossings cannot be conducted let alone completed? Just because all swans seen in the Old World were white does not mean that all swans are necessarily white. I.e., the philosophical movement from description to prescription is the bedrock of the naturalistic fallacy which denies our passage from a descriptive sense of ‘is’ to what ‘ought’ to be the case prescriptively. Yet, in our daily existence, we all too often usefully make such ‘illegal’ crossings for this type of practice to be merely written off as philosophically forbidden and intellectually irresponsible. So, how is it the case that we all too often successfully can defy our philosophical brethren in these types of apparent transgression? (6)

	Somehow, it would seem, we already have to-hand simple strategies in the public domain for dealing with the navigation through and arbitration of complex values! So, what are these strategies, do they actually exist? Their existence given, why are these manoeuvres apparently successful? And, what philosophical implications could/should be drawn in the light of the same? (7)

	It would seem obvious, e.g., that phenomenologists, for a start, should develop a deeper sense of perspective and concentrate their attention on how complex value is able to function beyond the superficial world of philosophical controversies. I.e., also focus on the deeper phenomenon of the interactive nature of complex value rather than merely concentrating upon instances of simple value of a distinctive, essential kind! Hence, also, our hermeneutic interest in these existential surpluses of value. (8)

3.   Do Strategies for Dealing with Complex Values Exist?

	Although philosophers are all too often mired in controversies themselves, yet, when they remove their philosophical hats so to speak they get on with their lives like the next person. This apparent relative lack of confusion parallels the same type of observation that can often be made about our moral lives, namely, that most lives are lived without feelings of a continual ongoing moral perplexity. In our normal passage through the world we are not bedeviled at every corner by moral dilemmas, indeed, in this regard, we just are not ‘cornered’, so to speak, by a multiplexity of ethical controversies! To this extent the world is more or less already worked-out-for-us in much the same way road rules of a certain locale are generally followed in that locale. (9) 

In effect, our path through the world is facilitated through our adoption and adaptation of these meta-rules of behaviour closely linked to and firmly associated with certain genres of activity as modes-of-life. (10)

	Is this just some form of speculation on my part? Can this attention to inter-subjective patterns of performance be confirmed? Well, we have road rules. Indeed, every mode of life and its attendant modes of practice are tempered by rule-directed activity. Write a letter, use a telephone, how you greet people you know or don’t know are all instances of these genre-rules being already found to-hand. E.g., a shop might put merchandise out on the street for sale, whereas, people in a non-commercial residence might put stuff out on the street because it is rubbish or refuse, or, they no longer want those artifacts and are happy for people to take them away. Are there grounds for confusion here? People normally don’t take rubbish bins from the street thinking they too are being thrown away. Their removal is more likely to be seen as theft. On the other hand, if a shop has free material it will often sign it to that end in order to alert passersby as to what genre is actually being exercised here. Or, if a rubbish bin is now no longer wanted or no longer able to function as a rubbish container it might be signed to that effect, i.e., noted as that to be taken away and be disposed off. What I am trying to say is that exceptions more often than not prove the point (or at least clarify which set of conventions are to be adopted). Thus I rest my case. Complex value is negotiated through the adoption and adaptation of the appropriate social conventions already being exercised to that end. That, indeed, all forms of intentionally thematized activity are genre-directed! (11)

	So the bridge designer utilizes planning qualifications and conventions usually already to-hand. Similarly in the legal profession with its use of precedent. And the same applies to all other disciplines to the extent that they are already recognized as disciplines in this regard! What are the ramifications of this observation that complex modes of life generally already have rules for dealing with such complexity? (12)

4.   The Ramifications of the Pre-Development of Genre Directed Activity?

	Just as our bridge designer will contemplate exercising their deontological  sense of duty by tempering their designs with current practice and standards (in the light of current communal expectations in that regard) we must now ask ourselves how is it possible that different types of value can be mutually accommodated. That such accommodations already pre-exist in the social domain should be considered a fact of life. Our more complex world is obviously mirrored in the greater complexity of its rules and regulations, etc. Still, how do we explain how potentially controversial fields of practice are normally exercised in a relatively non-controversial manner (unless such pre-existent conventions be controversially broken)? (13)

	A simple answer to that conundrum is to argue, metaphorically, that all forms of judgment have the same ‘transcendental machinery of judgment’ in operation! Merely being tweaked in this direction or that direction as circumstances demand. [To this end I have already elaborated upon a typology of six kinds of primary value dependent upon what three main aspects involved in a specific process of judgment are being relatively privileged/de-privileged in that regard; these three aspects subjected to such relative privileging being the intentional object(-state) and/or the associated intentional-field and/or the associated sense of intentional-subject in question. From such relative privileging/de-privileging I have postulated six kinds of distinctive value (such as pre-essential, aesthetical, deontological, pragmatical, hermeneutical and factual forms of value). But I would like to steer clear of this aspect of my philosophical research in order to focus here upon the ‘important ramifications’ of this approach towards complex value, and, how complex fields of ecological value might be better approached (by both philosophers and non-philosophers)!] (14)

	Let me list some of these ‘important ramifications’: 

1.	Our life is spent negotiating the complexities of living hence complex values.
2.	The superficial treatment of complexity is usually controversial.
3.	The non-superficial treatment of complexity is usually non-controversial.
4.	This later approach usually is already pre-prepared for us socially.
5. 	Being exercised through the appropriate adoption and adaptation of same.
6.	Thus non-superficial philosophers/phenomenologists need to note such rules.
7.	And the potential philosophical/phenomenological ramifications of same. (15)

	And with regard to the complex nature of ecoglogical value:

1.	Recognize its complexity (by virtue of its superficial controversial treatment).
2.	Articulate what rules already pre-exist that bypass controversial treatments. 
3.	Clarify and amplify the same.
4.	Re-examine the consequences and ramifications of such practices. (16)
5.	Conclusion(s)?

	A recipe for ecological scandal is to treat ecological value just as a simple value (concentrating on a sole metaphor in this regard). Rather, instead, we should be focusing upon a series of relatively simple facets thought present in ecological complexity whilst looking for pre-existent genre interconnections between the same. E.g., looking for linkages between such key metaphorical components as ‘harmony’ (treated both ethically and aesthetically), or, ‘patrimony’ (for present and future generations), or, the ‘sacred-like nature of life’ in general, or, the existential ‘excess of functioning systems’, etc., etc. In all of this search for viable interconnection, let us propose that all such useful metaphors can be validly extracted out of a non-superficial treatment of judgment in general in our experience of our-being in-the-world-with-others by virtue of the fact that ecological value is a type of complex value-judgment that should be treated accordingly. But, rather than be frightened by this fact of complexity let us recognize that we already have ways and means for our passage through the world in this regard, and, by extension, that we also have ways and means for negotiating beyond the mere complexities of ecologically located value within the overall complexities of the Life-World itself by virtue of the fact that ecological value too also has pre-existent rules for negotiating with the complexities, e.g., of the psychological, social, political, historical, cultural, inter-cultural, spiritual, etc., as already, effectively, pre-understood by-us! That in our existential passage through the world before-others the distinctive complexity of ecological value has a place and already knows its place in the complexities of this World-of-Life that is equally ‘our’ Life-World within which we ‘all’ share ‘our’ lives with all others! (17)

	That, in effect, ecological value is complex; its non-superficial treatment is relatively non-controversial or less controversial; its complexity is practically mapped out for us in socially understood rules of engagement; that the same can be philosophically clarified; that, equally, the complexities of ecological value/s are also negotiated by other fields of complexity, and, that a non-superficial, integrated approach would/should be able to also map out key points recognized as already pre-operative in those types of negotiations thence helping us to form a recognition of an integrated understanding of the complex phenomenon of ecological value as already pre-experienced by-us today in this complex World-of-Life. That, in essence, our future existence with-others demands that we build upon such a basis in order to equally participate in the existential release of value that would/should devolve from the practice of such deeper, communal, cultural insights!! Moreover, such ideas here can also act as a practical template in advancing our philosophical understanding of our practical and critical dealings with all other kinds of complex value!!! (18)
			  				     Noël Tointon, Sydney, 3.6.08.