Eye of Value
Description
Daniel Thorson:
"The philosophers Zachary Stein and Marc Gafni have developed this insight further through their framework of CosmoErotic Humanism. They speak of "the eye of value" – a perceptual capacity that allows us to directly apprehend the intrinsic worth of reality.
This eye of value, when open and clarified, enables us to perceive not just that things have value but how value flows and manifests in the living world. It reveals a universe that is not value-neutral but value-saturated, where goodness, truth, and beauty are not subjective projections but real dimensions of existence that call us to right relationship.
Stein and Gafni understand our current meta-crisis – the interconnected ecological, social, and meaning crises we face – as fundamentally a crisis of intimacy and perception. When the eye of value is clouded or closed, we become functionally blind to the intrinsic worth of the natural world, of other beings, and ultimately of ourselves. This blindness doesn't just impoverish our experience; it enables destruction that would be unthinkable if we could directly perceive the value of what we're destroying.
The eye of value isn't just a passive receiver; it's an active capacity that shapes how we exist in the world. When this perceptual organ is functioning well, we naturally align our actions with the flow of value we perceive. We don't need complex ethical calculations to know that clear-cutting an ancient forest is wrong – we can feel the wrongness directly, just as we can sense the dissonance in a jarring chord."
(https://intimatemirror.substack.com/p/valueception?)
Discussion
Daniel Thorson:
"In a world increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence, algorithmic decision-making, and virtual realities, the cultivation of distinctly human valueception becomes not just philosophically interesting but essential for our survival. The computational systems we're creating can process information with unprecedented speed and accuracy, but they fundamentally lack the capacity for direct perception of value.
The eye of value, the soul's perception, the right hemisphere's direct apprehension of meaning and worth—these represent capacities that no artificial intelligence can replicate because they emerge from our embodied, conscious participation in reality itself. As we face decisions about the future of our societies and our planet, these distinctly human capacities for perceiving value directly may prove to be our most precious resource.
The good news embedded in all these frameworks is that valueception isn't something we need to invent or construct; it's a natural human capacity that simply needs to be uncovered and developed. Like learning to see the hidden image in a stereogram, perceiving intrinsic value requires a shift in how we attend to reality rather than the addition of something new.
This shift in perception doesn't happen all at once but emerges gradually through practice and proper attention. Each moment of directly perceiving beauty, truth, or goodness strengthens this perceptual capacity. Each act of honoring the value we perceive reinforces its clarity. Each community that validates and supports this mode of perception helps to preserve and extend it.
The invitation before us isn't to construct meaning in a meaningless universe but to develop the perceptual capacities that allow us to recognize and participate in the meaning and value that have been here all along. In rediscovering valueception, we don't just find a solution to our crisis of meaning—we recover our birthright as beings uniquely capable of perceiving and honoring the intrinsic value that always saturates existence."