Get Oriented to Purposes & Values

I had several publications, isolated frameworks, many notes. «Levels of work» loomed over it all. I had to somehow demonstrate to myself and others that I was on to something. I chose Purpose as my focus. I needed to devote myself to a detailed book-length account of frameworks associated with it. I didn't at the time grasp just how fundamental Purpose was—although I knew many had said so. Nor did I have any idea of the way the frameworks would evolve and interconnect.

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Physical sciences regard the universe as devoid of either purpose or value because these are intangible. The materialist paradigm views anything that is not fully reducible to biological process as unacceptable, if not unbelievable. That makes detailed study rather difficult. You cannot compare goals or appreciate a value by measuring neuronal firing.

Social sciences, by contrast, have long been preoccupied with particular purposes or values. However, they have avoided focusing on their nature as a feature of all individuals and societies. Particular disciplines impose their own distortions e.g. economics takes value and purpose for granted without appreciating their impact on rationality.

The systems sciences are more aware. They have recognized will and purpose as essential features of social systems. However, the dominant paradigms have been strongly empirical and intensely mathematical. Even «soft-systems» approaches, which focus on management and social change, do not deeply explore human experience.

During the writing of Working with Values, I was operating from first principles at all times. Taxonomic architecture emerged during that inquiry: it was not a guide as it now is.

Because I had not recognized the Tree as a universal pattern, I did not automatically seek it for ethical rules (which certainly interact with each other) or in the ethical authorities (which likewise interact) or in the structural groupings in realizing values. These frameworks have been developed and posting will occur in due course within Frameworks in Development.

Various architectural discoveries e.g. the unfolding dualities in the approaches to ethical choice and the structural hierarchies, were checked and tested in other frameworks both within the book (e.g. identity systems in Ch. 7) and outside it (e.g. management work).