Abstract
Life creates value as living processes unfold.
Introduction
This is not an argument that Life has any intrinsic or sacred value. Instead it is an argument that creating value is a function of life.
Thought Experiment
Imagine a barren world on the other side of the Universe where humans will never set foot. Now imagine that simple life appears here for the first time. It requires food: a new value is applied to some material subset of the world. Other values appear as life develops, evolves, complexity and variation increase. As life, and the behaviour of living organisms emerges, so do values.
Implications
As an organism grows, its range of values are likely to grow (up to a point, maybe), and even change over its lifetime, and through its encounters and experiences. The values of a hunting predator are likely to be characteristically different from that of a grazing herbivore, say; of a social animal compared with a solitary lifeform.
But the point is that value emerges from life, not as a theoretical or imposed perspective, but organically and instrinsically, as a natural process.
Conclusion
Life, itself an emergent phenomena, generates value, as an emergent property or behaviour. These values may be simple or complex, stable or unstable, specific or experiential. One could even define life as a value-generating phenomena, although I suspect this would be a problematic reach. As would claiming only life generates value. But as an observation, I think accurate enough.
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