Nature, the genesis of value, and human understanding

Abstract

Many anthropogenic values are indeed important, but I deny that nature is otherwise value free, and recommend to humans a psychological joining (with) ongoing natural history, since there is value wherever there is positive creativity. Epistemologically, it is impossible for any knower not to be participant in what he or she knows. We will have to use our eyes, ears, noses, hands, minds. What we know will be filtered through our percepts and concepts. But that does not make the discovery of valued features in nature assimilationist or anthropocentric. I defend a rather more critical realism.