appreciation • gary e. davis • berkeley

appreciation implies astute valuing

gary e. davis

October 17, 2025

Standardly, ‘appreciate’ is evaluative, rather than valuative (in a non-monetary sense): judging someone or something as having given value, rather than giving value to the person/thing; or discovering given value.

So, understanding appreciation as evaluative easily becomes ambiguously nested in given/giving interests and background relations of valuing, giving irt given.

Given evaluative interest presumes a basis for itself in oriental value which is giving/given direct relevance for evaluating. Evaluative implicature implies interesting/interested relevance of value belonging to apprecation of the specific person/thing.

Given value, discerned as already belonging to the person/thing, is made evaluatively relevant.

Giving value to the other/thing for evaluation is distinguishable from value already belonging, definitively, to the other/thing (extrinsic value relevance); or relevance can be discerned to belong to the other or thing, by the person’s appropriation of extrinsic value for its integral character (or analogously, some thing is personified as if absorbing extrinsic value). Is integral value based extrinsically (self-giving, absorbed) or intrinsic (self-given, constitutive)? That’s to be evaluated, of course.

So, a relationality of “having” value for evaluation belongs to ambiguous interrelations: perceptual interest (valuing/already valued) irt evaluative interest (giving relevance, given relevance); preference irt relevance.

Differentiations between extrinsic and intrinsic relevance may fade by way of scaling horizonal interest: situational, project-ive, prospective, or/and genealogical.

So, desired clarity about specific appreciating calls for astuteness of perception and evaluative relevance, but also actional (performative) honoring of, or fidelity to, specific values: To give relevance to values (or presume given relevance) is to honor the values in preference considerations; or to hold/show fidelity to the relevant values in preference considerations (though relevant values may not be situationally overriding relative to better relevances).

Theorizing appreciation requires extrapolation from many kinds of valuing (a venture beyond this provisional note). A theory of appreciation derives from astute understanding of value conceptuality, I would argue. Soon, I’ll dwell with aspects of value conceptuality which are important.

One very important kind of value (Value) for me is gifting a child as owning integral value, i.e., having/owning potential or latent capability: The child may not realize that s/he “has” potential until someone grants that as given, thereby maybe awakening aspiration because the potential “is” given. (According to some master teachers, every student has a “gift.”)

“Found” art is an object which “has” value granted as if discovered (giving appreciaton to what “is” given).

Cherishing gives value as given, which is not about speculative pricing. Even marketing has to create appellant value to justify its profitable margin of pricing.

Fashions don’t become expensive due to inherent price-worthiness.

In a sense, price insults value. Something may be “priceless” because price is irrelevant.

There is so much to value for appreciation, obviously. Exploring value conceptuality is an odyssey. So, what can be appreciation itself relative to the far reaches, heights, and inspireable awing-ness of being?

I favor psychalogical appreciations, but implicitly (at least) in belonging with interal, cultural, conceptual, social, and political appreciations—altogether a bleonging (by giving/given valuing) too complex for detailed attention here, but integral to my way of thinking.

Favorite themes for appreciation include prospecting…

		a conception of self-enhanciveness
			Self-enhancive interest is easily evident in a child’s intrinsic love of learning; later in individuation as reflective (self-directive) learning, There is primal integrality to want of flourishing (so often suppressed by environments, becoming internalized suppression, then forgotten in repression). How do primal differentiations “happen” (i.e., come to be made valuable), e.g., self irt another person, persons irt things? What “is” more valuable for flourishing? How does love of inquiry emerge sustainably for higher individuation? What makes high individuation (which can be very challenging) appealing? How does a life gain and sustain its ownmost purposefulness?

		intelligent life as fidelity to healthy living
			Healthy living—thriving—precedes (gives leeway to) enactive self-enhanciveness, but remains vital for individuation, only by fidelity to authentic appeals. “Intelligent” life is integrally person-al at best relative to authentic individuation, which employs normal senses of intelligence (which tend to be instrumentalist). A life’s holistic thriving, its Career (A-Project-ivity within the an era of humanity) is a life cycle likely involving multiple professional careers, each likely involving multiple employments, each multi-tasking multiple jobs. How can healthy enjoyments sustain fidelity to one’s Path of long-life being well?

		conscience
			What is “good” conscience beyond theistic intimation? How can fidelity to appeals of high valuing (Valuing) belong to selfidentity (oneSself) durably? What wisdom is better to choose for the better-oriented life? How may mindful receptiveness and responsiveness best stay attuned to its relatingness (genuine rc/rs interality, I call it).

		the better view of being
			A situational possibility of the better view is always a matter of [shared?] values of interested action: a determinably better-oriented engagement of activity or project-iveness relative, at best, to “the” better-organized flourishing, holistically conceived (mindfulness, at best, highly minding).

So, what can appreciation best be? What are the better engagements? What may be the better cohering of better values thereby orienting better-oriented action? How may idealization be best aligned with interests of better humanity?

In conceptual questing, every assertion is implicitly giving question.