At the moment, “valence” seems to me, in the material I’ve read, no more than a name reifying a noun phrase of the form “the thing that...” It is like saying that salt tastes salty due to its saltiness, or to use a well-known example, that opium produces sleep through its dormitive principle.
Uttering a noun phrase does not conjure into existence a thing that it refers to. It can conjure an idea of such a thing into your head, and then you can look at various phenomena and “see” it there, just like you can “see” the phlogiston coming out of a burning log, or “see” the demon possessing an epileptic. That is what the whole Valence sequence looks like to me, and the valence literature that I cited.
In the context of consciousness, valence basically means the qualia of value.
My scepticism then extends to the word “value”, as applied in this context. Also, I had not got the impression from the material that valences were defined to be conscious experiences, but rather, that they pervade all decision-making in the brain, that comparison of valence is “the thing that” makes decisions. For example, the fourth reference I cited is a purely speculative article asserting the existence of “micro-valences” in low-importance rapid choices like which coffee mug to select from a cupboard. But perhaps the authors would say that these micro-valences are micro-consciously perceived.
At the moment, “valence” seems to me, in the material I’ve read, no more than a name reifying a noun phrase of the form “the thing that...” It is like saying that salt tastes salty due to its saltiness, or to use a well-known example, that opium produces sleep through its dormitive principle.
Uttering a noun phrase does not conjure into existence a thing that it refers to. It can conjure an idea of such a thing into your head, and then you can look at various phenomena and “see” it there, just like you can “see” the phlogiston coming out of a burning log, or “see” the demon possessing an epileptic. That is what the whole Valence sequence looks like to me, and the valence literature that I cited.
My scepticism then extends to the word “value”, as applied in this context. Also, I had not got the impression from the material that valences were defined to be conscious experiences, but rather, that they pervade all decision-making in the brain, that comparison of valence is “the thing that” makes decisions. For example, the fourth reference I cited is a purely speculative article asserting the existence of “micro-valences” in low-importance rapid choices like which coffee mug to select from a cupboard. But perhaps the authors would say that these micro-valences are micro-consciously perceived.