enacted values

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Enacted values are historically formed patterns of attention, commitment and participation through which agents and collectives articulate real goods within particular worlds. They are neither private preferences nor transparent copies of goods existing apart from practice. Their adequacy depends on how the arrangements they sustain affect actual capacities, participation and continued viability.

Explanation

AB distinguishes the reality of goods from their historical articulation. Different communities can profess the same value while building very different worlds; the contrast between domination and participatory freedom is therefore more than a disagreement over vocabulary.

The dialysis example makes the distinction practical. Medically comparable treatments can organize a particular patient’s time, dependence and participation differently. Employment makes one stake visible without measuring that person’s worth, and the example does not establish a universal preference for treatment at home.

RB3 ties this account to enactive ethics and evolutionary moral realism while retaining their separate contributions. Real goods make error possible; historical enactment makes learning necessary. A value must be judged through the world it brings forth, not accepted merely because an institution announces it.

Scope and attribution

Direct AB and RB3 formulations; broader normative change in PB/RB1/RB2 remains context rather than an imported definition.

AB — The Actual Book

Attention and commitment articulate goods historically; the dialysis and freedom examples make the difference concrete.

Occurrence locators: 177, 178, 186; Notes: 247, 248.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

Enactive participation articulates real goods through regimes, with patient-specific consequences and room for error and learning.

Occurrence locators: 220, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 314, 316, 321.