Reading notes on value

Googled “category theory value,” found a paper by Geoff Hellman entitled “Does category theory provide a framework for mathematical structuralism” [@hellman:2003:category]. Since this paper was from 2003, it does not consider homotopy type theory or it’s modal varieties. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Hellman is a leading proponent of ‘mathematical nominalism’, so he would not take a pragmatic realistic view of math, contra Peirce. Nevertheless, he does reference Bell’s work on local mathematics and proposes to use ‘modal structuralism’ to strengthen his claim.

Graeber’s Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value is awesome. The writing is clever and the ideas are interesting. So far, the central thesis of the book seems very consistent with my ideas for *Semiotic of values, but also seems to require development of categorical semiotics. It is interesting that Greaber proposes a generalization of Marx’s theory of value towards a more general notion of “action,” and critiques the use of semiology, but does not mention Peirce.

I’d like to structure the course to reflect the subject matter. Students taking the course for a grade are engaged in a value creation and evaluation process. Different class projects could embody different theories of value. Ultimately, student grades would depend upon common-based peer production, perhaps their contribution to a course website that could be used as the main text for the course. The public-facing part of the website could include acceptable limited-use of copyrighted texts, while a private-facing part could contain electronic copies