Keywords

1 Introduction

Jorge Luis Borges (1926) defined language as “effective organizer of the enigmatic abundance of the world”. The same way the science of the evaluations, as discipline of economic policy, is committed to put into order the enigmatic abundance of the world of values of the real estate capital assets. As “abundance” we mean here the wide range of the territorial, institutional and juridical conditions inside which the reticulum of motivations for selling and purchasing and for transforming and preserving articulates. The science of evaluations utilizes the language of value to describe the capability of being worth of the economic goods.

If it is true that a function of language is to constitute the social relations concerning reality—Lewis 1968, argues: “we have created the word “hammer” so that we may say “pass me the hammer”—we can also accept the idea that the language of value establishes the social relations concerning “what really counts” about the destinies of our territory, our cities and the landscape. Whether the economic-territorial order is founded on the monetary language (Rizzo 2002, 2016) or on value (in Luhmann 1992 “code/program”) as language—mostly considered a feeble foundation—it is at the root of the issue of true value, that means that if as “true” we mean “real”, and as “real” we mean referred to things and facts, then legitimate doubts on the possibility to talk about “true values” arise. The observation of D’Agostini (2013) on the statement by Lewis—word “was born from the world, from how it is made, how it appeared to us, so it was consolidated by repetition, that created the linguistic convention” (p. 148)—opens, instead of closing, a wide and fruitful discussion the same author has extensively dealt with in Introduction to trueness (2011), to which this contribution systematically refers, being inspired by it.

The basic issue is this: what do we mean as “world”—as this world produces the evidences we organize through the interferences (the logical sequences) contained by the value judgment?

The recent and sudden extension of the operative contexts of the evaluation discipline has contributed to give a practical meaning to this world, taking demanding challenges in the very contexts in which “facts and values” (Putnam 2002) are more and more difficult to distinguish and therefore to connect by means of a quantitative measurement or a preference relation.

  1. 1.

    This application field constitutes the horizontal dimension of this “world”, the world of problems. As a matter of fact the following issues are involved:

    • a progressively wider range of subjective profiles participating to the process of formation of wealth, among which the one external to the social system, the environment;

    • a quicker dynamic of the dimension of the destructive variables of social and environmental wealth;

    • a more and more effective system of intra-systemic communication through which the economic sub-system (Luhmann 1990) increases the income articulations and its dimension at the expense of the other distributive variables, originating alarming forms of concentration of wealth and social and geographical polarization;

    • a more and more dispersed institutional apparatus of command and control that delegates to the market increasingly larger areas of the affirmation of rights;

    • a more fragmented institutional apparatus inside whose network the judicial procedures get stuck.

All the above mentioned matters constitute the first level of the issue we, in synthesis, address as “the true value” and that, as will be subsequently explained, must be specified in its semantic aspects and its main uses.

  1. 2.

    The vertical dimension of this “world” is the inseparable unity of language and reality. Reality is organized as value by means of the language of evaluation, that allows us to say the truth, that means to attribute the “true value”.

2 Three Values. Really?

One of the greatest difficulties the estimator encounters nowadays is the rarefaction of the factual and axiological referents of the evaluative process. Even in front of the most traditional evaluative question, that is the evaluation of the market value of an urban property, the double “being at large”, (1) of the market and (2) of reality occurs.

  1. 1.

    The “being at large” of the market may be observed in the irreducible divergence of the three values: ask price; market value; bid price. The market is the place of the economic communication that coordinates the seller (that requires a certain amount of money) and the purchaser (that offers a different amount of money). The transaction is a communicative act consequent to the agreement of the two contracting parties on the mutual convenience of the transaction itself.

Several observations on this simplification might be carried out, but they would deal with other fields of study. On the grounds of the addresses of economic-evaluative semiotics outlined by Rizzo (1999), the “ask price” is attributed to the “intentional” signification, the “bid price” to the “real signification”, while the market value to the “conventional” signification (ib., p. 330).

In the specific evaluative context, we should consider that:

  • the real estate market is a market of capital assets instead of housing functions;

  • the capital assets are economic signs whose physical reference is constituted by the housing functions just as the building itself;

  • as they are economic signs, their value (significance) is the result of a process of signification;

  • the capital markets are characterized as they coordinate the speculative activity;

  • the real estate price results from the encounter (or collision) of two counter-posed speculative intentionalities, the bullish one (of those who intend to purchase) and the bearish one (of those who intend to sell).

The referential or utilitarian motivations may arise in borderline situations:

  • at the bottom of a generalized “bearish” trend like the current one, characterized by the paralysis of the transactions, when people sell out of necessity capitalizing past capital losses;

  • at the top of a “bullish” trend when people buy out of urgent housing necessities, capitalizing future losses of capital value.

In the periods considered stable, the three prices tend to coincide, while in periods of fluctuation: they discourage the purchases (lowering trend), and the market is nearly silent and not promising; they encourage beyond measure the purchases (raising trend) and the market “speaks aloud” and “shows off”.

Ultimately, which are the prices that, in similar situations, should be assumed as significant? And, on second thoughts, even in the periods of flexibility of the market, in what sense may be assume as “true” a value calculated out of prices formed by the collision of speculative intentionalities? Which is the true value?

  1. 2.

    The “being at large” of reality concerns instead the difficulty to describe the economic goods from the point of view of the significant characteristics for the purposes of the evaluations:

    • the signifiers the significance connects with;

    • the syntactic ties delimiting the semantic chain (a market segment), and between them: the episodic nature of the transactions, the heterogeneity of the contracting parties, the fragmentation of the political—economic context.

If the above mentioned matters are valid for the real estate evaluations, even more so they are valid for the qualitative evaluations, and as a matter of fact:

The first ones refer to a consolidated system of exchange and use the monetary language, that has the maximum level of abstraction; the second ones are carried out without exchange and shared descriptive dominions, and by using a plurality of concrete languages that can more hardly blend and be merged in a unitary and robust expression.

As a consequence the question is: does the true value exist? If the answer wasn’t positive the following paragraphs, and even this contribute, wouldn’t be.

3 Structure of the Value Judgment: Real Evaluations or Real Values?

Judgment is a linguistic expression that unites an object and a predicate: the judgment of value connects an economic good (something that may be considered as being worth, then as existing in the economic communication) with an attribute of value (that constitutes the motivation because of which that good should be subject to higher or lower interest). In the analytic field, the value judgement is the assertion on the trueness of an evaluative statement. In strictly logic-linguistic sense, the judgment is distinguished from the statement by the “extolling strength” (Dummet 1978) with which it affirms that the statement is true (or false).

The statement is a set of propositions each with a content, and whose coordination constitutes the sense of the statement. The judgment, therefore, activates the cognitive and heuristic functions that coordinate the statements, in particular their sense, so that their contents are ordered in the sequence of the logic interferences suitable to affirm that “A is worth x” or that “A is preferable to B”. Therefore the value is the “row material” of the evaluative statements, and the judgment oversees the truth of these statements. The evaluative statement consists of: (1) connecting a term of value with an object, that means selecting, defining and quantifying the properties because of which that object is important, preferable, valuable; (2) connecting the dimension of these properties with the quantitative-monetary measure of value or qualitative ranking.

The traditional discipline of estimation has specified the property “true”—enactment of the value judgment—in the requirements of generality, objectivity, ordinary nature, actuality, dependence on the aim (contextuality). It has also indicated the place of the “facts” that make the evaluative statement real: the market (actual or simulated, directly or indirectly questioned) or, more moderately, the preferences (detected or declared); this last matter concerns the issue of the “truth of value” instead of the evaluations, affirming that the market is the place where true values are formed. Finally, and above all, the estimation discipline has established the probabilistic approach as guarantee of truth of the evaluation (Locke delimits the significance of judgment to the faculty to use probable knowledge where certain knowledge is missing—Essay IV, 14, 3—Abbagnano 1998, p. 529), that implies another important assumption: the “intra-temporal prevision” about what would hypothetically happen at that definite moment in the facts (of the market). In synthesis, the judgment of value says: (a) which are the true evaluations, indicating the conditions of truth of the evaluative predication, that is a set of statements coordinated in the inferential form (if:…: then:…) of a logical sequence with a probabilistic value; (b) which is the real value, indicating it in the recursive behaviours observed in the practice of the market or the practice of the preferences.

Inside the evaluative statement, an issue that differentiates this simple and neutral correspondence between economic facts and probabilistic previsions is worth analyzing. The conditions of truth of the evaluative statement as here defined, can be discussed if we go beyond the limits of its validity, and we agree on these limits being indeed very restricted.

“Judgment of value” is a demanding phrase, in both terms, that refer respectively to the logical-linguistic and to the ethical sphere. The evaluative statement, that complies with the internal coherence of the evaluative process, is verified by the judgment. The judgment is a propositional structure that corresponds to a capability of humankind. By means of the capability of judgment choices transcend evaluations just as evaluations transcend observations: this ascent develops with the progression: “judgments of fact, judgments of value, judgments of merit”. This originates a chain of responsibilities, first heuristic ones involving the evaluating subjects, then the moral ones involving those who make a choice.

The highest part of this ascent (evaluations-choices), supported more by the moral than by the heuristic responsibility, exceeds or transcends the simplistic correspondence between the evaluative statement and the facts of the market, defining a further space of values. Therefore in the context of the quantitative-monetary evaluations not only the actual prices (provided that they are known) will be relevant, but the supply and demand prices as well; in the qualitative evaluations the policies and a set of universal values will be relevant instead of only what people like.

The substantial difference between the estimation predication and the axiological predication is, therefore, that the first one is descriptive and assumes from the market and from the observed behaviours the references for judgment, while the second one, explicitly normative, is inspired by a theory of value.

It is also possible to synthesize with Celano (1999, pp. 281–84): passing from a positive approach to a normative one the adaptation direction changes, from word-world to world-word.

The axiological predication is the set of context (conventional) and co-text (conversational), inside which it is possible to define the lawfulness, the legitimacy and the justification of the evaluative predication, therefore the sense of the evaluative statement itself, its origin and its destination, ultimately in what sense and how to define the “real value”.

4 Truth and Value

The estimation discipline bases the significance of the axiological predication on the convergence, coherence and integration between ethical and epistemic values.

One of the preliminary features of the relation between truth and value consists in understanding if and under which condition two conceptual categories, associable as both are super-concepts, are equal or the one may be subjected to the other (real values or good truths?).

First of all it is necessary to define the properties of the “super-concepts” or “transcendental” concepts. They are particular properties that don’t allow to be denied or relativized. Truth is a condition of reasoning that guides thought and, derivatively, action (D’Agostini 2011, p. 84), and it is not possible to get rid of. Denying truth implies believing as true anyway that truth doesn’t exist (arguments for confutation or “elenctic” in the Aristotelian logic) (ib). The same way, value, that means what is important and is tied to good (in the sense of what is good), is a condition for action: denying it means believing that doing it is good that means to implicitly admit it.

It may also be deduced that truth and value are properties (as in linguistic terms “real” and “good” are noun phrases) that mutually support each other in the axiological predication (the true value). The estimation predication (the real evaluation) is a different matter, that is ranked at a lower level than the transcendental concepts, in the sense that it is subject to logical (internal coherence) and factual (external coherence or correspondence) verification.

The axiological statement (“this is good”) differs from the evaluative one (“A is worth x”) in the fact that, while the first implies the transcendental “good”, the second implies the transcendental “true” (it is true that “A is worth x”) but it doesn’t imply that “it is good to affirm it”. “True” is the noun phrase that inside an evaluative judgment states the content of the estimation predication. In this case it may be observed that, while at the level of the estimation predication the judgment is a factual judgment on the truth/falsity of the evaluation statement, at the axiological predication level the judgment has as object the “truth of value”, that means that the value is authentic and it is not reduced only to the contingent interest expressed by the estimation query, therefore that the evaluation is really impartial in the sense (apparently opposite) of non neutral. The axiological predication differs from the evaluation predication in being the result of a stance, therefore in being capable of “evaluating the evaluation”, of expressing the value of the values involved in the evaluation. The value of values that distinguishes the axiological predication is the result of a “semantic ascent” confirming that “good” is an inferential and reflexive (it talks of itself) property common to “true”. Are there good truths and less good truths? Are there true values and less true values? The question is not simple, and the affirmative answer that here for the moment is provided must be examined in depth.

There are redundant or a-contextual truths that means not coherent with the sense of the proposition itself or with the needs of the situation where they arise. This aspect recalls what has been said on the relation between contextual and co-textual dimension of the value of the evaluations. We can say: “we have been together for 30 years”, that is true and relevant in contextual terms: or: “we have been together for 10.958 days”, that is even more true concerning the correspondence to the facts (we kept into account the leap years) but it doesn’t make any sense, therefore is irrelevant (we are not interested in this precision), redundant (we cannot immediately understand the duration of this experience) and therefore a-contextual, then in a certain sense erroneous even if true; moreover, we can say: “we have been together for an entire life!” that is false in the sense of the correspondence to the facts, but it makes a precise sense, represents an “axiological truth”, a truth that is worth, a “true truth” as it expresses in depth the sense and the density of the experience of being together.

The same way, in the axiological field, we can employ different modes in which what matters arises (the use value and the exchange value) as evaluative material, and we can satisfactorily answer the specific question.

Nonetheless we shouldn’t necessarily assume a critical position on the evaluation itself, in particular on its sense, and especially on which socio-economic and political-institutional context it intends to reproduce.

What has been proposed so far requires some clarifications. The first one concerns the sense of “true”. Value is not a “truth bearer” in the proper sense; as a consequence, we can talk of authentic (aesthetic) or non authentic (contingent, hedonic) values. Assuming value as true means considering it as a criterion of judgment or of action and, as said, of truth as well: in case of doubt what we consider important prevails. Therefore, “the true value” is a phrase that, in a classical sense, it is more correct to attribute to the statement on the relation between a good and its capability of being worth inside a defined socio-economic context. In a wider sense this phrase concerns the adequacy and the completeness of the axiological material—values as criteria—involved by the inferences connecting the different facts through which value is experienced.

We may conclude that, while in the estimation predication the phrase “true” refers to the statement, and therefore it verifies in the proper sense its internal coherence, in the axiological predication “the true value” constitutes, from the exterior and broadly, the context of values inside which true (or false) evaluations of true (or false) values are carried out.

The other issue to clarify concerns just those facts, defined as “truth-makers” as they are recalled to make the propositions true, and as such constitute the extra-linguistic material (ib., p. 108) of the judgment of value.

This last issue is mainly linked to the diverse theories of truth.

5 Theories of Truth and Estimation Truth

The theories of truth involve the science of valuation in both estimation and axiological predication realms.

The theories of truth (ib., p. 41) are divided in:

  • robust theories, that connect the noun phrase “true” with other concepts and predicates, and say how the proposition should be formulated to be true:

    • correspondence theory: the proposition is true if it corresponds with the facts;

    • coherence theory: the proposition is true if it is consistent with the most diffused opinion;

    • pragmatism: the proposition is true if it has predictive success, explicative effectiveness, if believing in it is useful for a purpose;

  • non robust theories, in general referring to the theory of A. Tarsky expressed in the “diagram T”: the proposition “p” is true only if p; this diagram represents the most common way we interpret truth. The diagram T originates different forms of deflationism, the tendency to reduce the importance of truth itself as actual and identifiable property (ib., p. 100); many deflationist theories end up by denying truth itself without escaping, if not in rare cases and only partially, from the auto-rebuttal implicit in any negative meta-theoretical position (ib., p. 135), appearing as a consequence irrelevant.

The theory of “alethic realism” is the most capable of giving scientific robustness to the common sense with which we mean “true”, by implementing the Tarsky’s diagram T in the following fashion: “a proposition is true is things are like it says”. In his extensive and circumstantial exposition of this theory, F. D’Agostini shows it is the most capable of escaping from the Aristotelian rebuttal (elencos) and epistemic theory and anti-realism as well.

Epistemic theory (verificationist), implies the dependency of reality on the possibility to know it, “truth for us” (Quine): Dummett argues that while the idea of a reality independent from language and from knowledge focuses on what is true, epistemic theory concerns what “is said to be true” and therefore defines the “theory of comprehension of the significance” instead of the theory of truth (ib., p. 121).

Alethic realism doesn’t imply metaphysic realism, because it doesn’t say how the world is made, but assumes the way things are as term of verification of the cognitive entities we use in the experience of discussion. Whether the world is made of things independent from our cognitive experience (metaphysical realism) or a totality of perceptions, is a different matter that doesn’t influence the meaning of “true”. Alethic realism comprises metaphysical realism (reduction of mental reality into a physical reality) and epistemic theory (or idealism, reduction of physical reality into mental reality, ib., p. 123), in the sense that it doesn’t say whether mind is dependent on reality and the world is dependent on language or not. In this case the expression “things are this way” should be considered.

Alethic realism, in synthesis, says that reality may be thought of only in terms of truth, and therefore it is not true what is real but what is true is real.

A very important issue on these acquisitions is that even outside the field of value and valuations, “truth”, as presented in the T diagram, is a transversal function in between language (“p”) and world (p). In this sense, this is one of the most brilliant parts of F. D’Agostini’s treatise for the purpose of understanding something on the true value.

It is often argued that the estimation discipline is transversal as the value judgment is attributed to properties and projects dealing with different realms of experience where the economic value arises. Environment, territory and landscape are parts of reality whose knowledge is distributed between different disciplines that, in a certain sense, converge (from our point of view) in the property of value or in the capability of being worth, as the value function is characterized by many variables. But the teaching that comes out of the reflections on truth is different and, “2008” (De Monticelli 2008). The estimation discipline is transversal as the evaluation functions, in the two estimation and axiological articulations, coordinate different layers of being worth as experience and norm: in the estimation predication, the way things are and the attributes of value; in the axiological predication, the sense of the way things are in consideration of how it would be better they were. The value judgment as a whole coordinates language, world and determination. This issue complicates further the discussion on truth and true value, and refers to the kinds of statements participating in this double predication.

6 Evaluative Statements: A Science of “Paranormal”?

For the present purposes it may be useful the definition of statement as “real segment of the discourse produced by the subject that makes the statement itself in a definite communicative situation: the subject that makes the statement differs from the locutor in assuming responsibility for the statement (Beccaria 2004, pp 281–3). The statement constitutes the minimum unity of the discourse (in this case, the value judgment), of which it is a segment delimited by a unitary communicative intention. Responsibility and intention form the base of the semantic value of the statement, the sense, that exceeds the semantic value of the simple sentence, the meaning (Simone 2005).

The statements constituting the value judgment are mainly of three types: descriptive, evaluative, normative, and they utilize a connective fabric of subordinate statements: hypothetical, doubtful and negative. The assertive strength of the meta-statement that affirms the true value is not in the sentences in themselves, but in the organization, coalescence and compliance (concinnitas) of their meanings, therefore of their overall “communicative conformity” (Beccaria 2004, ib.).

The descriptive statements are explicit and they are part of the estimation predication; the normative statements address the general premises of evaluation and are implicit if accepted and practiced, while they are made explicit whenever the evaluation intends to emend or subvert these premises: in between, the evaluative statements connect the two layers, and are preferably reinforced by a procedural redundancy that increases their robustness.

One of the critical issues on the truth of value and the evaluations is the fact that the above mentioned three types of statements escape, each its own way, from the classical logic based on the law of non contradiction and on the law of the third excluded, involving the well known “paracomplete” (A. “subdetermined” situations) and “paraconsistent” (B. overdetermined situations) logics, and deal with the problem of the violation of these two laws, emerging in the borderline cases of the paradoxes (D’Agostini, ib.).

  1. (A)

    The solution admitting the violation of the law of the third excluded—not true and not false—is called “truth-value gap”. This happens in case of:

    • Epistemic gaps: the procedure is effective but we don’t have enough evidences;

    • Category errors: i.e. assuming, in imperfect markets, the approach based on the most probable price “violating the logical syntax of the language” (ib. p. 203) of the money-goods (Rizzo 1978);

    • Failed presuppositions: i.e. procedures like the residual value and the income approach ones, with many variables on which the result is highly dependent;

    • Assertive failures: observation without interpretation (meaning without sense) typical of the statistic models;

    • Contingent futures: foresee the actual value instead of attributing the real one;

    • Normative statements: they are declaratory statements concerning how the world should be made, and that define the ultimate end of the evaluation; they refer to conflicts on the common good; they impose a choice based on value connected with the facts of the world we know, and referring to which we imagine a better world (D’Agostini, ib., p. 322–24). Referring to the three values (§ 2) we observe that the disagreement between different points of view (purchasers and sellers) is not justified (ib., p. 331), and as a consequence the value judgment enacts the cognitive functions by means of which, on the grounds of the facts, the contrasting positions are justified and are finalized to the decisions to make according to reason and truth. For all these cases we may also talk of knowledge gaps (weak paraconsistency, ib., pp. 209 and 225) instead of truth, and therefore not of lack of a true value, but of difficulty of attribution.

  2. (B)

    The solution admitting the violation of the law of non contradiction—“it is both true and false”—is called “truth-value glut” or “dialeteism”. The case of the three values (§ 2) may also be interpreted in the sense of the admissibility of not consistent values; this “blows up” (“ex contradictione quodlibet” ib., p. 218) the estimation logic, that loses its relation to the true value: every evaluation is true (trivialism). As a consequence, the problem of a paraconsistent estimation logic is considering this overlapping saving the possibility to assert the true value. This is possible by admitting that some double truths may be acknowledged, but they concern knowledge and experience, not reality: it is a case of “evidences of not effective contradictions” (ib., p. 225); this type of contradiction concerns the stratification of the axiological layers (a good has an high market value despite it is affected by structural risks that the market doesn’t see) and therefore between values and evaluations. The evaluations, in particular, are expressions confirmed by acknowledgments and evidences and therefore strongly oriented in epistemic sense (“true for us”) instead of realistic sense (“things are this way”); the premise of epistemic theory is that the function of knowledge is to construct reality and select its part we can represent and then use; we experiment and accept that many phenomena cannot be explained because our conceptual structures are not up to this task, even more so when we have to deal with social facts. But not always not having evidences on the content of a proposition implies that the not verifiable proposition is false.

If the economic goods exist as representations in terms of properties or attributes, they are affected by the vagueness of the predicates expressing these properties, and as a consequence the economic behaviors on which we can infer preference functions will be influenced by it too. In particular, the Fuzzy logic attributes a graduated true value, supposing that a statement is partially true and partially false, and the two parts are complementary. The last fifteen years the estimation discipline has been practicing this approach as well, and in particular dealing with the segmentation of the urban real estate markets (Fuzzy cluster analysis), helping identify cases of sub-determination (gap: non belonging to any submarket) or over-determination (overlap: belonging to several submarkets) of the elements of the sample. The vague logic has the function to unveil the pretensions of absolute truth of the categorical predicates, and supports the non dogmatic discussion in favor of decisions.

The fuzzy logic implements, and in many cases replaces, the traditional inductive probabilistic estimation approach: “being the premises probable, so are the results” (ib., p. 248); the results depend on the articulation and completeness of the premises, and the probability calculation measures the value of truth of a statement of inductive type that is assumed as true if this measure is higher than the “epistemic standard” (preset acceptability threshold). But if from the logic point of view the value of truth in both approaches (fuzzy and probabilistic) is provided as a percentage, and the value of falsity is given by its complement, in factual sense the Fuzzy logic focuses on the phrases that may be vague (young and old), while the probabilistic logic focuses on the events (winner or loser).

7 Conclusions. Discussion-Based Truth for a “Paranormal” Reality

The axiological rationality inspired by true value connects the epistemic layer of the evidences with the ontological one of reality and the logic one of the interferences. The contradictory situations—the case in which similar goods are attributed different actual values (not compliant situation in correspondentist sense) or different appraisers estimate different values of the same good (non compliant situation in coherentist sense)—must be solved: the estimation practice choses the shortcut of eliminating the “inconvenient reality”, that means the cases that obstruct the model: what is out of the relation characteristics/price is out of the logic of the market and the estimation discipline; the true in factual sense is not necessarily true in estimation sense.

But why exclude that what is not true from the point of view of the market and the evaluations might be true from the point of view of values? The space of values inside which the evaluations are justified and verified is a space of discussion where free thought and collective intelligence (Labinaz 2013) generate decisions (about method as well) leading to settle the logic contradictions and to deal with the inaccessibility of reality: evaluations exceed observations as choices exceed evaluations; decision (responsibility) is immanent in evaluation (interpretation) that is immanent itself in observation (information).

The orientation of this research and its developments is just this: the perspective of values overrules the practice of the evaluations: the theory of truth contains the scientific foundation of the above mentioned issue.

The encountering of the epistemic and logic difficulties in the description, interpretation and assertion of value, fosters the enactment of tools referring to the truth as primary constitutive term of reality.

The conclusion of these reflections follows the solution proposed by D’Agostini and here embraced in the broadened perspective of the “truth of value”.

Value, like truth, is an undeniable concept and an indispensable reference for action; it is a transversal entity that—like truth, that connects language with the world—is one of the properties of the objects (the representation of the world) and the decisions on them (the construction of a better world); it defines a particular space of experience, the one inside which it is possible to compare behaviors, actions, decisions. In this sense, the true value—the true evaluation of true values—cannot be reduced to the response to a well formulated question, but includes instead the very method to formulate it. In this sense the axiological predication exceeds the estimation predication, like the end exceeds the means.

The complexity of contemporary societies concerning needs, perspectives, possibilities, and therefore options (with the related extension of the entity and the types of “existential cost-opportunities”), makes evaluation an omnipresent practice requiring an authentic axiology (system of values in sociology, theory of values in economy) and adequate tools. The fundamental elements of this axiology are just the super-concepts or transcendental (good, true, right, being) that, like “skeptical tools”, enact free thought and contribute to build, restructure, demolish and rebuild the institutions accountable to affirm, defend and specify them.

Truth operates disregarding the rigidities of logic, the nihilistic closures, the mistrust of the neo-sophistic skepticism (De Monticelli 2010): “if many truths exist, truth doesn’t exist, and reality itself is inaccessible and deceptive”.

The strategies of a truth of value are characterized by two main issues: the first concerns facts: they are not limited to the physical world, but also comprise the “speech acts” connecting this world to language, and enrich the ontology of the objects we valuate; the second concerns the enlargement of ontology itself: “being may be predicated in several ways”: there are not many truths, but many an ontology each assuming one and only one truth on value: one and only one evaluation.

The consequence of this second issue concerns the multidimensional extension of the approach to the evaluations, meeting the different types of ontology and the different methods of predicating the being, and that establishes the “multi-ontological evaluation”.