Ontology, decision-making, and values, or several "philosophical" reminiscences

The paper continues a series of the author’s publications on relationships between philosophy and Weltanschauung. Its subject is the mechanisms of interaction between ontological attitudes and values in decision-making. It is assumed that philosophy has always, one way or another, strived for their comprehension, and it was the increasing cultural significance of these efforts that contributed to the separation of ontology from the general metaphysical field. The article begins with an analysis of the concept of existence and an explication of the evolutionary premises of situations where the need for decision-making arises. The author refers to the concept of a self-organizing system, the role of information blocks and the place of selection and choice in its reproduction. Selection is based on predetermined criteria, while choice, with its greater or lesser certainty of the options, on the contrary, implies variability of the agent’s aspirations. In the main part of the article, the author introduces the idea of a decision scheme as a model that combines the dynamic and spatial aspects of this phenomenon; relations between being, possibility, and goals are explored. Special attention is given to the importance of spiritual values for the formation of goals and to the cognitive similarity between ontology and the picture of the world as a component of the worldview. Since values exist, the restructuring of metaphysics demanded clarification of the functions of values in decisions. The last section, based on the controversy of Locke and Leibniz over justice, shows that the law of sufficient reason was an epistemic prerequisite for the formation of axiology as a special area of philosophizing. All the material considered makes it possible to present the relationship between the picture of the world and values as the basis of the goal-setting.