This study proposes a geometric model of human values by representing value systems as state vectors in a shared high-dimensional value space.
Traditional discussions of “value change,” “value update,” and “new values” often implicitly assume the emergence of novel value structures or modifications of the value system itself. In contrast, this study argues that most such phenomena can be consistently explained without assuming changes in the underlying value space.
Instead, they are unified into three types of transformations:
Positional shifts of individual value vectors
Distributional shifts within populations
Semantic labeling of previously unlabelled regions within the same space
Based on this framework, individual differences, cultural variation, temporal change, and perceived “new values” are all described within a single state-space model.
The purpose of this study is not to provide a normative theory of values, but to propose a structural and descriptive framework for their representation and dynamics.