Idea: Value is a combination of pushing and pulling.
“Significant” and “important” mean opposite things, and yet mean the same thing.
Something is significant if it’s like a sign. And signs point you away from themselves. They refer to other things. They have “meanings” and “implications.” A thing is significant because of its consequences and ramifications.
In contrast, something is important if it . . . imports. I guess. To import is to bring in, not point away. Important things are in your face, demanding attention for themselves.
Value combines both the pulling of significance and the pushing of importance. How?
I think the form/content (or structure/material) distinction helps here. The pulling aspect of value is structural. It is a relationship between presence and absence. A sign points to something absent by being itself present. Significance is the form of value.
Importance provides value’s content. Something valuable gives, presents, or imports value to you. It is filled with worth, goodness, or whatever, and offers that “content” to you.
(I also think beauty has the same significance/importance structure as value, but that’s another issue.)
Do you think that importance/significance would have the push/pull quality even without such implications given by the English words importance and significance? Another way to ask the question would be to say if some other word(s) that had no further meanings do you think that you would still have thought that the importance/significance concept had a push/pull aspect about it?
Good one! Yeah, I think the push/pull thing would still be there. When you encounter something valuable, you tend to encounter a push, a pull, or both. Things that are “useful for” other things pull us along and motivate us to act. (That’s “extrensic value”.) Things that are good in themselves push/provide/give value just by being what they are. (That’s “intrinsic value”.) And many things do both. They are both good in themselves and good for something else. I think that’s the “fullest” type of value.