A human’s values—not the human’s estimate of their own values, not their revealed or stated preferences, but their actual values, the thing which their estimates-of-their-own-values are an estimate of—are “a thing” to exactly the extent that a whole bunch of the reward signals to that human’s brain can be compactly represented as generated by some consistent valuation.
Here it seems you mean
estimates of my values := what I believe I want
my values := what I really want (in some intuitive sense) or
my values := what’s in my best interest or
my values := what I would have wanted if I knew the consequences of my wishes being fulfilled
That’s roughly the right direction. Really, clarifying what we mean by “values” is exactly what this post is intended to do. The answer implied by the post is: we seem to have these things we call “beliefs about values” or “estimates of values”; we’re justified in calling them “beliefs” or “estimates” because they behave cognitively much like other “beliefs” or “estimates”. But then there’s a question of what the heck the beliefs are about, or what the estimates are estimates of. And we answer that question via definition: we define values as the things that “beliefs about values” are beliefs about, or the things that “estimates of values” are estimates of.
It’s kind of a backwards/twisty definition, but it does open the door to nontrivial questions and claims like “In what sense do these ‘values’ actually exist?”, and as the post shows we can give nontrivial answers to those questions.
This seems then closely related to the much more general question of what makes counterfactual statements true or false. Like ones of the type mentioned in the last bullet point above. For descriptive statements, the actual world decides what is true, but counterfactuals talk only about a hypothetical world that is different from the real world. In this case, the difference is that I know (in the hypothetical world) all the consequences of what I want. Of course such hypothetical worlds don’t “exist” like the real world, so it is hard to see how there can be a fact of the matter about what I would have wanted if the hypothetical world had been the actual one. The answer might be similar to what you are saying here about fictional objects.
Can you clarify what you mean with “values”?
Here it seems you mean
estimates of my values := what I believe I want
my values := what I really want (in some intuitive sense) or
my values := what’s in my best interest or
my values := what I would have wanted if I knew the consequences of my wishes being fulfilled
Does this go in the right direction?
That’s roughly the right direction. Really, clarifying what we mean by “values” is exactly what this post is intended to do. The answer implied by the post is: we seem to have these things we call “beliefs about values” or “estimates of values”; we’re justified in calling them “beliefs” or “estimates” because they behave cognitively much like other “beliefs” or “estimates”. But then there’s a question of what the heck the beliefs are about, or what the estimates are estimates of. And we answer that question via definition: we define values as the things that “beliefs about values” are beliefs about, or the things that “estimates of values” are estimates of.
It’s kind of a backwards/twisty definition, but it does open the door to nontrivial questions and claims like “In what sense do these ‘values’ actually exist?”, and as the post shows we can give nontrivial answers to those questions.
This seems then closely related to the much more general question of what makes counterfactual statements true or false. Like ones of the type mentioned in the last bullet point above. For descriptive statements, the actual world decides what is true, but counterfactuals talk only about a hypothetical world that is different from the real world. In this case, the difference is that I know (in the hypothetical world) all the consequences of what I want. Of course such hypothetical worlds don’t “exist” like the real world, so it is hard to see how there can be a fact of the matter about what I would have wanted if the hypothetical world had been the actual one. The answer might be similar to what you are saying here about fictional objects.