Claim. The potential value latent in an object consists of two things: the object’s purpose of creation, and the internal harmony of its paired elements (Sungsang/Hyungsang, yang/yin, principal/subordinate) achieved through comparison-type give-and-receive action.
Elaboration. Having distinguished potential value (essence) from actual value (appraised in relationship), Lee specifies what potential value consists of (Potential value). Every created being — and every human-made artifact — has a purpose for which it was created. A flower’s purpose is to give joy through its beauty; an artwork or commodity has the purpose its creator built in.
The second component is internal harmony. Because every individual truth being contains correlative subject-element and object-element pairs, the give-and-take action within the being (the comparison type, as opposed to the developmental type that produces new beings) generates harmony. When paired elements are harmonized centering on the purpose of creation, potential value exists.
This is an elegant unification of axiology with UT’s ontology. The same dual-characteristic structure that explains being now explains value. A thing has more value when (a) it more clearly manifests its purpose and (b) its internal correlatives are more harmonized around that purpose. A discordant artwork, a malformed organism, or a tool that does not serve its purpose lacks potential value, regardless of whether any subject is present to appraise it.
This grounds value-claims objectively without collapsing into objectivism. The object really does have a quality independent of the perceiver — Lee is not a value-relativist. But that quality is constituted by purpose and harmony (relational structures), not by some Platonic value-property floating in the object. And it only becomes actual value when a subject’s appraisal completes the give-and-take.
A consequence Lee leaves implicit: an object whose paired elements are disharmonized relative to its purpose has disvalue, not merely absence of value. This is the structural basis for calling something ugly, false, or evil — it is purpose-violation, not mere purpose-absence.
See also. value-defined-by-subject-desire-satisfaction, actual-value-requires-subject-and-object-requisites, beauty-determined-by-give-and-take-not-objectively-existent