Full Idea
Early and central in the development of the brain are the dimensions provided by value systems indicating salience for the entire organism.
Clarification
'Salience' is significance
Gist of Idea
Systems that generate a sense of value are basic to the primitive brain
Source
G Edelman / G Tononi (Consciousness: matter becomes imagination [2000], Ch.13)
Book Reference
Edelman,G/Tononi,G: 'Consciousness: how matter becomes imagination' [Penguin 2000], p.174
A Reaction
This doesn't quite meet Hume's challenge to find values in the whole of nature, but it matches Charles Taylor's claim that for humans values are knowable a priori. Conditional values can be facts of the whole of nature. "If there is life, x has value..".