Of course, you could argue that neither of us really cared about loaning at interest; what we really cared about was a higher-level goal like a healthy economy. It would be convenient if we could establish a restate our values in a well-organized hierarchy, with a node at the top that was invariant on available information.

That's closer to the sense I wanted to convey with this word.

But even if that could be done, which I doubt, it would still leave a role for available information in deciding something as concrete as a preferred future-configuration.

Distinction is between a formal criterion of preference and computationally feasible algorithms for estimation of preference between specific plans. The concept relevant for this discussion is the former one.