Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value

First published Tue Oct 22, 2002; substantive revision Wed Jan 9, 2019

Intrinsic value has traditionally been thought to lie at the heart of

ethics.
Philosophers use a number of terms to refer to such value. The
intrinsic
value of something is said to be the value that that thing
has “in itself,” or
“for its own sake,” or
“as such,” or “in its own right.” Extrinsic
value is
value that is not intrinsic.

Many philosophers take intrinsic value to be crucial to a variety of

moral
judgments. For example, according to a fundamental form of
consequentialism, whether an action is morally right or wrong
has
exclusively to do with whether its consequences are intrinsically
better than those of any other action one can
perform under the
circumstances. Many other theories also hold that what it is right or
wrong to do has at least in
part to do with the intrinsic value of the
consequences of the actions one can perform. Moreover, if, as is
commonly believed, what one is morally responsible for doing
is some function of the rightness or wrongness of
what one does, then
intrinsic value would seem relevant to judgments about responsibility,
too. Intrinsic value is
also often taken to be pertinent to judgments
about moral justice (whether having to do with moral rights
or
moral desert), insofar as it is good that justice is done and bad
that justice is denied, in ways that appear
intimately tied to
intrinsic value. Finally, it is typically thought that judgments about
moral virtue and vice also
turn on questions of intrinsic
value, inasmuch as virtues are good, and vices bad, again in ways that
appear
closely connected to such value.

All four types of moral judgments have been the subject of discussion
since the dawn of western philosophy in
ancient Greece. The Greeks
themselves were especially concerned with questions about virtue and
vice, and the
concept of intrinsic value may be found at work in their
writings and in the writings of moral philosophers ever
since. Despite
this fact, and rather surprisingly, it is only within the last one
hundred years or so that this concept
has itself been the subject of
sustained scrutiny, and even within this relatively brief period the
scrutiny has
waxed and waned.

1. What Has Intrinsic Value?

2. What Is Intrinsic Value?
3. Is There Such a Thing As Intrinsic Value At All?
4. What Sort of Thing Can Have Intrinsic Value?
5. How Is Intrinsic Value to Be Computed?
6. What Is Extrinsic Value?
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1. What Has Intrinsic Value?

The question “What is intrinsic value?” is more
fundamental than the question “What has intrinsic value?,”
but
historically these have been treated in reverse order. For a long
time, philosophers appear to have thought that
the notion of intrinsic
value is itself sufficiently clear to allow them to go straight to the
question of what should
be said to have intrinsic value. Not even a
potted history of what has been said on this matter can be attempted
here, since the record is so rich. Rather, a few representative
illustrations must suffice.

In his dialogue Protagoras, Plato [428–347 B.C.E.]

maintains (through the character of Socrates, modeled after
the real
Socrates [470–399 B.C.E.], who was Plato’s teacher) that,
when people condemn pleasure, they do so,
not because they take
pleasure to be bad as such, but because of the bad consequences they
find pleasure often to
have. For example, at one point Socrates says
that the only reason why the pleasures of food and drink and sex
seem
to be evil is that they result in pain and deprive us of future
pleasures (Plato, Protagoras, 353e). He
concludes that
pleasure is in fact good as such and pain bad, regardless of what
their consequences may on
occasion be. In the Timaeus, Plato
seems quite pessimistic about these consequences, for he has Timaeus
declare
pleasure to be “the greatest incitement to evil”
and pain to be something that “deters from good” (Plato,
Timaeus, 69d). Plato does not think of pleasure as the
“highest” good, however. In the Republic,
Socrates states
that there can be no “communion” between
“extravagant” pleasure and virtue (Plato,
Republic, 402e) and in the
Philebus, where Philebus
argues that pleasure is the highest good, Socrates argues against
this, claiming that
pleasure is better when accompanied by
intelligence (Plato, Philebus, 60e).

Many philosophers have followed Plato’s lead in declaring

pleasure intrinsically good and pain intrinsically bad.
Aristotle
[384–322 B.C.E.], for example, himself a student of
Plato’s, says at one point that all are agreed that
pain is bad
and to be avoided, either because it is bad “without
qualification” or because it is in some way an
“impediment” to us; he adds that pleasure, being the
“contrary” of that which is to be avoided, is therefore
necessarily a good (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1153b).
Over the course of the more than two thousand years
since this was
written, this view has been frequently endorsed. Like Plato, Aristotle
does not take pleasure and
pain to be the only things that are
intrinsically good and bad, although some have maintained that this is
indeed
the case. This more restrictive view, often called hedonism,
has had proponents since the time of Epicurus [341–
271
B.C.E.].[1]
Perhaps the most thorough renditions of it are to be found in the
works of Jeremy Bentham
[1748–1832] and Henry Sidgwick
[1838–1900] (see Bentham 1789, Sidgwick 1907); perhaps its most
famous
proponent is John Stuart Mill [1806–1873] (see Mill
1863).

Most philosophers who have written on the question of what has

intrinsic value have not been hedonists; like
Plato and Aristotle,
they have thought that something besides pleasure and pain has
intrinsic value. One of the
most comprehensive lists of intrinsic
goods that anyone has suggested is that given by William Frankena
(Frankena 1973, pp. 87–88): life, consciousness, and activity;
health and strength; pleasures and satisfactions of
all or certain
kinds; happiness, beatitude, contentment, etc.; truth; knowledge and
true opinions of various kinds,
understanding, wisdom; beauty,
harmony, proportion in objects contemplated; aesthetic experience;
morally
good dispositions or virtues; mutual affection, love,
friendship, cooperation; just distribution of goods and evils;
harmony
and proportion in one’s own life; power and experiences of
achievement; self-expression; freedom;
peace, security; adventure and
novelty; and good reputation, honor, esteem, etc. (Presumably a
corresponding
list of intrinsic evils could be provided.) Almost any
philosopher who has ever addressed the question of what
has intrinsic
value will find his or her answer represented in some way by one or
more items on Frankena’s list.
(Frankena himself notes that he
does not explicitly include in his list the communion with and love
and
knowledge of God that certain philosophers believe to be the
highest good, since he takes them to fall under the
headings of
“knowledge” and “love.”) One conspicuous
omission from the list, however, is the increasingly
popular view that
certain environmental entities or qualities have intrinsic value
(although Frankena may again
assert that these are implicitly
represented by one or more items already on the list). Some find
intrinsic value,
for example, in certain “natural”
environments (wildernesses untouched by human hand); some find it in
certain
animal species; and so on.

Suppose that you were confronted with some proposed list of intrinsic
goods. It would be natural to ask how you
might assess the accuracy of
the list. How can you tell whether something has intrinsic value or
not? On one
level, this is an epistemological question about which
this article will not be concerned. (See the entry in this
encyclopedia on moral epistemology.) On another level, however, this
is a conceptual question, for we cannot be
sure that something has
intrinsic value unless we understand what it is for something to have
intrinsic value.
2. What Is Intrinsic Value?
The concept of intrinsic value has been characterized above in terms
of the value that something has “in itself,”
or “for
its own sake,” or “as such,” or “in its own
right.” The custom has been not to distinguish between the
meanings of these terms, but we will see that there is reason to think
that there may in fact be more than one
concept at issue here. For the
moment, though, let us ignore this complication and focus on what it
means to say
that something is valuable for its own sake as
opposed to being valuable for the sake of something else to
which
it is related in some way. Perhaps it is easiest to grasp this
distinction by way of illustration.

Suppose that someone were to ask you whether it is good to help others
in time of need. Unless you suspected
some sort of trick, you would
answer, “Yes, of course.” If this person were to go on to
ask you why acting in this
way is good, you might say that it is good
to help others in time of need simply because it is good that their
needs be satisfied. If you were then asked why it is good that
people’s needs be satisfied, you might be puzzled.
You might be
inclined to say, “It just is.” Or you might accept the
legitimacy of the question and say that it is
good that people’s
needs be satisfied because this brings them pleasure. But then, of
course, your interlocutor
could ask once again, “What’s
good about that?” Perhaps at this point you would answer,
“It just is good that
people be pleased,” and thus put an
end to this line of questioning. Or perhaps you would again seek to
explain
the fact that it is good that people be pleased in terms of
something else that you take to be good. At some point,
though, you
would have to put an end to the questions, not because you would have
grown tired of them (though
that is a distinct possibility), but
because you would be forced to recognize that, if one thing derives
its goodness
from some other thing, which derives its goodness from
yet a third thing, and so on, there must come a point at
which you
reach something whose goodness is not derivative in this way,
something that “just is” good in its
own right, something
whose goodness is the source of, and thus explains, the goodness to be
found in all the
other things that precede it on the list. It is at
this point that you will have arrived at intrinsic goodness (cf.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1094a). That which is
intrinsically good is nonderivatively good; it is good for
its
own sake. That which is not intrinsically good but
extrinsically good is derivatively good; it is good, not
(insofar as
its extrinsic value is concerned) for its own sake, but for the sake
of something else that is good and
to which it is related in some way.
Intrinsic value thus has a certain priority over extrinsic value. The
latter is
derivative from or reflective of the former and is to be
explained in terms of the former. It is for this reason that
philosophers have tended to focus on intrinsic value in
particular.

The account just given of the distinction between intrinsic and

extrinsic value is rough, but it should do as a
start. Certain
complications must be immediately acknowledged, though. First, there
is the possibility,
mentioned above, that the terms traditionally used
to refer to intrinsic value in fact refer to more than one
concept;
again, this will be addressed later (in this section and the next).
Another complication is that it may not
in fact be accurate to say
that whatever is intrinsically good is nonderivatively good; some
intrinsic value may be
derivative. This issue will be taken up (in
Section 5) when the computation of intrinsic value is discussed; it
may
be safely ignored for now. Still another complication is this. It
is almost universally acknowledged among
philosophers that all value
is “supervenient” or “grounded in” on certain
nonevaluative features of the thing that
has value. Roughly, what this
means is that, if something has value, it will have this value in
virtue of certain
nonevaluative features that it has; its value can be
attributed to these features. For example, the value of helping
others in time of need might be attributed to the fact that such
behavior has the feature of being causally related
to certain pleasant
experiences induced in those who receive the help. Suppose we accept
this and accept also
that the experiences in question are
intrinsically good. In saying this, we are (barring the complication
to be
discussed in Section 5) taking the value of the experiences to
be nonderivative. Nonetheless, we may well take
this value, like all
value, to be supervenient on, or grounded in, something. In this case,
we would probably
simply attribute the value of the experiences to
their having the feature of being pleasant. This brings out the
subtle
but important point that the question whether some value is derivative
is distinct from the question
whether it is supervenient. Even
nonderivative value (value that something has in its own right; value
that is, in
some way, not attributable to the value of
anything else) is usually understood to be supervenient on certain
nonevaluative features of the thing that has value (and thus to be
attributable, in a different way, to these
features).
To repeat: whatever is intrinsically good is (barring the complication
to be discussed in Section 5)
nonderivatively good. It would be a
mistake, however, to affirm the converse of this and say that whatever
is
nonderivatively good is intrinsically good. As “intrinsic
value” is traditionally understood, it refers to a
particular way of being nonderivatively good; there are other
ways in which something might be
nonderivatively good. For example,
suppose that your interlocutor were to ask you whether it is good to
eat and
drink in moderation and to exercise regularly. Again, you
would say, “Yes, of course.” If asked why, you would
say
that this is because such behavior promotes health. If asked what is
good about being healthy, you might cite
something else whose goodness
would explain the value of health, or you might simply say,
“Being healthy just
is a good way to be.” If the latter
were your response, you would be indicating that you took health to be
nonderivatively good in some way. In what way, though? Well, perhaps
you would be thinking of health as
intrinsically good. But perhaps
not. Suppose that what you meant was that being healthy just is
“good for” the
person who is healthy (in the sense that it
is in each person’s interest to be healthy), so that
John’s being healthy
is good for John, Jane’s being
healthy is good for Jane, and so on. You would thereby be attributing
a type of
nonderivative interest-value to John’s being healthy,
and yet it would be perfectly consistent for you to deny that
John’s being healthy is intrinsically good. If John
were a villain, you might well deny this. Indeed, you might
want to
insist that, in light of his villainy, his being healthy is
intrinsically bad, even though you recognize that
his being
healthy is good for him. If you did say this, you would be
indicating that you subscribe to the common
view that intrinsic value
is nonderivative value of some peculiarly moral
sort.[2]

Let us now see whether this still rough account of intrinsic value can
be made more precise. One of the first
writers to concern himself with
the question of what exactly is at issue when we ascribe intrinsic
value to
something was G. E. Moore [1873–1958]. In his book
Principia Ethica, Moore asks whether the concept of
intrinsic
value (or, more particularly, the concept of intrinsic goodness, upon
which he tended to focus) is
analyzable. In raising this question, he
has a particular type of analysis in mind, one which consists in
“breaking
down” a concept into simpler component concepts.
(One example of an analysis of this sort is the analysis of the
concept of being a vixen in terms of the concepts of being a fox and
being female.) His own answer to the
question is that the concept of
intrinsic goodness is not amenable to such analysis (Moore
1903, ch. 1). In place
of analysis, Moore proposes a certain kind of
thought-experiment in order both to come to understand the
concept
better and to reach a decision about what is intrinsically good. He
advises us to consider what things are
such that, if they existed by
themselves “in absolute isolation,” we would judge their
existence to be good; in
this way, we will be better able to see what
really accounts for the value that there is in our world. For example,
if such a thought-experiment led you to conclude that all and only
pleasure would be good in isolation, and all
and only pain bad, you
would be a
hedonist.[3]
Moore himself deems it incredible that anyone, thinking clearly,
would reach this conclusion. He says that it involves our saying that
a world in which only pleasure existed—a
world without any
knowledge, love, enjoyment of beauty, or moral qualities—is
better than a world that
contained all these things but in which there
existed slightly less pleasure (Moore 1912, p. 102). Such a view he
finds absurd.

Regardless of the merits of this isolation test, it remains unclear

exactly why Moore finds the concept of intrinsic
goodness to be
unanalyzable. At one point he attacks the view that it can be analyzed
wholly in terms of
“natural” concepts—the view, that
is, that we can break down the concept of being intrinsically good
into the
simpler concepts of being A, being B, being
C…, where these component concepts are all purely
descriptive
rather than evaluative. (One candidate that Moore
discusses is this: for something to be intrinsically good is for it
to
be something that we desire to desire.) He argues that any such
analysis is to be rejected, since it will always
be intelligible to
ask whether (and, presumably, to deny that) it is good that something
be A, B, C,…, which
would not be the
case if the analysis were accurate (Moore 1903, pp. 15–16). Even
if this argument is successful
(a complicated matter about which there
is considerable disagreement), it of course does not establish the
more
general claim that the concept of intrinsic goodness is not
analyzable at all, since it leaves open the possibility
that this
concept is analyzable in terms of other concepts, some or all of which
are not “natural” but evaluative.
Moore apparently thinks
that his objection works just as well where one or more of the
component concepts A,
B, C,…, is
evaluative; but, again, many dispute the cogency of his argument.
Indeed, several philosophers have
proposed analyses of just this sort.
For example, Roderick Chisholm [1916–1999] has argued that
Moore’s own
isolation test in fact provides the basis for an
analysis of the concept of intrinsic value. He formulates a view
according to which (to put matters roughly) to say that a state of
affairs is intrinsically good or bad is to say that
it is possible
that its goodness or badness constitutes all the goodness or badness
that there is in the world
(Chisholm 1978).

Eva Bodanszky and Earl Conee have attacked Chisholm’s proposal,

showing that it is, in its details,
unacceptable (Bodanszky and Conee
1981). However, the general idea that an intrinsically valuable state
is one
that could somehow account for all the value in the world is
suggestive and promising; if it could be adequately
formulated, it
would reveal an important feature of intrinsic value that would help
us better understand the
concept. We will return to this point in
Section 5. Rather than pursue such a line of thought, Chisholm himself
responded (Chisholm 1981) in a different way to Bodanszky and Conee.
He shifted from what may be called an
ontological version of
Moore’s isolation test—the attempt to understand the
intrinsic value of a state in terms of
the value that there would be
if it were the only valuable state in existence—to an
intentional version of that test
—the attempt to
understand the intrinsic value of a state in terms of the kind of
attitude it would be fitting to
have if one were to
contemplate the valuable state as such, without reference to
circumstances or consequences.

This new analysis in fact reflects a general idea that has a rich
history. Franz Brentano [1838–1917], C. D. Broad
[1887–1971], W. D. Ross [1877–1971], and A. C. Ewing
[1899–1973], among others, have claimed, in a more
or less
qualified way, that the concept of intrinsic goodness is analyzable in
terms of the fittingness of some
“pro” (i.e., positive)
attitude (Brentano 1969, p. 18; Broad 1930, p. 283; Ross 1939, pp.
275–76; Ewing 1948, p.
152). Such an analysis, which has come to
be called “the fitting attitude analysis” of value, is
supported by the
mundane observation that, instead of saying that
something is good, we often say that it is valuable, which
itself
just means that it is fitting to value the thing in question.
It would thus seem very natural to suppose that for
something to be
intrinsically good is simply for it to be such that it is fitting to
value it for its own sake.
(“Fitting” here is often
understood to signify a particular kind of moral fittingness, in
keeping with the idea that
intrinsic value is a particular kind of
moral value. The underlying point is that those who value for its own
sake
that which is intrinsically good thereby evince a kind of
moral sensitivity.)

Though undoubtedly attractive, this analysis can be and has been

challenged. Brand Blanshard [1892–1987], for
example, argues
that the analysis is to be rejected because, if we ask why
something is such that it is fitting to
value it for its own sake, the
answer is that this is the case precisely because the thing
in question is intrinsically
good; this answer indicates that the
concept of intrinsic goodness is more fundamental than that of the
fittingness
of some pro attitude, which is inconsistent with analyzing
the former in terms of the latter (Blanshard 1961, pp.
284–86).
Ewing and others have resisted Blanshard’s argument, maintaining
that what grounds and explains
something’s being valuable is not
its being good but rather its having whatever non-value property it is
upon
which its goodness supervenes; they claim that it is because of
this underlying property that the thing in question
is
“both” good and valuable (Ewing 1948, pp. 157 and 172. Cf.
Lemos 1994, p. 19). Thomas Scanlon calls such
an account of the
relation between valuableness, goodness, and underlying properties a
buck-passing account,
since it “passes the buck” of
explaining why something is such that it is fitting to value it from
its goodness to
some property that underlies its goodness (Scanlon
1998, pp. 95 ff.). Whether such an account is acceptable has
recently
been the subject of intense debate. Many, like Scanlon, endorse
passing the buck; some, like Blanshard,
object to doing so. If such an
account is acceptable, then Ewing’s analysis survives
Blanshard’s challenge; but
otherwise not. (Note that one might
endorse passing the buck and yet reject Ewing’s analysis for
some other
reason. Hence a buck-passer may, but need not, accept the
analysis. Indeed, there is reason to think that Moore
himself is a
buck-passer, even though he takes the concept of intrinsic goodness to
be unanalyzable; cf. Olson
2006).

Even if Blanshard’s argument succeeds and intrinsic goodness is

not to be analyzed in terms of the fittingness of
some pro
attitude, it could still be that there is a strict
correlation between something’s being intrinsically good
and its being such that it is fitting to value it for its own sake;
that is, it could still be both that (a) it is necessarily
true that
whatever is intrinsically good is such that it is fitting to value it
for its own sake, and that (b) it is
necessarily true that whatever it
is fitting to value for its own sake is intrinsically good. If this
were the case, it
would reveal an important feature of intrinsic
value, recognition of which would help us to improve our
understanding
of the concept. However, this thesis has also been challenged.

Krister Bykvist has argued that what he calls solitary goods may
constitute a counterexample to part (a) of the
thesis (Bykvist 2009,
pp. 4 ff.). Such (alleged) goods consist in states of affairs that
entail that there is no one in
a position to value them. Suppose, for
example, that happiness is intrinsically good, and good in such a way
that
it is fitting to welcome it. Then, more particularly, the state
of affairs of there being happy egrets is intrinsically
good; so too,
presumably, is the more complex state of affairs of there being happy
egrets but no welcomers. The
simpler state of affairs would appear to
pose no problem for part (a) of the thesis, but the more complex state
of
affairs, which is an example of a solitary good, may pose a
problem. For if to welcome a state of affairs entails
that that state
of affairs obtains, then welcoming the more complex state of affairs
is logically impossible.
Furthermore, if to welcome a state of affairs
entails that one believes that that state of affairs obtains, then the
pertinent belief regarding the more complex state of affairs would be
necessarily false. In neither case would it
seem plausible to say that
welcoming the state of affairs is nonetheless fitting. Thus, unless
this challenge can
somehow be met, a proponent of the thesis must
restrict the thesis to pro attitudes that are neither truth- nor
belief-entailing, a restriction that might itself prove unwelcome,
since it excludes a number of favorable
responses to what is good
(such as promoting what is good, or taking pleasure in what is good)
to which
proponents of the thesis have often appealed.

As to part (b) of the thesis: some philosophers have argued that it

can be fitting to value something for its own
sake even if that thing
is not intrinsically good. A relatively early version of this argument
was again provided
by Blanshard (1961, pp. 287 ff. Cf. Lemos 1994, p.
18). Recently the issue has been brought into stark relief by
the
following sort of thought-experiment. Imagine that an evil demon wants
you to value him for his own sake
and threatens to cause you severe
suffering unless you do. It seems that you have good reason to do what
he
wants—it is appropriate or fitting to comply with his demand
and value him for his own sake—even though he
is clearly not
intrinsically good (Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen 2004, pp.
402 ff.). This issue, which has
come to be known as “the wrong
kind of reason problem,” has attracted a great deal of
attention. Some have
been persuaded that the challenge succeeds, while
others have sought to undermine it.

One final cautionary note. It is apparent that some philosophers use

the term “intrinsic value” and similar terms
to express
some concept other than the one just discussed. In particular,
Immanuel Kant [1724–1804] is famous
for saying that the only
thing that is “good without qualification” is a good will,
which is good not because of
what it effects or accomplishes but
“in itself” (Kant 1785, Ak. 1–3). This may seem to
suggest that Kant ascribes
(positive) intrinsic value only to a good
will, declaring the value that anything else may possess merely
extrinsic,
in the senses of “intrinsic value” and
“extrinsic value” discussed above. This suggestion is, if
anything,
reinforced when Kant immediately adds that a good will
“is to be esteemed beyond comparison as far higher
than anything
it could ever bring about,” that it “shine[s] like a jewel
for its own sake,” and that its
“usefulness…can
neither add to, nor subtract from, [its] value.” For here Kant
may seem not only to be invoking
the distinction between intrinsic and
extrinsic value but also to be in agreement with Brentano et
al. regarding
the characterization of the former in terms of the
fittingness of some attitude, namely, esteem. (The term
“respect” is often used in place of “esteem”
in such contexts.) Nonetheless, it becomes clear on further
inspection
that Kant is in fact discussing a concept quite different from that
with which this article is concerned.
A little later on he says that
all rational beings, even those that lack a good will, have
“absolute value”; such
beings are “ends in
themselves” that have a “dignity” or
“intrinsic value” that is “above all price”
(Kant 1785,
Ak. 64 and 77). Such talk indicates that Kant believes
that the sort of value that he ascribes to rational beings is
one that
they possess to an infinite degree. But then, if this were understood
as a thesis about intrinsic value as
we have been understanding this
concept, the implication would seem to be that, since it contains
rational
beings, ours is the best of all possible
worlds.[4]
Yet this is a thesis that Kant, along with many others, explicitly
rejects elsewhere (Kant, Lectures in Ethics). It seems best
to understand Kant, and other philosophers who have
since written in
the same vein (cf. Anderson 1993), as being concerned not with the
question of what intrinsic
value rational beings have—in the
sense of “intrinsic value” discussed above—but with
the quite different
question of how we ought to behave toward such
creatures (cf. Bradley 2006).

3. Is There Such a Thing As Intrinsic Value At All?

In the history of philosophy, relatively few seem to have entertained
doubts about the concept of intrinsic value.
Much of the debate about
intrinsic value has tended to be about what things actually do have
such value.
However, once questions about the concept itself were
raised, doubts about its metaphysical implications, its
moral
significance, and even its very coherence began to appear.

Consider, first, the metaphysics underlying ascriptions of intrinsic

value. It seems safe to say that, before the
twentieth century, most
moral philosophers presupposed that the intrinsic goodness of
something is a genuine
property of that thing, one that is no less
real than the properties (of being pleasant, of satisfying a need, or
whatever) in virtue of which the thing in question is good. (Several
dissented from this view, however.
Especially well known for their
dissent are Thomas Hobbes [1588–1679], who believed the goodness
or badness
of something to be constituted by the desire or aversion
that one may have regarding it, and David Hume [1711–
1776], who
similarly took all ascriptions of value to involve projections of
one’s own sentiments onto whatever
is said to have value. See
Hobbes 1651, Hume 1739.) It was not until Moore argued that this view
implies that
intrinsic goodness, as a supervening property, is a very
different sort of property (one that he called
“nonnatural”) from those (which he called
“natural”) upon which it supervenes, that doubts about the
view
proliferated.

One of the first to raise such doubts and to press for a view quite
different from the prevailing view was Axel
Hägerström
[1868–1939], who developed an account according to which
ascriptions of value are neither true nor
false (Hägerström
1953). This view has come to be called “noncognitivism.”
The particular brand of
noncognitivism proposed by
Hägerström is usually called “emotivism,” since
it holds (in a manner reminiscent
of Hume) that ascriptions of value
are in essence expressions of emotion. (For example, an emotivist of a
particularly simple kind might claim that to say “A is
good” is not to make a statement about A but to say
something like “Hooray for A!”) This view was
taken up by several philosophers, including most notably A. J.
Ayer
[1910–1989] and Charles L. Stevenson [1908–1979] (see Ayer
1946, Stevenson 1944). Other philosophers
have since embraced other
forms of noncognitivism. R. M. Hare [1919–2002], for example,
advocated the
theory of “prescriptivism” (according to
which moral judgments, including judgments about goodness and
badness,
are not descriptive statements about the world but rather constitute a
kind of command as to how we
are to act; see Hare 1952) and Simon
Blackburn and Allan Gibbard have since proposed yet other versions of
noncognitivism (Blackburn 1984, Gibbard 1990).

Hägerström characterized his own view as a type of

“value-nihilism,” and many have followed suit in taking
noncognitivism of all kinds to constitute a rejection of the very idea
of intrinsic value. But this seems to be a
mistake. We should
distinguish questions about value from questions about
evaluation. Questions about value
fall into two main groups,
conceptual (of the sort discussed in the last section) and
substantive (of the sort
discussed in the first section).
Questions about evaluation have to do with what precisely is going on
when we
ascribe value to something. Cognitivists claim that
our ascriptions of value constitute statements that are either
true or
false; noncognitivists deny this. But even noncognitivists must
recognize that our ascriptions of value fall
into two fundamental
classes—ascriptions of intrinsic value and ascriptions of
extrinsic value—and so they too
must concern themselves with the
very same conceptual and substantive questions about value as
cognitivists
address. It may be that noncognitivism dictates or rules
out certain answers to these questions that cognitivism
does not, but
that is of course quite a different matter from rejecting the very
idea of intrinsic value on
metaphysical grounds.

Another type of metaphysical challenge to intrinsic value stems from

the theory of “pragmatism,” especially in
the form
advanced by John Dewey [1859–1952] (see Dewey 1922). According
to the pragmatist, the world is
constantly changing in such a way that
the solution to one problem becomes the source of another, what is an
end in one context is a means in another, and thus it is a mistake to
seek or offer a timeless list of intrinsic goods
and evils, of ends to
be achieved or avoided for their own sakes. This theme has been
elaborated by Monroe
Beardsley, who attacks the very notion of
intrinsic value (Beardsley 1965; cf. Conee 1982). Denying that the
existence of something with extrinsic value presupposes the existence
of something else with intrinsic value,
Beardsley argues that all
value is extrinsic. (In the course of his argument, Beardsley rejects
the sort of
“dialectical demonstration” of intrinsic value
that was attempted in the last section, when an explanation of the
derivative value of helping others was given in terms of some
nonderivative value.) A quick response to
Beardsley’s misgivings
about intrinsic value would be to admit that it may well be that, the
world being as
complex as it is, nothing is such that its value is
wholly intrinsic; perhaps whatever has intrinsic value also has
extrinsic value, and of course many things that have extrinsic value
will have no (or, at least, neutral) intrinsic
value. Far from
repudiating the notion of intrinsic value, though, this admission
would confirm its legitimacy.
But Beardsley would insist that this
quick response misses the point of his attack, and that it really is
the case,
not just that whatever has value has extrinsic value, but
also that nothing has intrinsic value. His argument for
this view is
based on the claim that the concept of intrinsic value is
“inapplicable,” in that, even if something had
such value,
we could not know this and hence its having such value could play no
role in our reasoning about
value. But here Beardsley seems to be
overreaching. Even if it were the case that we cannot know
whether
something has intrinsic value, this of course leaves open the
question whether anything does have such value.
And even if
it could somehow be shown that nothing does have such value,
this would still leave open the
question whether something
could have such value. If the answer to this last question is
“yes,” then the
legitimacy of the concept of intrinsic
value is in fact confirmed rather than refuted.

As has been noted, some philosophers do indeed doubt the legitimacy,

the very coherence, of the concept of
intrinsic value. Before we turn
to a discussion of this issue, however, let us for the moment presume
that the
concept is coherent and address a different sort of doubt:
the doubt that the concept has any great moral
significance. Recall
the suggestion, mentioned in the last section, that discussions of
intrinsic value may have
been compromised by a failure to distinguish
certain concepts. This suggestion is at the heart of Christine
Korsgaard’s “Two Distinctions in Goodness”
(Korsgaard 1983). Korsgaard notes that “intrinsic value”
has
traditionally been contrasted with “instrumental
value” (the value that something has in virtue of being a means
to an end) and claims that this approach is misleading. She contends
that “instrumental value” is to be contrasted
with
“final value,” that is, the value that something has as an
end or for its own sake; however, “intrinsic value”
(the
value that something has in itself, that is, in virtue of its
intrinsic, nonrelational properties) is to be
contrasted with
“extrinsic value” (the value that something has in virtue
of its extrinsic, relational properties).
(An example of a
nonrelational property is the property of being round; an example of a
relational property is the
property of being loved.) As an
illustration of final value, Korsgaard suggests that gorgeously
enameled frying
pans are, in virtue of the role they play in our
lives, good for their own sakes. In like fashion, Beardsley wonders
whether a rare stamp may be good for its own sake (Beardsley 1965);
Shelly Kagan says that the pen that
Abraham Lincoln used to sign the
Emancipation Proclamation may well be good for its own sake (Kagan
1998);
and others have offered similar examples (cf. Rabinowicz and
Rønnow-Rasmussen 1999 and 2003). Notice that
in each case the
value being attributed to the object in question is (allegedly) had in
virtue of some extrinsic
property of the object. This puts
the moral significance of intrinsic value into question,
since (as is apparent
from our discussion so far) it is with the
notion of something’s being valuable for its own sake that
philosophers
have traditionally been, and continue to be, primarily
concerned.

There is an important corollary to drawing a distinction between

intrinsic value and final value (and between
extrinsic value and
nonfinal value), and that is that, contrary to what Korsgaard herself
initially says, it may be a
mistake to contrast final value with
instrumental value. If it is possible, as Korsgaard claims, that final
value
sometimes supervenes on extrinsic properties, then it might be
possible that it sometimes supervenes in
particular on the property of
being a means to some other end. Indeed, Korsgaard herself suggests
this when she
says that “certain kinds of things, such as
luxurious instruments, … are valued for their own sakes under
the
condition of their usefulness” (Korsgaard 1983, p. 185).
Kagan also tentatively endorses this idea. If the idea is
coherent,
then we should in principle distinguish two kinds of instrumental
value, one final and the other
nonfinal.[5]
If something A is a means to something else B and
has instrumental value in virtue of this fact, such
value will be
nonfinal if it is merely derivative from or reflective of
B’s value, whereas it will be final if it is
nonderivative, that is, if it is a value that A has in its
own right (due to the fact that it is a means to B),
irrespective of any value that B may or may not have in
its own right.

Even if it is agreed that it is final value that is central to the

concerns of moral philosophers, we should be
careful in drawing the
conclusion that intrinsic value is not central to their concerns.
First, there is no necessity
that the term “intrinsic
value” be reserved for the value that something has in virtue of
its intrinsic properties;
presumably it has been used by many writers
simply to refer to what Korsgaard calls final value, in which case
the
moral significance of (what is thus called) intrinsic value has of
course not been thrown into doubt.
Nonetheless, it should probably be
conceded that “final value” is a more suitable term than
“intrinsic value” to
refer to the sort of value in
question, since the latter term certainly does suggest value that
supervenes on
intrinsic properties. But here a second point can be
made, and that is that, even if use of the term “intrinsic
value” is restricted accordingly, it is arguable that, contrary
to Korsgaard’s contention, all final value does after
all
supervene on intrinsic properties alone; if that were the case, there
would seem to be no reason not to
continue to use the term
“intrinsic value” to refer to final value. Whether this is
in fact the case depends in part
on just what sort of thing
can be valuable for its own sake—an issue to be taken
up in the next section.

In light of the matter just discussed, we must now decide what

terminology to adopt. It is clear that moral
philosophers since
ancient times have been concerned with the distinction between the
value that something has
for its own sake (the sort of nonderivative
value that Korsgaard calls “final value”) and the value
that something
has for the sake of something else to which it is
related in some way. However, given the weight of tradition, it
seems
justifiable, perhaps even advisable, to continue, despite
Korsgaard’s misgivings, to use the terms
“intrinsic
value” and “extrinsic value” to refer to these two
types of value; if we do so, however, we should
explicitly note that
this practice is not itself intended to endorse, or reject, the view
that intrinsic value
supervenes on intrinsic properties alone.

Let us now turn to doubts about the very coherence of the concept of
intrinsic value, so understood. In Principia
Ethica and
elsewhere, Moore embraces the consequentialist view, mentioned above,
that whether an action is
morally right or wrong turns exclusively on
whether its consequences are intrinsically better than those of its
alternatives. Some philosophers have recently argued that ascribing
intrinsic value to consequences in this way is
fundamentally
misconceived. Peter Geach, for example, argues that Moore makes a
serious mistake when
comparing “good” with
“yellow.”[6]
Moore says that both terms express unanalyzable concepts but are to
be
distinguished in that, whereas the latter refers to a natural
property, the former refers to a nonnatural one. Geach
contends that
there is a mistaken assimilation underlying Moore’s remarks,
since “good” in fact operates in a
way quite unlike that
of “yellow”—something that Moore wholly overlooks.
This contention would appear to be
confirmed by the observation that
the phrase “x is a yellow bird” splits up
logically (as Geach puts it) into the
phrase “x is a
bird and x is yellow,” whereas the phrase
“x is a good singer” does not split up in the
same way.
Also, from “x is a yellow bird” and
“a bird is an animal” we do not hesitate to infer
“x is a yellow animal,”
whereas no similar
inference seems warranted in the case of “x is a good
singer” and “a singer is a person.” On
the basis of
these observations Geach concludes that nothing can be good in the
free-standing way that Moore
alleges; rather, whatever is good is good
relative to a certain kind.

Judith Thomson has recently elaborated on Geach’s thesis

(Thomson 1997). Although she does not unqualifiedly
agree that
whatever is good is good relative to a certain kind, she does claim
that whatever is good is good in
some way; nothing can be “just
plain good,” as she believes Moore would have it. Philippa Foot,
among others,
has made a similar charge (Foot 1985). It is a charge
that has been rebutted by Michael Zimmerman, who argues
that
Geach’s tests are less straightforward than they may seem and
fail after all to reveal a significant distinction
between the ways in
which “good” and “yellow” operate (Zimmerman
2001, ch. 2). He argues further that
Thomson mischaracterizes
Moore’s conception of intrinsic value. According to Moore, he
claims, what is
intrinsically good is not “just plain
good”; rather, it is good in a particular way, in keeping with
Thomson’s thesis
that all goodness is goodness in a way. He
maintains that, for Moore and other proponents of intrinsic value,
such value is a particular kind of moral value. Mahrad
Almotahari and Adam Hosein have revived Geach’s
challenge
(Almotahari and Hosein 2015). They argue that if, contrary to Geach,
“good” could be used
predicatively, we would be able to
use the term predicatively in sentences of the form ‘a is
a good K’ but, they
argue, the linguistic evidence
indicates that we cannot do so (Almotahari and Hosein 2015,
1493–4).

4. What Sort of Thing Can Have Intrinsic Value?

Among those who do not doubt the coherence of the concept of intrinsic
value there is considerable difference of
opinion about what sort or
sorts of entity can have such value. Moore does not explicitly address
this issue, but
his writings show him to have a liberal view on the
matter. There are times when he talks of individual objects
(e.g.,
books) as having intrinsic value, others when he talks of the
consciousness of individual objects (or of their
qualities) as having
intrinsic value, others when he talks of the existence of individual
objects as having intrinsic
value, others when he talks of types of
individual objects as having intrinsic value, and still others when he
talks
of states of individual objects as having intrinsic value.

Moore would thus appear to be a “pluralist” concerning the

bearers of intrinsic value. Others take a more
conservative,
“monistic” approach, according to which there is just one
kind of bearer of intrinsic value.
Consider, for example,
Frankena’s long list of intrinsic goods, presented in Section 1
above: life, consciousness,
etc. To what kind(s) of entity do
such terms refer? Various answers have been given. Some (such as
Panayot
Butchvarov) claim that it is properties that are the
bearers of intrinsic value (Butchvarov 1989, pp. 14–15). On
this
view, Frankena’s list implies that it is the properties of being
alive, being conscious, and so on, that are
intrinsically good. Others
(such as Chisholm) claim that it is states of affairs that
are the bearers of intrinsic
value (Chisholm 1968–69, 1972,
1975). On this view, Frankena’s list implies that it is the
states of affairs of
someone (or something) being alive, someone being
conscious, and so on, that are intrinsically good. Still others
(such
as Ross) claim that it is facts that are the bearers of
intrinsic value (Ross 1930, pp. 112–13; cf. Lemos
1994, ch. 2).
On this view, Frankena’s list implies that it is the facts that
someone (or something) is alive, that
someone is conscious, and so on,
that are intrinsically good. (The difference between Chisholm’s
and Ross’s
views would seem to be this: whereas Chisholm would
ascribe intrinsic value even to states of affairs, such as
that of
everyone being happy, that do not obtain, Ross would ascribe such
value only to states of affairs that do
obtain.)

Ontologists often divide entities into two fundamental classes, those

that are abstract and those that are concrete.
Unfortunately, there is
no consensus on just how this distinction is to be drawn. Most
philosophers would
classify the sorts of entities just mentioned
(properties, states of affairs, and facts) as abstract. So understood,
the
claim that intrinsic value is borne by such entities is to be
distinguished from the claim that it is borne by certain
other closely
related entities that are often classified as concrete. For example,
it has recently been suggested that
it is tropes that have intrinsic
value.[7]
Tropes are supposed to be a sort of particularized property, a kind
of
property-instance (rather than simply a property). (Thus the
particular whiteness of a particular piece of paper is
to be
distinguished, on this view, from the property of whiteness.) It has
also been suggested that it is states,
understood as a kind of
instance of states of affairs, that have intrinsic value (cf.
Zimmerman 2001, ch. 3).

Those who make monistic proposals of the sort just mentioned are aware
that intrinsic value is sometimes
ascribed to kinds of entities
different from those favored by their proposals. They claim that all
such ascriptions
can be reduced to, or translated into, ascriptions of
intrinsic value of the sort they deem proper. Consider, for
example,
Korsgaard’s suggestion that a gorgeously enameled frying pan is
good for its own sake. Ross would
say that this cannot be the case. If
there is any intrinsic value to be found here, it will, according to
Ross, not
reside in the pan itself but in the fact that it plays a
certain role in our lives, or perhaps in the fact that something
plays
this role, or in the fact that something that plays this role exists.
(Others would make other translations in
the terms that they deem
appropriate.) On the basis of this ascription of intrinsic value to
some fact, Ross could
go on to ascribe a kind of extrinsic
value to the pan itself, in virtue of its relation to the fact in
question.

Whether reduction of this sort is acceptable has been a matter of

considerable debate. Proponents of monism
maintain that it introduces
some much-needed order into the discussion of intrinsic value,
clarifying just what is
involved in the ascription of such value and
simplifying the computation of such value—on which point, see
the
next section. (A corollary of some monistic approaches is that the
value that something has for its own sake
supervenes on the intrinsic
properties of that thing, so that there is a perfect convergence of
the two sorts of
values that Korsgaard calls “final” and
“intrinsic”. On this point, see the last section;
Zimmerman 2001, ch. 3;
Tucker 2016; and Tucker (forthcoming).)
Opponents argue that reduction results in distortion and
oversimplification; they maintain that, even if there is intrinsic
value to be found in such a fact as that a
gorgeously enameled frying
pan plays a certain role in our lives, there may yet be
intrinsic, and not merely
extrinsic, value to be found in the
pan itself and perhaps also in its existence (cf. Rabinowicz and
Rønnow-
Rasmussen 1999 and 2003). Some propose a compromise
according to which the kind of intrinsic value that can
sensibly be
ascribed to individual objects like frying pans is not the same kind
of intrinsic value that is the topic
of this article and can sensibly
be ascribed to items of the sort on Frankena’s list (cf. Bradley
2006). (See again
the cautionary note in the final paragraph of
Section 2 above.)
5. How Is Intrinsic Value to Be Computed?
In our assessments of intrinsic value, we are often and understandably
concerned not only with whether
something is good or bad but
with how good or bad it is. Arriving at an answer to the
latter question is not
straightforward. At least three problems
threaten to undermine the computation of intrinsic value.

First, there is the possibility that the relation of intrinsic

betterness is not transitive (that is, the possibility that
something
A is intrinsically better than something else B,
which is itself intrinsically better than some third thing
C,
and yet A is not intrinsically better than C).
Despite the very natural assumption that this relation is transitive,
it has been argued that it is not (Rachels 1998; Temkin 1987, 1997,
2012). Should this in fact be the case, it
would seriously complicate
comparisons, and hence assessments, of intrinsic value.

Second, there is the possibility that certain values are

incommensurate. For example, Ross at one point contends
that it is
impossible to compare the goodness of pleasure with that of virtue.
Whereas he had suggested in The
Right and the Good that
pleasure and virtue could be measured on the same scale of goodness,
in Foundations of
Ethics he declares this to be impossible,
since (he claims) it would imply that pleasure of a certain intensity,
enjoyed by a sufficient number of people or for a sufficient time,
would counterbalance virtue possessed or
manifested only by a small
number of people or only for a short time; and this he professes to be
incredible
(Ross 1939, p. 275). But there is some confusion here. In
claiming that virtue and pleasure are incommensurate
for the reason
given, Ross presumably means that they cannot be measured on the same
ratio scale. (A ratio
scale is one with an arbitrary unit but
a fixed zero point. Mass and length are standardly measured on ratio
scales.) But incommensurability on a ratio scale does not imply
incommensurability on every scale—an ordinal
scale, for
instance. (An ordinal scale is simply one that supplies an ordering
for the quantity in question, such as
the measurement of arm-strength
that is provided by an arm-wrestling competition.) Ross’s
remarks indicate that
he in fact believes that virtue and pleasure
are commensurate on an ordinal scale, since he appears to
subscribe
to the arch-puritanical view that any amount of virtue is
intrinsically better than any amount of pleasure. This
view is just
one example of the thesis that some goods are “higher”
than others, in the sense that any amount of
the former is better than
any amount of the latter. This thesis can be traced to the ancient
Greeks (Plato,
Philebus, 21a-e; Aristotle, Nicomachean
Ethics, 1174a), and it has been endorsed by many philosophers
since,
perhaps most famously by Mill (Mill 1863, paras. 4 ff).
Interest in the thesis has recently been revived by a set of
intricate
and intriguing puzzles, posed by Derek Parfit, concerning the relative
values of low-quantity/high-
quality goods and
high-quantity/low-quality goods (Parfit 1984, Part IV). One response
to these puzzles
(eschewed by Parfit himself) is to adopt the thesis
of the nontransitivity of intrinsic betterness. Another is to
insist
on the thesis that some goods are higher than others. Such a response
does not by itself solve the puzzles
that Parfit raises, but, to the
extent that it helps, it does so at the cost of once again
complicating the computation
of intrinsic value.

To repeat: contrary to what Ross says, the thesis that some goods are
higher than others implies that such goods
are commensurate, and not
that they are incommensurate. Some people do hold, however, that
certain values
really are incommensurate and thus cannot be compared
on any meaningful scale. (Isaiah Berlin [1909–1997],
for
example, is often thought to have said this about the values of
liberty and equality. Whether he is best
interpreted in this way is
debatable. See Berlin 1969.) This view constitutes a more radical
threat to the
computation of intrinsic value than does the view that
intrinsic betterness is not transitive. The latter view
presupposes at
least some measure of commensurability. If A is better than
B and B is better than C, then A
is
commensurate with B and B is commensurate with
C; and even if it should turn out that A is not
better than C, it
may still be that A is
commensurate with C, either because it is as good as
C or because it is worse than C. But if
A
is incommensurate with B, then A is neither better
than nor as good as nor worse than B. (Some claim,
however,
that the reverse does not hold and that, even if A is neither
better than nor as good as nor worse than B,
still A
may be “on a par” with B and thus be roughly
comparable with it. Cf. Chang 1997, 2002.) If such a case
can arise,
there is an obvious limit to the extent to which we can meaningfully
say how good a certain complex
whole is (here, “whole” is
used to refer to whatever kind of entity may have intrinsic value);
for, if such a whole
comprises incommensurate goods A and
B, then there will be no way of establishing just how good it
is overall,
even if there is a way of establishing how good it is with
respect to each of A and B.
There is a third, still more radical threat to the computation of
intrinsic value. Quite apart from any concern with
the
commensurability of values, Moore famously claims that there is no
easy formula for the determination of
the intrinsic value of complex
wholes because of the truth of what he calls the “principle of
organic unities”
(Moore 1903, p. 96). According to this
principle, the intrinsic value of a whole must not be assumed to be
the
same as the sum of the intrinsic values of its parts (Moore 1903,
p. 28) As an example of an organic unity,
Moore gives the case of the
consciousness of a beautiful object; he says that this has great
intrinsic value, even
though the consciousness as such and the
beautiful object as such each have comparatively little, if any,
intrinsic
value. If the principle of organic unities is true, then
there is scant hope of a systematic approach to the
computation of
intrinsic value. Although the principle explicitly rules out only
summation as a method of
computation, Moore’s remarks strongly
suggest that there is no relation between the parts of a whole and the
whole itself that holds in general and in terms of which the value of
the latter can be computed by aggregating
(whether by summation or by
some other means) the values of the former. Moore’s position has
been endorsed
by many other philosophers. For example, Ross says that
it is better that one person be good and happy and
another bad and
unhappy than that the former be good and unhappy and the latter bad
and happy, and he takes
this to be confirmation of Moore’s
principle (Ross 1930, p. 72). Broad takes organic unities of the sort
that
Moore discusses to be just one instance of a more general
phenomenon that he believes to be at work in many
other situations, as
when, for example, two tunes, each pleasing in its own right, make for
a cacophonous
combination (Broad 1985, p. 256). Others have furnished
still further examples of organic unities (Chisholm
1986, ch. 7; Lemos
1994, chs. 3 and 4, and 1998; Hurka 1998).

Was Moore the first to call attention to the phenomenon of organic

unities in the context of intrinsic value? This
is debatable. Despite
the fact that he explicitly invoked what he called a “principle
of summation” that would
appear to be inconsistent with the
principle of organic unities, Brentano appears nonetheless to have
anticipated
Moore’s principle in his discussion of
Schadenfreude, that is, of malicious pleasure; he condemns
such an
attitude, even though he claims that pleasure as such is
intrinsically good (Brentano 1969, p. 23 n). Certainly
Chisholm takes
Brentano to be an advocate of organic unities (Chisholm 1986, ch. 5),
ascribing to him the view
that there are many kinds of organic unity
and building on what he takes to be Brentano’s insights (and,
going
further back in the history of philosophy, the insights of St.
Thomas Aquinas [1225–1274] and others).

Recently, a special spin has been put on the principle of organic

unities by so-called “particularists.” Jonathan
Dancy, for
example, has claimed (in keeping with Korsgaard and others mentioned
in Section 3 above), that
something’s intrinsic value need not
supervene on its intrinsic properties alone; in fact, the
supervenience-base
may be so open-ended that it resists
generalization. The upshot, according to Dancy, is that the intrinsic
value of
something may vary from context to context; indeed, the
variation may be so great that the thing’s value changes
“polarity” from good to bad, or vice versa (Dancy
2000). This approach to value constitutes an endorsement of
the
principle of organic unities that is even more subversive of the
computation of intrinsic value than Moore’s;
for Moore holds
that the intrinsic value of something is and must be constant, even if
its contribution to the value
of wholes of which it forms a part is
not, whereas Dancy holds that variation can occur at both levels.

Not everyone has accepted the principle of organic unities; some have
held out hope for a more systematic
approach to the computation of
intrinsic value. However, even someone who is inclined to measure
intrinsic
value in terms of summation must acknowledge that there is a
sense in which the principle of organic unities is
obviously true.
Consider some complex whole, W, that is composed of three
goods, X, Y, and Z, which are
wholly
independent of one another. Suppose that we had a ratio scale on which
to measure these goods, and that
their values on this scale were 10,
20, and 30, respectively. We would expect someone who takes intrinsic
value
to be summative to declare the value of W to be (10 +
20 + 30 =) 60. But notice that, if X, Y, and
Z are parts of
W, then so too, presumably, are the
combinations X-and-Y, X-and-Z, and
Y-and-Z; the values of these
combinations, computed
in terms of summation, will be 30, 40, and 50, respectively. If the
values of these parts
of W were also taken into consideration
when evaluating W, the value of W would balloon to
180. Clearly, this
would be a distortion. Someone who wishes to
maintain that intrinsic value is summative must thus show not
only how
the various alleged examples of organic unities provided by Moore and
others are to be reinterpreted,
but also how, in the sort of case just
sketched, it is only the values of X, Y, and
Z, and not the values either of any
combinations of these
components or of any parts of these components, that are to be taken
into account when
evaluating W itself. In order to bring some
semblance of manageability to the computation of intrinsic value, this
is precisely what some writers, by appealing to the idea of
“basic” intrinsic value, have tried to do. The general
idea is this. In the sort of example just given, each of X,
Y, and Z is to be construed as having basic
intrinsic
value; if any combinations or parts of X,
Y, and Z have intrinsic value, this value is not
basic; and the value of W
is to be computed by appealing only
to those parts of W that have basic intrinsic value.

Gilbert Harman was one of the first explicitly to discuss basic

intrinsic value when he pointed out the apparent
need to invoke such
value if we are to avoid distortions in our evaluations (Harman 1967).
However, he offers
no precise account of the concept of basic
intrinsic value and ends his paper by saying that he can think of no
way to show that nonbasic intrinsic value is to be computed in terms
of the summation of basic intrinsic value.
Several philosophers have
since tried to do better. Many have argued that nonbasic intrinsic
value cannot always
be computed by summing basic intrinsic
value. Suppose that states of affairs can bear intrinsic value. Let
X be
the state of affairs of John being pleased to a certain
degree x, and Y be the state of affairs of Jane
being
displeased to a certain degree y, and suppose that
X has a basic intrinsic value of 10 and Y a basic
intrinsic value
of −20. It seems reasonable to sum these values
and attribute an intrinsic value of −10 to the conjunctive state
of
affairs X&Y. But what of the disjunctive state of
affairs XvY or the negative state of affairs ~X? How
are their
intrinsic values to be computed? Summation seems to
be a nonstarter in these cases. Nonetheless, attempts have
been made
even in such cases to show how the intrinsic value of a complex whole
is to be computed in a
nonsummative way in terms of the basic
intrinsic values of simpler states, thus preserving the idea that
basic
intrinsic value is the key to the computation of all intrinsic
value (Quinn 1974, Chisholm 1975, Oldfield 1977,
Carlson 1997). (These
attempts have generally been based on the assumption that states of
affairs are the sole
bearers of intrinsic value. Matters
would be considerably more complicated if it turned out that entities
of
several different ontological categories could all have intrinsic
value.)

Suggestions as to how to compute nonbasic intrinsic value in terms of

basic intrinsic value of course presuppose
that there is such a thing
as basic intrinsic value, but few have attempted to provide an account
of what basic
intrinsic value itself consists in. Fred Feldman is one
of the few (Feldman 2000; cf. Feldman 1997, pp. 116–18).
Subscribing to the view that only states of affairs bear intrinsic
value, Feldman identifies several features that
any state of affairs
that has basic intrinsic value in particular must possess. He
maintains, for example, that
whatever has basic intrinsic value must
have it to a determinate degree and that this value cannot be
“defeated”
by any Moorean organic unity. In this way,
Feldman seeks to preserve the idea that intrinsic value is summative
after all. He does not claim that all intrinsic value is to be
computed by summing basic intrinsic value, but he
does insist that the
value of entire worlds is to be computed in this way.

Despite the detail in which Feldman characterizes the concept of basic

intrinsic value, he offers no strict analysis
of it. Others have tried
to supply such an analysis. For example, by noting that, even if it is
true that only states
have intrinsic value, it may yet be that not all
states have intrinsic value, Zimmerman suggests (to put matters
somewhat roughly) that basic intrinsic value is the intrinsic value
had by states none of whose proper parts have
intrinsic value
(Zimmerman 2001, ch. 5). On this basis he argues that disjunctive and
negative states in fact have
no intrinsic value at all, and thereby
seeks to show how all intrinsic value is to be computed in terms of
summation after all.

Two final points. First, we are now in a position to see why it was
said above (in Section 2) that perhaps not all
intrinsic value is
nonderivative. If it is correct to distinguish between basic and
nonbasic intrinsic value and also
to compute the latter in terms of
the former, then there is clearly a respectable sense in which
nonbasic intrinsic
value is derivative. Second, if states with basic
intrinsic value account for all the value that there is in the world,
support is found for Chisholm’s view (reported in Section 2)
that some ontological version of Moore’s isolation
test is
acceptable.

6. What Is Extrinsic Value?

At the beginning of this article, extrinsic value was said
simply—too simply—to be value that is not intrinsic.
Later, once intrinsic value had been characterized as nonderivative
value of a certain, perhaps moral kind,
extrinsic value was said more
particularly to be derivative value of that same kind. That
which is extrinsically
good is good, not (insofar as its extrinsic
value is concerned) for its own sake, but for the sake of something
else
to which it is related in some way. For example, the goodness of
helping others in time of need is plausibly
thought to be extrinsic
(at least in part), being derivative (at least in part) from the
goodness of something else,
such as these people’s needs being
satisfied, or their experiencing pleasure, to which helping them is
related in
some causal way.

Two questions arise. The first is whether so-called extrinsic value is

really a type of value at all. There would
seem to be a sense in which
it is not, for it does not add to or detract from the value in the
world. Consider some
long chain of derivation. Suppose that the
extrinsic value of A can be traced to the intrinsic value of
Z by way of
B, C, D… Thus
A is good (for example) because of B, which is good
because of C, and so on, until we get to Y’s
being good because of Z; when it comes to Z,
however, we have something that is good, not because of
something
else, but “because of itself,” i.e., for its own sake. In
this sort of case, the values of A, B, …,
Y are all
parasitic on the value of Z. It is
Z’s value that contributes to the value there is in the
world; A, B, …, Y contribute
no
value of their own. (As long as the value of Z is the only
intrinsic value at stake, no change of value would be
effected in or
imparted to the world if a shorter route from A to Z
were discovered, one that bypassed some
letters in the middle of the
alphabet.)

Why talk of “extrinsic value” at all, then? The answer can

only be that we just do say that certain things are
good, and others
bad, not for their own sake but for the sake of something else to
which they are related in some
way. To say that these things are good
and bad only in a derivative sense, that their value is merely
parasitic on
or reflective of the value of something else, is one
thing; to deny that they are good or bad in any respectable
sense is
quite another. The former claim is accurate; hence the latter would
appear unwarranted.

If we accept that talk of “extrinsic value” can be

appropriate, however, a second question then arises: what sort
of
relation must obtain between A and Z if A
is to be said to be good “because of” Z? It is
not clear just what the
answer to this question is. Philosophers have
tended to focus on just one particular causal relation, the means-
end
relation. This is the relation at issue in the example given earlier:
helping others is a means to their needs
being satisfied, which is
itself a means to their experiencing pleasure. The term most often
used to refer to this
type of extrinsic value is “instrumental
value,” although there is some dispute as to just how this term
is to be
employed. (Remember also, from Section 3 above, that on some
views “instrumental value” may refer to a type
of
intrinsic, or final, value.) Suppose that A is a
means to Z, and that Z is intrinsically good. Should
we therefore
say that A is instrumentally good? What if
A has another consequence, Y, and this consequence
is intrinsically
bad? What, especially, if the intrinsic badness of
Y is greater than the intrinsic goodness of Z? Some
would say
that in such a case A is both instrumentally good
(because of Z) and instrumentally bad (because of
Y). Others
would say that it is correct to say that
A is instrumentally good only if all of A’s
causal consequences that have
intrinsic value are, taken as a whole,
intrinsically good. Still others would say that whether something is
instrumentally good depends not only on what it causes to happen but
also on what it prevents from happening
(cf. Bradley 1998). For
example, if pain is intrinsically bad, and taking an aspirin puts a
stop to your pain but
causes nothing of any positive intrinsic value,
some would say that taking the aspirin is instrumentally good
despite
its having no intrinsically good consequences.

Many philosophers write as if instrumental value is the only type of

extrinsic value, but that is a mistake.
Suppose, for instance, that
the results of a certain medical test indicate that the patient is in
good health, and
suppose that this patient’s having good health
is intrinsically good. Then we may well want to say that the results
are themselves (extrinsically) good. But notice that the results are
of course not a means to good health; they are
simply indicative of
it. Or suppose that making your home available to a struggling artist
while you spend a year
abroad provides him with an opportunity he
would otherwise not have to create some masterpieces, and suppose
that
either the process or the product of this creation would be
intrinsically good. Then we may well want to say
that your making your
home available to him is (extrinsically) good because of the
opportunity it provides him,
even if he goes on to squander the
opportunity and nothing good comes of it. Or suppose that
someone’s
appreciating the beauty of the Mona Lisa
would be intrinsically good. Then we may well want to say that the
painting itself has value in light of this fact, a kind of value that
some have called “inherent value” (Lewis 1946,
p. 391; cf.
Frankena 1973, p. 82). (“Inherent value” may not
be the most suitable term to use here, since it may
well suggest
intrinsic value, whereas the sort of value at issue is
supposed to be a type of extrinsic value. The
value
attributed to the painting is one that it is said to have in virtue of
its relation to something else that would
supposedly be intrinsically
good if it occurred, namely, the appreciation of its beauty.) Many
other instances
could be given of cases in which we are inclined to
call something good in virtue of its relation to something else
that
is or would be intrinsically good, even though the relation in
question is not a means-end relation.

One final point. It is sometimes said that there can be no extrinsic

value without intrinsic value. This thesis
admits of several
interpretations. First, it might mean that nothing can occur that is
extrinsically good unless
something else occurs that is intrinsically
good, and that nothing can occur that is extrinsically bad unless
something else occurs that is intrinsically bad. Second, it might mean
that nothing can occur that is either
extrinsically good or
extrinsically bad unless something else occurs that is either
intrinsically good or
intrinsically bad. On both these
interpretations, the thesis is dubious. Suppose that no one ever
appreciates the
beauty of Leonardo’s masterpiece, and that
nothing else that is intrinsically either good or bad ever occurs;
still
his painting may be said to be inherently good. Or suppose that
the aspirin prevents your pain from even starting,
and hence inhibits
the occurrence of something intrinsically bad, but nothing else that
is intrinsically either good
or bad ever occurs; still your taking the
aspirin may be said to be instrumentally good. On a third
interpretation,
however, the thesis might be true. That interpretation
is this: nothing can occur that is either extrinsically good or
extrinsically neutral or extrinsically bad unless something else
occurs that is either intrinsically good or
intrinsically neutral or
intrinsically bad. This would be trivially true if, as some maintain,
the nonoccurrence of
something intrinsically either good or bad
entails the occurrence of something intrinsically neutral. But even if
the thesis should turn out to be false on this third interpretation,
too, it would nonetheless seem to be true on a
fourth interpretation,
according to which the concept of extrinsic value, in all its
varieties, is to be understood in
terms of the concept of intrinsic
value.

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Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Fred Feldman, Noah Lemos, Terry McConnell, and Toni
Rønnow-Rasmussen for helpful
comments on a previous draft.
 Copyright © 2019 by

Michael J. Zimmerman
<m_zimme2@uncg.edu>

Ben Bradley
<wbradley@syr.edu>

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