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The Value Gap

The Value Gap

TONI RØNNOW-RASMUSSEN
1
3
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To Elly, Anna, and Sofia

Preface
This book is about values. Libraries abound with books about values, and this one
will be similar to some but different from others. For one thing, it does not seek to
tell you what kinds of things are valuable. This might well be its most important
drawback. Rather, it addresses some issues with which a philosophical mind will
eventually wrestle—issues that are more or less important for how we should or
should not reason and deliberate about matters of value. This is my second book-
length attempt to contribute to the topic (my first, Personal Value, was published
in 2011). So why write another book on the same topic as the first one, given that
the likelihood that I will be getting it (or even some of it) right is small? To ignore
this question would be to signal philosophical hubris—however hard I have
worked to address the issues I am engaged with.
As always, when you pose a ‘why’ question you might be interested in an
explanation, motive, or a justification. As to explanation, I have several suspicions,
but none is really convincing. My motive is a very unexciting one. I am still
puzzled by the nature of values and evaluations, and the crucial role they play in so
many parts of our lives despite the fact that people seem to have no clear idea of
what they are (which is hardly surprising given that the clues point in all
directions). Of course, not everyone is as puzzled as I am. For some with a strong
naturalistic inclination—those who are prone to naturalise everything they can get
their hands on—there is no real puzzle. But for others, including me, what we
express in our value claims continues to be a vivid philosophical issue. Metaethics
still thrives on the unfortunate fact that we have no introspective knowledge of the
kinds of mental state we are in when we express natural language sentences such
as ‘It’s good that the war ended’ or ‘Climate change is bad for us.’ Not everyone
believes that something good comes from addressing these issues, but unless the
doubters are convinced they know what kind of things values are, and what we are
doing or expressing when we value, it is hard to understand their complacency.
Turning to justification, I find it increasingly hard to justify anything I do, and
dedicating as much time as I have to this book is certainly no exception. This may
have to do with the fact that I am bad at arguing my case. It may be, alternatively,
that what, precisely, I do is hard to justify. However, there is a third possibility, and
this book is very much devoted to an exploration of this. There seem to be two
fundamentally different kinds of value: relational and non-relational ones, or as
I shall also say, impersonal and personal ones. I shall explore this value divide, or
gap, taking it to be one that runs deep in our lives and recognising that it
challenges any attempt to provide rational evaluative justifications. I am not the
viii 
first to address this gap, nor am I aspiring to be the last to discuss the many facets
it has. With the exception of the last chapter, I shall not spend much time in
explaining why discussion of the divide is important. I assume my readers will
figure this out for themselves. Rather, I shall be focusing on a limited group of
issues. These fall into two sorts. One sort connects with the ways in which our
various value notions relate to each other. The issues here reflect the seemingly
unbridgeable value gap just mentioned. The other sort revolves around a particu-
lar way of analysing value that has been intensely discussed for the last two
decades or so. The book is divided into two parts to mark these two contrasting
sorts of issue.
The problems of the first sort are often taxonomic. That is to say, they involve
questions about the different kinds of value there are: How do they relate to each
other? Are they equally important? If not, which are the most important value
notions? Taxonomic issues of these kinds may look inconsequential, but that
appearance is misleading. As I shall argue in the first part of the book, they
actually have some quite devastating effects on what we can and cannot hope to
achieve when it comes to justifying our evaluations.
Any value taxonomy has to be built upon not only logical (or conceptual)
considerations, but also what we understand by value in the first place. The view
I will be concerned with in much of the second part of the book is one that Wlodek
Rabinowicz and I (2000) once dubbed the ‘fitting-attitude analysis of value’, or
simply the ‘FA analysis’. The problems I shall be dealing with, are closely linked to
this analysis. It is a pattern of analysis that I find, philosophically, both attractive
and challenging. However, you do not need to be an FA analyst to find discussion
of these challenges interesting. That discussion concerns our understanding of
reasons, and certain kinds of attitude, so it ought to appeal to anyone interested in
normative notions and the nature of non-doxastic pro- and con- attitudes.¹ In
fact, one reason why the FA analysis has been given so much attention in recent
years is that it has challenged and refined our views on a number of areas that are
relevant to most views on value. You might think values are entities of a kind that
cannot be reduced to reasons, and thus reject the FA analysis, but it would be
strange to suggest that values are not in some way connected with what we have
reasons to favour, do, or believe.
Since Chapter 1 presents a range of approaches to value taxonomy, it might be
helpful to say something more general about this kind of endeavour. Classical
taxonomies help us structure reality into fundamental types. Linnaeus’s
¹ By ‘attitudes’ in what follows, unless I state otherwise, I mean pro- and con-attitudes. By ‘reasons’
I have in mind either (good or normative) reasons for favouring or reasons against favouring (see here
Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen (2000), in which the distinction plays an important role). For
instance, a reason against liking a is not identical to a reason for disliking a (cf. Metz 2020). However,
since the for–against distinction will not play any major role in this book, and in order to avoid cum-
bersome wording, I shall mostly ignore the distinction, and just talk about reasons.
 ix
classification of plants and Mendeleev’s periodic table of elements are bona fide
examples of such taxonomies.² This might lead one to think that taxonomies
necessarily classify entities understood in a realistic sense. It is therefore very
important to stress at the outset that value taxonomy is not necessarily about
realistically understood entities. Indeed value taxonomies need not take a stand on
the realism/irrealism issue. In many contexts, what is of interest is not so much
what is the case but what is believed to be the case. In large-scale, cross-
national empirical studies such as, for example, the European Values Study
(https://europeanvaluesstudy.eu/) and the World Values Survey (http://www.
worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp), the focus tends to be on what people implicitly
or explicitly believe to be valuable, or on what they like or prefer. Studies of this
kind supply social scientists and policymakers with data on people’s preferences,
and what they believe to be significant (in their lives or more generally). While
such studies are of great interest, I shall for the most part be focusing on other
matters.
My own taxonomic endeavour will circumvent metaphysical issues. This, and
the fact that I also set empirical studies aside, need not lead to arbitrariness about
value taxonomy, however. The way you sort your values is largely a matter of what
you are interested in. In this work, I shall be discussing what I take to be two very
important value distinctions—distinctions on which values in general depend.
The principle that guides my ordering of values turns on a simple idea, namely
that some values are more important than others.
The really significant distinction, and the one on which this book focuses, is the
division between relational and non-relational value—or, to put it in terms of a
positive, thin value notion, between what is good for someone, or some entity, and
what is simply good (impersonally good, or good, period). The contrast between
these two value notions shapes much of modern ethics.
Over the years, the notion that someone, or something, is good has been
captured in many analyses, above all when good is understood to be a gloss on
what is good in itself or good for its own sake (rather than what is good for the sake
of something else). Two further distinctions play a crucial role in this work: that
between intrinsic and extrinsic value, and that between final and non-final value.
For a long time, these were thought to have roughly the same extensions. A great
deal of work has been done on these distinctions in the last two or three decades,
and I shall not try to summarise this discussion. Instead, I shall attempt to explain,
² As for value taxonomies, in his Groundwork Kant supplies us with one that still plays a role in
contemporary value theory. Mark LeBar (2013) summarises his position well: Kant ‘divides [values]
into two exhaustive categories: things which have dignity and things which have a price (Kant 1785/
1991) and pairs this distinction with two others. The first is between things capable of morality
(namely, rational agents—in our world coextensive with human beings), which have dignity, and
things lacking that capability, which have only a “market price”. The second distinction is between
things that are ends in themselves and things with only instrumental value (Kant 1785/1991 p. 4289)’
(p. 17).
x 
in Chapter 1, how I think they are best understood. In that chapter, I shall also
comment briefly on some other related value notions.
To my surprise, the work I have just referred to showed that FA analysts need to
reconsider how they have understood final value thus far. I explain why in
Chapters 7 and 8. Luckily, as I shall also explain, there is a simple way to modify
the definition of final value. However, before taking this up, it makes sense to
discuss the analysis of good-for. For reasons that will emerge in due course, it was
my FA analysis of good-for that led me to realise that the advocates of FA analysis
have been setting out from a defective view on final value. I therefore begin this
book by discussing good-for, mainly in Chapters 2–4.
In one sense, there has been less disagreement over the correct understanding
of the notion of good-for than there has been over good, period. What is good-for
someone is at least very often explicated in terms of well-being or welfare. Where
there is disagreement, it arises largely because we do not do not agree on what
welfare is, or what constitutes a person’s well-being.³ However, there is another
source of disagreement that cuts across the entire value realm. This relates not to
what kinds of thing we should apply the two notions, but rather to the relation
between them. Are we to understand one notion in terms of the other? Or are they
to be understood as two entirely separate notions, one relational and the other
non-relational? The view we take on these matters will have a significant impact
on our taxonomy, and either simplify or complicate our lives as agents. Somewhat
ruefully, I shall argue that the view we should endorse is, in effect, one that makes
things much more complicated.
I should say something about how I understand the expression ‘value claim’.
Noun phrases such as ‘value claim’ or ‘value assertion’ suffer from a well-known
ambiguity. They might refer to some natural language sentence, utterance, or
conscious thought, which is being employed, or made, or had, by a speaker.
Alternatively, they can refer to that which is expressed by those utterances or
thoughts. In what follows, unless otherwise indicated, I will have the first sense in
mind. What the linguistic entities and thoughts express is also open, and in more
than one way, to discussion. Is it some mental state (e.g. the belief that p) or the
content of these mental states (e.g. p)? Generally speaking, I find the second of
these options the more reasonable—at least when it comes to beliefs. However,
since I will be more interested in the attitude than the content part, I will
sometimes speak as if value claims express beliefs or pro- and con-attitudes
(when it would be more accurate to say that it is the content of these that is
expressed). Now that we are aware of this ambiguity, it should not give rise to any
misunderstanding in what follows. Sometimes, therefore, I will say that what value
claims (i.e. sentences employed by a speaker) express is some attitude (here
³ The nature of the well-being makers or even happiness-makers is a much-debated matter. See e.g.
Mulligan (2016), where the great variety of the ‘the fauna of happiness’ is set out.
 xi
broadly understood to include beliefs), when, again, a more discerning statement

would refer to the content of the attitude.⁴ Even more specifically, in what follows,
when I use the noun phrase ‘value claim’, I shall have in mind a linguistic assertion
(e.g. the utterance, or entertaining, of a thought) cast in terms of phrases such as
those below in (1–6), made by some person and containing at least one term
referring to either a thin value or to a thick value (see Bernard Williams 1985:
140–143). Here are some sentences of the kind we standardly employ in making
value claims in English (I omit reference to the speaker):
(1) ‘Pleasure is good in itself ’; (2) ‘Smoking is not good for you’; (3) ‘This painting
by Købke is beautiful’; (4) ‘Rescuing the child was a courageous thing to do’;
(5) ‘Salieri is a better composer than Mozart’; (6) ‘John is a good philosopher.’
The list is not exhaustive, obviously, but it contains some sentences of the types
typically employed when we make value claims. Thus, (1) mentions what I shall
refer to as a final intrinsic value; (2) is about a relational value, ‘good for’;
(3) concerns an aesthetic value; (4) refers to a specific value notion; (5) states a
value relation, and (6) involves an ‘attributive’ use of a value predicate, contrasting
with the ‘predicative’ use in such statements as (1), for example. In its attributive
usage, ‘good’ is a category modifier (‘a good philosopher’, ‘a good knife’, etc.),
while in predicative usage it stands on its own. Sometimes it is unclear from the
surface grammar how a given term is being used. Compare ‘Lund Cathedral is a
grey building’ with (6). The former parses conjunctively: that Lund Cathedral is a
grey building means that it is grey and that it is a building. Hence, ‘grey’ is
predicative. In the latter, ‘John is a good philosopher’, this is not the case; there
is no entailment that John is good, since ‘good’ here modifies ‘a philosopher’, and
does not stand on its own. In Chapter 1, I shall consider some views suggesting
that the predicative use is problematic. I doing so, I will consider Peter Geach’s
seminal paper ‘Good and Evil’ (1956). Geach argued that the predicative use of
‘good’ does not make sense, unlike its attributive uses. He might be right inasmuch
as meaningful predicative uses of ‘good’ must be translatable into attributive
claims. However, I shall argue that, to be defensible, his claim has to be under-
stood in a rather trivial sense that even his opponents might agree to.
At times, I shall refer to value claims as making sense or not making sense. This
‘making sense’ idea, which will play a role especially in Chapters 2 and 3, is itself
⁴ Of course, ‘express’ has several meanings as well. Here, the relevant sense is illuminated by the
following idea: To say that the value claim x expresses the attitude state y is to claim that there is an
attitude y such that the speaker (or evaluator) has to be in this y-state for it to be semantically
permissible (or perhaps appropriate) for him to make the value claim sincerely. In Rønnow-
Rasmussen (2017a), I explore a novel metaethical view which has so far gone under the radar of
metaethicists. On this view, we express a so-called on-conditional belief (that is not to be identified with
a belief in a condition).
xii 
worthy of philosophical probing. My use of it is intuitive, however. I rely therefore

on examples which I trust readers will view in the way I do. Although there clearly
is regularity in linguistic communication that someone can pick up and learn, and
hence be something about which we can have intuitions, intuitions may be wrong,
and so intuitive-driven philosophy is not the ideal philosophical approach. It is
nonetheless a viable one. Of course, not everyone agrees, but this is not the work to
take up that glove. I am merely flagging the view that it makes sense to distinguish
between value claims that conceptually make or do not make sense, whether or
not we believe these claims to be true or false, or correct or incorrect. This is the
sense I have in mind when I say that although I think claim (5) above is false or
incorrect, or one that I would not endorse, it still is a claim that makes (enough)
sense for me to be in a disagreement with someone who thinks it is true or correct.
That statements like (1)–(6) make evaluative claims is a view deeply rooted in a
loose collection of ideas about how such judgements differ from (purely) descrip-
tive claims such as ‘pleasure is a mental state’, ‘some people are addicted to drugs’,
and ‘this painting weighs 5 kilograms’. But value claims should also be distin-
guished from so-called deontic statements, such as ‘You ought to keep your
promises’ and ‘We must come to his rescue.’ While both the deontic and the
value statements are contrasted with descriptive ones, there is a ‘prescriptivity’ and
action-guidingness in the area of the deontic⁵ that is at least not as explicitly
present in the value area. Whether prescriptivity is implicit in the latter is a matter
of controversy. As I indicated earlier, it is hard to understand values without
somehow relating them to reasons. In my view, values might not be as explicitly
action-guiding as reasons, but they are nonetheless prescriptive in some way. To
take value notions to have no prescriptive significance at all would be to rob them
of important functions.
The FA analysis of value definitively sides with those who take values to be in
some way prescriptive. On the FA analysis, which has recently been the subject of
two book-length discussions (Francesco Orsi 2015, Richard Rowland 2019), an
object is valuable if and only if it is fitting (appropriate, warranted, required, etc.)
to favour it. Here, ‘fitting’ stands for the normative component in the analysis,
while ‘favour’ is a placeholder for a pro-attitude.⁶ Thus, on this analysis, value
judgements are plausibly interpreted as implicitly prescriptive in nature.⁷ Despite
being formulated in terms of a biconditional, the FA analysis is generally thought
⁵ Of course, not only prescriptions, but also permissions, belong to the deontic area. However, one
might argue that the latter do so simply because they are denials of prescriptions.
⁶ Depending on the nature of the fitting pro-attitude (desire, preference, admiration, respect, care,
etc.) we get different kinds of value (desirability, preferability, admirability, etc.). As several have
pointed out, FA analysis faces the challenge of explaining what makes an attitude pro rather than
con or even neutral. See e.g., Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen (2004, especially p. 204) and Kathie
McShane (2013) on this issue.
⁷ On a version of FA analysis due to Thomas Scanlon (1998), for an object to be good or valuable is
for it to have properties that provide reasons to respond to it in various positive ways. Here the notion
 xiii
to express an explanation in which the normative element is given metaphysical

priority over value. Values, therefore, are nothing but reasons to favour.
Henceforth, I shall regard the biconditional in this way.
The above list of value claims also serves as an illustration of certain issues in
value theory with a bearing on value taxonomies. ‘Good’ and ‘bad’, as predicates,
seem quite different from, say, ‘beautiful’ or ‘courageous’. To judge something to
be good is to offer much less (if any) specific information about that thing than if
we had judged it to be beautiful, or someone to be courageous. ‘Good’ and ‘bad’
have been referred to as thin concepts because of their lack of a fixed descriptive
content, and the more descriptive value concepts have accordingly been called
thick (Williams 1985, 140–143). The nature of this distinction between thick and
thin evaluative concepts is a much-debated matter.⁸ In what follows, we will focus
on the thin value notions rather than the thick ones. The taxonomy suggested here
is thus intended to apply primarily to the former, although it may in some cases
also apply to the latter.
So, although values are sometimes ordered into domains such as moral, aes-
thetic, prudential, political, economic—to mention some of the most common—
in this book I will focus on conceptual distinctions that can be made regardless of
which area of value one is interested in.
The principal aim of this work is to throw light on the distinction between
(personal) relational and (impersonal) non-relational value,⁹ but this is not the
only way in which I hope to contribute. Along the way, I will also highlight some
areas which have, in the past, stirred up dust among value theorists. The distinc-
tion between final and non-final value is one arena of disagreement that I will
of a reason is the deontic component in the analysis. To mark the fact that in Scanlon’s account the role
of the reason-provider is transferred from the value of the object to other properties (the ones that
make the object valuable), this version of the analysis has been called ‘the buck-passing account of
value’. To pass the buck is to shift the responsibility for something to someone else, or (applied to
goodness) the property of goodness itself does not provide reasons to value what is good, but ‘passes the
normative buck’ to the value bearer’s good-making properties.
⁸ See Simon Kirchin (2013) for a collection of papers on thick concepts. Kevin Mulligan (2009a)
contains the following list of thick value categories: ‘There are the aesthetic properties of being
beautiful, elegant, or sublime. There are the cognitive value-properties of which clarity, distinctness,
illusion, error, knowledge, truth and falsity are the bearers and the property of being foolish. There are
the ethical properties of being evil and good, and the properties corresponding to different ethical
virtues and vices, for example, the property of being a coward. There are the properties of being right,
just and unjust. There are the religious properties of being holy or sacred and profane. There are the
vital value-properties of which health, life, and illness are the bearers. And the sensory value-properties
of being pleasant and unpleasant’ (p. 477). Whether all the items on Mulligan’s list are thick value
properties can, of course, be discussed. Some of them might instead be classified as value-making
features (truth, pleasantness), while some others (rightness) seem to be thin.
⁹ A caveat: the match between the two distinctions—relational/non-relational and personal/imper-
sonal values—is not perfect. As we shall see, there is a sense in which some values accrue to relational
features that makes it legitimate to categorise these as relational but not personal values. In due time,
I will therefore suggest how to distinguish these and other relational values from personal values.
Meanwhile, since it will greatly simplify the presentation, I will allow myself some leeway and continue
as if the difference between the distinctions is of no major importance.
xiv 
consider in detail.¹⁰ In approaching both of these distinctions, it is a good idea to

consider the further distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value—a contrast
that was for a long time considered to be crucial to value theory. A better
understanding of this will take us into the two former distinctions.
While Chapter 1 introduces my general value taxonomy (by among other
things illuminating the core distinctions between final and non-final value, and
intrinsic and extrinsic value), Chapter 2 is devoted to the distinction between final
goodness and final goodness-for. These two notions mark the divide between the
impersonally and personally valuable—the value divide that this book is about.
I introduce two views that deny the existence of this divide, which I refer to as
‘Mooreanism’ and ‘good for monism’. Both of these deny what I call value
dualism, the theory that final goodness and final goodness-for are independent
value notions that cannot be fully understood in terms of one another. Chapter 3
argues that we should reject Mooreanism, with its commitment to the idea that
there is only one final value notion, namely final goodness. In Chapter 4, I take
on the good-for monist, who maintains that both value dualism and Mooreanism
get things wrong. For the good-for monist there is one fundamental final value,
and it is final goodness-for. I reject this view, and for good (sic) reason, I think.
Both monist views have the same defect: on purely formal grounds, they are
forced to renounce certain value claims that make perfectly good sense—they are
obliged to say that those claims are nonsensical. Before moving on to Part II,
I address a difficult matter in Chapter 5. My aim here is to show that good-for
expresses a much richer notion than traditionally assumed. More particularly,
I argue for two claims. First, the claim that not everything that is finally good for x
is constitutive of x’s well-being. My guess is that many readers will agree with this.
However, this admission often leads people to say that this ‘richness’ is best
understood in terms of the fact, as they see it, that ‘good for’ is a term with two
or more meanings. Second (and this is the hard part), I will argue that even if
good-for need not always be understood in terms of what constitutes well-being
(or welfare, or what is in someone’s interest), there is no need to claim that ‘good
for’ is ambiguous.
In Part II, I turn to the project of developing a FA analysis of the two core
notions: final goodness and final goodness for. In Chapter 6, I introduce the
¹⁰ I’ve had to omit discussion of certain value distinctions made in the literature. I’ll give just one
example. The late Gerry Cohen added an interesting but nonetheless controversial distinction to value
theory. In his attempt to outline a plausible reading of conservativism he defended what he referred to
as a thing’s ‘particular value’, by which he understood the value that emerges when ‘a person values
something as the particular valuable thing that it is, and not merely for the value that resides in it’
(Cohen 2011, p. 206). The value that he thought resides in the thing can be of various kinds, such as
moral or prudential. This sort of value makes the object into a valuable object. But Cohen suggested
that there is yet another value that arises from valuing such valuable things rather than valuing them for
their value. This is an intriguing account that simply raises too many questions for me to discuss here.
For a discussion, see George Brennan and Alan Hamlin (2016) who further develop Cohen’s views in
their attempt to provide an analysis of conservativism.
 xv
analysis by considering some of its advantages and disadvantages. I also address

an intriguing issue that goes back to G. E. Moore’s interpretation of Franz
Brentano’s account of value comparatives. I argue we should follow Brentano
rather than Moore. This chapter also considers certain well-known challenges to
the FA analysis, and this leads to the first modification of the FA analysis that I will
propose in this work. I have also explained (in Section 6.5) why we should be
careful and not interpret ‘weight of reason’ too literally. Yet another adjustment to
the FA analysis is suggested in the conclusions of Chapters 7 and 8. I show that
there is a problem with my suggested analysis of good-for in terms of reasons for
favouring an object for someone’s sake. Given some plausible assumptions,
reasons for this kind of sake-attitude seem to entail that the object carrying the
value is not only good for someone, but finally good. This is an unfortunate
consequence that must be avoided. I suggest a simple solution to this problem.
FA analyses involve what are usually called ‘for someone/something’s sake
attitudes’. These attitudes need to be characterised and explained—a task I take
up mainly in Chapters 9 and 10. Chapter 11 then considers a familiar idea about
attitudes that is often accepted, namely the so-called ‘guise of the good’ thesis.
I argue that we should not endorse this idea. In the course of arguing this,
I consider the notion that there are certain beliefs with contents that cannot
motivate any agent. Since these contents might well provide the supervenience
base of things of value, the FA analysis faces the potential challenge that we cannot
have a reason to favour something that we acknowledge as valuable. I believe,
however, that FA advocates have a reply to this kind of objection.
In the final chapter, I shall address in a more direct fashion certain issues that
would arise if I am right about the value divide. Unfortunately, my picture of our
relation to values and reasons is bleak. We are stuck with a split vision of our
deliberative opportunities.
Contents
Acknowledgements xxi
PART I: ELEMENTS
1. Value Taxonomy 3
1.1 Different Taxonomies 3
1.2 Intrinsic and Extrinsic Values 6
1.3 Final and Non-Final Values 8
1.4 Varieties of Non-Final (Extrinsic) Value 17
1.5 The Coherence of IE 20
2. Good and Good-For 24
2.1 Kinds of Positive Value 24
2.2 Less Interesting Senses of Good-For 27
2.3 Mooreans and Good-For Monists 32
2.4 Value Dualism 35
3. Challenging Mooreanism 37
3.1 Introducing a Debate 37
3.2 Overall and Pro Tanto Value 38
3.3 The Argument against Mooreanism 39
3.4 The Totality of Value 43
3.5 The Intuition of Neutrality and Value Monism 44
3.6 Relationalists and the Intuition of Neutrality 46
3.7 Non-Relationalists and the Intuition of Neutrality 46
4. Challenging Good-For Monism 50
4.1 Relationalist Strategies 50
4.2 Relationalism and Aggregation 52
4.3 Separating Value from Normativity 57
4.4 Good-For Monism and Thick Value Concepts 59
4.5 Reasons Provided by Relational Value 64
4.6 Relationalism, Supervenience, and Constitution 67
5. Good-For Unitarianism 72
5.1 The Background 72
5.2 Good-For Unitarianism 74
5.3 Disunitarianism 76
5.4 Well-being 79
5.5 Thin and Thick Values 80
5.6 The Thick- or Thinness of Good-For 83
5.7 Good-For and the Intuition of Neutrality 84
xviii 
PART II: A FITTING-ATTITUDE

ANALYSIS OF VALUE
6. Fitting-Attitude Analysis 91
6.1 The New Agenda 91
6.2 FA Analysis and its Advantages 95
6.3 Brentano, Kriegel, Rowland, and the Wrong Kind of
Reason Problem 100
6.4 FA Analysis and the Moore/Brentano Challenge 105
6.5 A Reason’s Strength 109
6.6 The Real Agency Challenge to FA Analysis 112
6.7 The Value of Actuality 114
7. The Logical Consequence of Fitting Attitudes 119
7.1 The Property of Being an Intrinsic Property 119
7.2 FA Analysis and Value Dualism 120
7.3 The Normative Approach 123
7.4 The Logical Consequence Argument 128
8. The Fitting-Attitude Analysis Revised 131
8.1 The Combinatorial Account 131
8.2 Challenging the Arguments 133
8.3 Downgrading the Logical Consequence Argument 135
8.4 Redefining Final Goodness 137
8.5 A Substantive Argument against P** 138
9. ‘Sake’ 142
9.1 For Pete’s Sake 142
9.2 The Untranslatability Objection 144
9.3 The Functional ‘Sake’ 146
9.4 The Non-Evaluative ‘Sake’ 148
9.5 Vocation and Being Struck by Personal Value 150
9.6 ‘Sake’ in FA Analysis 151
10. FA and Motivating Reasons 153
10.1 Two Issues 153
10.2 Introducing Some Terminology 154
10.3 Favourings and Motivating Reasons 160
11. Favourings for No Reason 166
11.1 Aim 166
11.2 Favourings Not Governed by Reason 166
11.3 Raz and Expressive Acts 170
11.4 Habits and Explanatory Reasons 171
11.5 The Dual-Role Requirement 174
11.6 Reasonm and Reasong 174
11.7 Two Challenging Cases: The Surprise Party and Placebo 175
11.8 Arguments from Intentional Overload, Complexity, and Form 177
 xix
12. Mind the Value Gap 181

12.1 On My Own Authority 181
12.2 The Width and the Profundity 183
12.3 Geachian Crossing 184
12.4 The Disapprovables—A Personality Response 185
12.5 Silencing 189
12.6 Incommensurable but Comparable 192
12.7 Two Kinds of Importance 195
12.8 Minding the Gap 197
References 199
Index 211
Acknowledgements
In preparing material for this book—something that had begun already in 2011—
I have greatly benefited from comments from, and discussions with, many people.
As always, I owe much to my colleagues in the Department of Philosophy at Lund
University. Thanks also to the department’s staff. Over the years, they have all
been very supportive. My discussions with Wlodek Rabinowicz ensured that this
book is much better than it otherwise would have been. Our nearly daily conver-
sations were invigorating wake-up calls. However sure you are philosophically
about something, you can be sure that Wlodek has either a counter-argument or a
better version of your own argument! Wlodek also very generously let me use
parts of papers that we co-authored. My gratitude to him is therefore simply huge.
In addition, I am privileged to be surrounded by so many clever, creative, and
interesting colleagues and PhD students, and I am deeply grateful to you all. It is
thanks to you that the Higher Seminar in Practical Philosophy continues to serve,
year after year, as a friendly and thriving test ground for philosophical ideas and
arguments.
Much of the core material has been tested on audiences at St Andrews, the
universities of Aarhus, Humboldt, Kent, Leuven, Münster, Tübinge, Uppsala,
Vienna, Vrije, York, Zürich, and Ecole Normal Superior. I have also presented
material at conferences at Assos (Turkey) and Bled (Slovenia), and a recent
workshop in Llafranc (Spain) provided lots of valuable input, with my commen-
tator, Richard Kraut, giving me much to think about. The list of the people to
whom I am grateful is therefore long, and what is worse almost certainly
incomplete—my bad memory is not improving with the years. Be that as it may,
my thanks go gladly to David Alm, Henrik Andersson, Steven Arkonovich, Ralf
Bader, Rudolf Bittner, John Broome, Filip Buekens, David Copp, Stefaan Cuypers,
Jonathan Dancy, Steve Darwall, Julien Deonna, Sabine Döring, Richard Dub, Dan
Egonsson, Pascal Engel, Seyyed Mohsen Eslam, Cathrine Felix, Fritz-Anton
Fritzon, Andrés Garcia, Jan Gertken, Maria Green, Robert Heeger, Victoria
Höög, Ingvar Johansson, Jens Johansson, Frances Kamm, Jiwon Kim, Benjamin
Kiesewetter, Simon Kirschin, Atay Kozlovski, Uriah Kriegel, Iddo Landau, Scott
O’Leary, Stéphane Lemaire, Brian McElwee, Tori McGeer, Doug Maclean, Olivier
Massin, Anne Meylan, Eugene Mills, Kevin Mulligan, Bert Musschenga, Alastair
Norcross, Paul Nordhoof, Jonas Olson, Orsan K. Oymen, Robert Pál-Wellin,
Herlinde Pauer Studer, Björn Petersson, Philip Pettit, Christian Piller, Matjaž
Potrč, Peter Railton, Andrew Reisner, Henry Richardson, Olle Risberg, Paul
Robinson, Rafaelle Rodongno, Paul Russell, Ben Sachs, Signe Savén, Geoff
xxii 
Sayer-McCord, Thomas Schmidt, Mark Schroeder, John Skorupski, David Sobel,

Bart Streumer, András Szigeti, Matt Talbert, Fabrice Teroni, Folke Tersman,
Cathrine Torpe Tuborg, Gary Watson, Jakob Werkmäster, Susan Wolf, and
Michael J. Zimmerman. Last but not least, I am indebted to two anonymous
readers for Oxford University Press. Their constructive comments and criticisms
led me to make several important changes. Any remaining mistakes and muddled
arguments are not their responsibility.
This work includes, with the kind permission of Oxford University Press,
revised portions of my articles:
‘Intrinsic and Extrinsic Value’, in Iwao Hirose and Jonas Olson (eds), The Oxford
Handbook of Value Theory (Oxford University Press, 2015).
‘Value Taxonomy’, in Tobias Brosch and David Sander (eds), Handbook of Value
(Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 23–42. With kind permission from co-author
Wlodek Rabinowicz.
‘Fitting-Attitude Analysis and the Logical Consequence Argument’, Philosophical
Quarterly, 68 (272): 560–579 (2018).
It also includes, with the kind permission of Springer Science and Business Media,
revised portions of my articles:
‘Fitting-Attitude Analyses: The Dual-Reason Analysis Revisited’, Acta Analytica
vol. 28, pp. 1–17 (2013).
‘For Kevin’s Sake’, in Anne Reboul (ed.), Mind, Values, and Metaphysics:
Philosophical Essays in Honor of Kevin Mulligan (Springer, 2014), vol. 2,
pp. 55–69.
Finally, I have used portions of my chapter ‘Motivation and Motivating Reason’,
in C. Svennerlind, J. Almäng, and R. Ingthorsson (eds), Johanssonian
Investigations (Ontos Verlag, 2013).
My work was supported by a generous grant from the Erik och Gurli Hultengrens
Fond.
PART I
ELEMENTS
1
Value Taxonomy
1.1 Different Taxonomies
There are various kinds of value notion. In some cases, to understand one of them
we need to bring another value notion into the picture. But this is not always the
case. This suggests that some values are more fundamental than others. There are
a number of ways of referring to this distinction between value-dependent or
value-independent value, and there are different ways to account for it. In fact, it is
probably wrong to speak about a distinction. There are many dependency rela-
tions involved when we talk about values. I shall focus on the issue whether there
are any values which can be understood without appealing to other value notions.
I will attend to this in the next section, though. In the meantime, I think it will be
helpful to clarify certain things.
Values can be taxonomised in various ways, depending on one’s purpose. For
example, you might want to have a substantive taxonomy, that is, an ordering of
valuable entities. Following Derek Parfit (1984, pp. 493–502), it is customary to
distinguish between three main kinds of theory of what is, in effect, valuable. The
first two are monistic, that is they take there to be only one kind of thing that is
valuable for its own sake. With these, taxonomical considerations will not be a
major issue. Everything that is valuable either belongs to the kind specified by the
view as being finally (intrinsically) valuable or has value that depends on the value
carried by the bearer of the final value. Hedonism is clearly such a monistic view; it
identifies what is finally valuable with (a positive balance of) pleasure (over pain).
Of course, some hedonists (e.g. John Stuart Mill), who believe that different kinds
of pleasure have different values, require a more fine-grained taxonomy.
The second monistic view is the ‘desire theory’. This comes in several versions,¹
and each of these versions admits of two fundamentally different sub-versions (see
Wlodek Rabinowicz and Jan Österberg 1996). On the ‘satisfaction’ version, what is
of value is the satisfaction of our desires. On the ‘object’ version, the value accrues
¹ Desire theories can be more or less sophisticated. In a crude form, the theory tells us that what is
valuable is the fulfilment of an agent’s present desires. We get another version if we focus on a person’s
desires over his life as a whole, and say that maximising these is what is ultimately valuable. Again, a
third version will insist on some sort of epistemological requirement to the effect that what is valuable is
satisfying desires that have survived an exposure to facts about the various options available to the
agent. And related to this latter approach are counterfactual accounts focusing on desires the agent
would have if he were rational and fully informed.
The Value Gap. Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen, Oxford University Press. © Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen 2022.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192848215.003.0001
4  
rather to what it is that is desired. In one sense the objects we desire can be
heterogeneous, and this allows for a pluralistic substantive theory. Thus, on many
people’s lists of what they desire (or wish for) there will be things such as world
peace, the happiness of one’s beloved, and a new car. In another sense, this picture
is not quite accurate. Given a reasonable view on the nature of desires, what we
desire is best understood as the obtaining of certain states of affairs. The desire
theory is therefore monistic in the sense that it takes value to accrue fundamen-
tally to these obtainings, rather than to what pertains to the obtaining states of
affairs. It is the obtainings that are the proper objects of our desires. Thus,
although we might say we desire a car, this only makes sense once we have
specified an appropriate that-clause. Until it has been made clear that what
I desire is that I own a car or that my car gets a new set of wheels, or some such
thing, it does not make much sense to say that we desire a car, period. Such claims
are elliptical; to make sense of them we need to fill in that what we desire is some
obtaining of some state of affairs.² Put in this way, desire theories are also on the
substantive level monistic views about what is valuable. In my view, this gives us a
good reason not to rest content with such theories: they rightly capture one kind of
bearer of value (the obtaining of states of affairs) but there are other things that are
valuable as well. What hedonists claim to be valuable is a case in point. Pleasure
qua experience seems valuable, and so does the fact that a certain being experi-
ences pleasure. However, it seems odd to say that the specific experience gets its
value from the fact to which it pertains. Arguably it is the other way around; the
value of the fact derives from the value of the pleasure.
Many things that we find valuable are represented in the desire theory as at
most only derivatively valuable; the non-derivative value accrues only to the
obtaining of states of affairs but not to the pleasure, the car, or the beloved. This
is a good reason to be sceptical about the desire theory’s claim to be a complete
theory of non-derivative value. I suppose one might try to widen the perspective
and allow value to accrue to objects of other pro-attitudes such as admiration and
respect. With this alteration the restriction to states of affairs as the only bearers of
value disappears. However, I am not sure whether such an expansion makes more
sense than the restricted desire theory. Consider an attitude such as respect, which
takes people rather than facts as its objects. I respect a and the reason I do so is
because he is a person of, say, integrity.³ Or take love, which is also, at least on
some views, an attitudinal state directed on a particular person rather than some
² Here I am simplifying matters, though. It is possible that not all ‘desire expressions’ can eventually
be understood in terms of that-clauses. If so, then, properly speaking, desire views are not necessarily
monistic: besides the obtaining states of affairs, they will be able to take acts (understood then as
something other than obtainings) as value bearers. However, historically, desire views have downplayed
the value of acts, and so, since nothing much hinges on it here, we may set this dualistic version aside.
³ A word on my notation. When I express myself about things (persons, acts, situations, etc.) in
general, I will use lower letters x, y, and z. For instance, the following is true whatever we have in mind
  5
fact. What I respect, or love, is a. It sounds odd to say that what I respect is the fact
that a has displayed great integrity, or that what I love is not a but the fact that a
has certain properties. It is a kind of category mistake to say that facts are the
objects of such attitudes.
The problem for the expanded desire view, then, is to explain what precise role
is played by the attitudes in this account. Of course, we might want to say that a
person is valuable just because I respect this person—that the fact that I direct an
attitude on something is enough to make it valuable. Now, this is best regarded as
a kind of subjectivism. In recent years, rather sophisticated versions of subjectiv-
ism have been developed (Fritz-Anton Fritzson 2014), and it certainly is not a
view that we can dismiss without good grounds.⁴ I shall return to this issue
between subjectivism and objectivism in various places in this work. Here it is
important to understand that the fitting-attitude (FA) analysis does not, at least in
the first instance, ascribe any value-constitutive role to attitudes. For this reason, it
is not an overtly subjectivist view. A person is valuable, according to the FA
analysis, because there is something about this person that provides us with a
reason to respect him or love him. The connection between value and attitudes is
intermediate; you need to add reasons to the picture—only then do we have value.
This is, I think, one of the more attractive features of FA. It connects our attitudes
with valuable objects in a straightforward way which (objections apart) makes
much sense.
In saying above that the FA analysis is not overtly subjectivist, I do not wish to
imply that at a deeper level it is a subjectivist view. In fact, I think the FA analysis is
best understood as an objectivist view. However, whether it is a subjectivist or
objectivist view has to do with our view of reasons (or fittingness). If what we have
reason to do, or to favour, is ultimately a matter of our de facto attitudes, then the
FA theory will turn out to be subjectivist. Now, this is a possibility. In my view, it is
not the most likely one, but it is important to understand right from the beginning
that the FA analysis is not fully determined until we explain what we mean by
with x, y, and z: if x is taller than y and y is taller than z, then x is taller than z. However, in this book
I will also often talk about particular individuals, and for this purpose I will use lower letters a, b, c, etc.
The other variables should be self-explanatory.
⁴ A caveat is in order. Consider the following claim: an object (in a wide sense of the term) x is good
for an agent a if a values x. Versions of this kind of claim (which specifies e.g. that only certain attitudes
are genuinely or appropriately kinds of ‘valuing’) continue to attract attention from philosophers. If we
look upon it as a claim about the value-making features of x—what pertains to x’s supervenience base—
we are dealing with a substantive claim that is in principle open to both subjectivists and objectivists
alike. However, not everyone who endorses this kind of claim is happy with the above characterisation.
Rather, they seem to take valuing as having some other role, one that prevents the kind of value related
to the subject’s valuing from being objective. Subjectivists are keen to push this point. On their view,
what they are arguing for is best regarded as a metaethical position rather than a substantive one. For an
interesting discussion of this important claim published recently, see Andrés Garcia 2018. See also Dale
Dorsey 2017.
6  
reasons. I shall say more about this matter. Unfortunately, although I see things
more clearly now, I am still not quite sure what we should conclude on this
matter. One issue that has occupied me in the past concerns the distinction
between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons. Elsewhere I have argued that
we should be sceptical about this distinction, so we should not rely on it in trying
to understand different kinds of value. I continue to believe this despite the
many attempts that have been made to prove me wrong. However, there is no
place in this work to argue for this. In fact, in some places later on (especially
Chapter 7) I will even invoke the distinction—but mainly for the sake of
discussion.
The third kind of substantive theory—the ‘objective list theory’—should not be
forgotten. Explicitly pluralistic, this view maintains that values accrue to various
types of thing, which it lists. The list might contain pleasure and desire-
satisfaction. However, typically it will contain other entries as well, such as
friendship, freedom, knowledge, love, and so forth. However, here we need to
tread carefully. The entries that I have just referred to are sometimes themselves
called values. For example, pleasure and friendship are sometimes said to be
values. I shall avoid this terminology. I shall say instead, for example, that
friendship possesses value, or that pleasure is valuable, or that a painting bears
an aesthetic value. Without this adjustment, anti-realism about value will turn out
to be, if not false, then an utterly implausible position. Although this may well be
the case, it should not be made so by terminological fiat. Surely it is uncontrover-
sial that there are such things as friendship, love, and pleasure. What is questioned
by the anti-realist is whether there exists any value property that these things, or
anything else for that matter, can possess.
1.2 Intrinsic and Extrinsic Values
An influential tradition in value theory suggests that some values can be under-
stood, or explained, without reliance on yet other value notions; our comprehen-
sion of certain values is not dependent on an understanding of other value
notions. The tradition I am interested in—one that I believe, ultimately, we should
not follow—expresses this difference in value-dependence in terms of a distinction
between intrinsic and extrinsic value. I shall begin by outlining this influential
tradition. For the last two or three decades it has run into several challenges.
Eventually, we shall see that there are good reasons why we should break with the
tradition.
First, it should be said that the intrinsic–extrinsic distinction plays a central role
in many philosophical discussions. Without it, much of the recent debate about
motivational reasons, mental content, and epistemic justification would be hard to
understand. But no other subject area seems to be more closely associated with it
    7
than moral philosophy in general, and value theory in particular. The philo-
sophical tradition which divides the value domain into what we nowadays
describe as intrinsic and extrinsic values reaches back to antiquity. Obviously,
it is a book-length topic on its own that merits much closer scrutiny that I can
give it in this work. However, I shall at least say a few words about the
tradition in Section 2.2. The distinction was mainly understood to be about
things that are means to other things, thought to be valuable, and things that
are valuable not as an instrument, or means, but in themselves. Much of the
debate about the distinction has been substantive in character: the aim has
been to determine what kinds of things are in fact intrinsically good (good in
themselves), or bad (bad in themselves), and what kinds of things are merely
instrumentally good or bad (and therefore without value in themselves).
However, for the last hundred years or so, with the birth and development
of metaethics and formal axiology, philosophers have taken a growing interest
in more formal issues. The distinction between formal value theory and
substantive value theory plays an important role in this book. To be engaged
in substantive value theory is to endorse first-order value opinions (e.g. to
believe that John’s pleasure is good or that suffering is bad in itself). On the
other hand, to do formal value theory is to hold second-order opinions about
the status of value and valuing, and not least the conceptual relations between
our various value notions and other notions.
In formal value theory, the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value has
given rise to a batch of fundamental questions concerning the very nature,
importance, and coherence of our value concepts.
Above I referred to the concept of intrinsic value in terms of what is valuable in
itself. However, this is just one way of capturing this notion. In fact, it has been
glossed variously as what is valuable for its own sake, on its own, in its own right, as
an end, or as such, and as what is valuable, period. Depending on how we account
for these notions, they may or may not be referring to one and the same kind of
value. As will become clear later on, there are differences—some more important
than others—between the notions.
Extrinsic value, by contrast, has been characterised mainly as what is valuable
as a means, or for something else’s sake. The man in the desert who finds a deep
well will find a bucket extremely valuable. Still, the bucket is valuable as a means to
something that is intrinsically valuable (say, staying alive with a good enough well-
being level). But, again, depending on the account we give of extrinsic value, there
might be much more to the notion of an extrinsic value than the idea that
something is valuable as a means.
What should be clear is that in the many works that deal with value, more than
one concept of intrinsic and extrinsic value is at play, and hence more than one
distinction might be of relevance. In Section 2.2, I will examine some recent
accounts of the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value. I will suggest
8  
that a minimal conception that combines two ideas has taxonomic advantages.⁵
Unfortunately, to argue this in detail would require more space than I have been
willing to make here; however tempting it is to follow each and every interesting
track along the way, doing that would eventually make this work unnecessarily
hard to digest. My introductory remarks on this matter will mainly, therefore,
serve another function; they will provide the background against which the further
discussion of the two kinds of value will proceed.
Recent work has also shown that the traditional way of explicating extrinsic
value simply as non-intrinsic value leads to the conflation of a number of very
different kinds of value. I shall reflect on this debate about varieties of extrinsic
value in Section 2.3. Finally, in Section 2.4, I will consider some attacks on the
notion of intrinsic value questioning, in effect, either the very coherence of the
intrinsic–extrinsic distinction or its role as a demarcation line between funda-
mental and non-fundamental value.
1.3 Final and Non-Final Values
Always bearing in mind, then, that the label picks out more than one notion, I will
use the shorthand ‘IE’ to refer to the intrinsic–extrinsic distinction. Let us begin by
saying a few words about how, historically, IE has been understood. A vivid
tradition within western value theory divides values according to what I call the
finality sense (see Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen 2000):
(I) IE turns on what is valuable (and what is not valuable) for its own sake.⁶
A much more recent way of dividing values can be found in G. E. Moore’s

influential works. Here the idea is that IE should be expressed in terms of a
difference in value-making features, that is supervenient features. There is no
consensus on the nature of the supervenience relation, especially in these times
where ‘grounding’ (i.e. non-causal dependence) has become the word on so many
philosophers’ lips. However, it is widely believed by value realists and anti-realists
alike that values are properties which objects have in virtue of having other
(natural) properties.⁷ This insight, which is often considered to be one of
G. E. Moore’s important contributions to value theory, supplies us with another
⁵ See Fred Feldman (1998), and Michel J. Zimmerman (2001a) for detailed discussion of the more
prominent characterisations of ‘intrinsic value’.
⁶ In The Republic, Plato offers an early taxonomy (see Plato 1992, 357b–c). See also note 55 for more
on Plato’s way of distinguishing between different kinds of good, separating those that are valued for
their own sake and those valued for the sake of something else (or in both ways).
⁷ One might point out that what realists and irrealists mean by ‘property’ (and, of course, by ‘in
virtue of ’) will not be the same thing. I suspect that this is often the case. However, there is a minimal
sense of ‘property’ that both might agree to use. Thus, ‘property’ could be used by both parties in a way
  -  9
approach to the distinction. While Moore described intrinsic value in various

ways,⁸ and sometimes used the formulation ‘for its own sake’, he tended to home
in on the question whether value depends on the properties that are internal to the
value bearer.⁹ In what I call the supervenience sense,
(II) IE turns on the nature of the value-making features of the value bearer; if a
value depends exclusively on the bearer’s internal properties it is intrinsic; other-
wise it is extrinsic.
Understood in this way the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value may
seem imminent. In common sense, I suppose it is. Intrinsic value supervenes
exclusively on internal features, extrinsic value on extrinsic features (or, to be
more accurate, relational features that are external to the bearer of value). There
are complications, though. First, (II) depends on the notion of a ‘value maker’,
which is not as clear-cut an idea as could be wished for. Of course, we have an
intuitive grasp of what it means to talk about value-making features; we display
this know-how whenever we list what we believe are the features in virtue of which
the value bearer is valuable. Such lists tend to only showcase the salient value-
making properties; the ones that come easily to mind. But there are many features
that seem to have to do with why something is valuable. However, not all of these
play exactly the same role, and so we need a better understanding of precisely what
makes something into a value maker rather than, say, what enables, or disables,
something from being a value maker—to mention just two of the other
functions that a feature might have which are somehow relevant for the value of
the bearer. This notwithstanding, a discussion of the finer details of how to
delineate value-making features from other kinds of features will be set aside in
that corresponds to ‘sense of a predicate’. So, saying that x has a certain property would just be a way of
saying that x falls under a certain concept (and thus, by implication, if two predicates with different
senses apply to x, then x will have two kinds of property). However, when realists and irrealists go head
to head over whether values are ‘real’ properties, they are likely to be employing a richer notion of
‘property’. Just how we should understand this more substantive notion is a debated issue. John
Skorupski (personal communication) has suggested to me that when we employ ‘property’ in this
latter sense we attribute it to an object by the use of a non-synonymous predicate. In this sense, the
realist and irrealist would be disagreeing about the possibility of there being such non-synonymous
predicates, capable of picking out, for example, ‘intrinsic value’.
⁸ For instance, Moore sometimes focused on a thing’s ‘nature’ rather than on its properties: Thus,
according to Moore, an object has intrinsic value if and only if it has a kind of value that depends solely
on its intrinsic nature (1922a, p. 260).
⁹ See Moore (1922a, p. 260). Note that although Moore believed that nothing can be good for its own
sake unless it is intrinsically good, the converse, which is widely accepted by modern value theorists,
was something he dismissed in Ethics (1965 [1912]). There he claims that an object is good for its own
sake only if all of its parts are intrinsically good. To illustrate, consider an intrinsically valuable
painting. Suppose the canvass is not a valuable part of the painting. The painting would still be
intrinsically good (beautiful) but it would not be good for its own sake but good for the sake of its
good parts, such as its composition and colour (cf. Moore 1965 [1912], pp. 30–32).
10  
this work. I doubt that these details would be significant in the discussions that
I do engage with.¹⁰
Second, (II) depends more importantly on the distinction between an object’s
internal and external features, and metaphysicians disagree as to how we should
understand this distinction.¹¹ Value theorists tend to assume that we have an
intuitive grasp of what properties are internal or external. From a metaphysical
point of view, and among value theorists, this assumption is not uncontroversial.
Still, many present-day value theorists employ a method, building on a test
proposed by Moore (and others), which appears not to leave us totally in the
dark. Moore’s so-called ‘isolation test’ asks us to consider things (as such) existing
in absolute isolation. Where things are assumed to exist in absolute isolation, and
yet the things’ existence is considered good, we arrive at what seems to us valuable
in itself, on the basis of having performed the (intentional) isolation test (see
Moore 1903, p. 187). In other words, by thinking about an alleged value bearer in
isolation, we are able, Moore thought, to determine whether or not it is intrinsic-
ally good. This test was supposed to make it possible to separate what is valuable in
itself from what is either valuable for something else’s sake or without value.¹²
Moore’s thought experiment has been shown to be defective. Noah Lemos (1994)
convincingly argues that there could be bearers of intrinsic value that are incap-
able of existing alone. The fact of Smith’s being happy is a case in point. This fact
‘could not exist without Smith’s existing . . . Since it is necessarily false that Smith’s
being happy could be the only existing thing, this sort of ontological isolationism
is not very clear or very helpful’ (Lemos 1994, p. 37). Shortcomings of the isolation
test led Roderick M. Chisholm (1981), Lemos (1994), and Zimmerman (2001a,
p. 132; cf. Eva Bodanszky and Earl Conee 1981) to amend it.¹³ Common to their
proposals is the idea that we should reflect on the supposedly valuable object, and
then ask whether it is good, setting aside its consequences and without paying
¹⁰ For an informative discussion of the intricacies of this topic, see Garcia (2018). See also Orsi and
Garcia (2020), Garcia and Green Werkmäster (2020), and Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen (2021).
¹¹ See, for example, Lloyd Humberstone (1996) for complications concerning the distinction
between relational and non-relational properties.
¹² See Principia Ethica, p. 187. As is pointed out by Noah Lemos (1994), Moore is not alone in
proposing the isolation test. David Ross did so in The Right and the Good (1930, pp. 68–69), and
according to Zimmerman (2001a), Richard Price made a similar claim in ‘Review of the Principal
Questions in Morals’ (1948 [1897], p. 148). Moore’s own positive test was a reaction to Sidgwick’s
‘negative’ test. The difference emerges if we apply the test to complex entities (i.e. things composed of
parts). Suppose we are enjoying a painting. We can now try to determine its value by imagining that one
part of the composite (the pleasure or the painting) is absent. If removing, say, the pleasure-part makes
the composite lose value, we can conclude (according to this negative test) that all of the composite’s
value can be ascribed to the pleasure-part. Moore, who was a firm believer in organic unities, thought
this was a mistake. The value of pleasure is also affected if the pleasure is mere pleasure or pleasure that
we get from being conscious of something beautiful. He thought the latter was more valuable. Kant in
his turn endorsed a test, or method, for determining what is valuable. See here note 27.
¹³ Zimmerman shows that the ontological version is not only incoherent, but also misleading in
certain cases. It can lead us to identify ‘certain states as parts of other states when they are in fact not
parts of them at all’ (Zimmerman 2001a, p. 141).
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attention to any circumstances we believe it is or might be in. The demand that we

contemplate the object in this way is not incoherent. It may sometimes be hard to
comply with, but it does not ask the impossible of us. This amended test tells us,
then, to consider the thing—whether or not we believe or imagine that it exists on
its own—without reference to its context, and what it brings in its train, and then
to make an evaluative assessment. Lemos (1994, pp. 10–11) refers to this amended
test as the ‘intentional isolation test’, contrasting it with Moore’s ontological
method of isolation. If this kind of contemplation ‘leads you’ to believe the
thing is valuable, or good, then, assuming you really have managed to exclude
circumstances and consequences from your contemplation, you will have arrived
at what is valuable, or good, in itself or for its own sake. Or so the argument goes.
The real exegetical issue raised by the isolation test is very much another one.
We might conceive of the test as having two parts: first, we discount circumstances
from our contemplation and establish that there are no natural extrinsic features
involved by imagining object x in ‘isolation’. Our imagination picks out x’s
internal, natural features. Second, there is a step involving attribution of a value
to the object. But since we can obviously imagine many things that are not
valuable in isolation, how exactly do we arrive at the conclusion that x has intrinsic
value rather than being one of those objects with no value at all? As far as I can see,
it is not easy to find a straightforward answer to this question in Moore’s work. Do
we somehow intuitively sense this non-natural property? I think that is how a
number of people have been reading Moore. However, John Skorupski has alerted
me to (personal communication) several passages in Moore’s work suggesting that
this reading is not the only one available. Some remarks of Moore’s suggest he was
an irrealist about intrinsic value, holding that values are not real properties. So if
we take Moore to be engaged in a discussion about whether the property of
‘intrinsic value’ involves a substantial sense of property, there are passages in his
work that suggest he would come down on the side of the irrealists (e.g. see his
‘The Conception of Intrinsic Value’). This indicates that Moore had something
else in mind when he talked about intrinsic value. So perhaps he did not employ
‘intrinsic value’ in a substantive sense. Perhaps we should take him instead as
saying that when we ascribe intrinsic value to an object, we are just saying that it
falls under the concept of intrinsic value. The problem with this suggestion is that
Moore cannot really say this without making himself either vulnerable to his own
naturalistic fallacy argument or saying something that is, if not trivial, then at least
bordering on the obvious. For this reason, Moore’s handling of this theme is quite
frustrating.
In one respect the intentional version certainly is an improvement on its
ontological predecessor. But there are further complications. For instance,
depending on how we conceive of the idea of imagining something in isolation,
we are stranded with a more or less serious modality issue. My hunch is that this is
a matter of fairly serious complexity. Unfortunately, here I am only able to treat
12  
the matter quite superficially. I will therefore confine myself to outlining one
response to the issue, which is perhaps best explained by bringing in the FA
analysis. According to a preliminary statement of this analysis, x is of final
intrinsic value if x’s value depends on its internal features alone and these provide
a reason for favouring it for its own sake. Now, one might ask whether this
property of being a final intrinsic value is itself an intrinsic or extrinsic feature.
The fact that the analysis refers to attitudes might suggest that we are thinking of a
relation between x and some extant kind of favouring, in which case it seems clear
that, on the FA analysis, the property of being an intrinsic value will not itself be
an intrinsic feature of x. But I think this is a mistaken view. FA theorists do not
analyse value in terms of actual attitudes of actual people. Rather, they understand
value in terms of attitudinal types (concepts), and these need not be instantiated in
the world in which x is valuable. On this picture, we can therefore imagine that x
exists by itself—for example in a world without any existing attitudes. If some set
of properties of x is such that it provides a reason to favour x for its own sake, then
the FA analysis tells us that the value is a final intrinsic value, in which case the
value property is an internal feature of x.¹⁴ If there are no relata (no existing
attitudes), there is no relation, and hence (in one sense) there is no relational
property. In general, the FA analysis need not, and should not, refer to someone’s
actual attitudes. It should refer instead to attitudes qua possibilia. This suggests
that we can say that the property of being an intrinsic value is one that we can
imagine something to have if it is possible to imagine its value bearer as existing on
its own without losing the property. Hence, I am inclined to say that the property
is internal on one way of understanding what it is to imagine something as
existing on its own.
A complication arises, however. The claim that it is unnecessary to distinguish
between value in itself and value for its own sake has been questioned, as we shall
later on.¹⁵ It has been argued that objects might be valuable for their own sake in
virtue of relational properties that are not internal to the value bearer. If there is
something to this argument—and I believe there is—then determining the value of
something with the help of the intentional version of Moore’s isolation test
obviously becomes considerably more complicated. The intentional version
might still be a catalyst that helps us trigger substantive evaluative reactions.
However, we must now be on our guard; even the improved test may be doing
more harm than good. The fact that we are not ready to ascribe goodness to
¹⁴ I owe Wlodek Rabinowicz thanks for making me think harder on this matter.
¹⁵ Monroe Beardsley (1965), Christine Korsgaard (1983), Shelly Kagan (1998), John O’Neill (1992),
and Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen (2000) argue that what is finally valuable need not be
intrinsically valuable (in a Moorean sense). However, notice that there is a difference between, for
example, Korsgaard’s views and the account Rabinowicz and I give. While we discuss two kinds of final
value, Korsgaard discusses two different kinds of valuing.
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something when we contemplate it in isolation is consistent with the fact that the
object is valuable for its own sake.¹⁶
Such complexities notwithstanding, the supervenience approach helps us to
structure our views in a fairly easy and helpful manner. In what follows, I shall
therefore take ‘extrinsic value’ to refer to values that supervene on the value
bearer’s extrinsic (i.e. externally relational) properties, and I will refer to values
accruing to an object in virtue of its internal features alone as ‘intrinsic’. This will
facilitate further discussion of the recent debates about intrinsic and extrinsic
value.
We still need to consider an additional characterisation of intrinsic value.¹⁷ On
what we might call the derivation sense:
(III) IE turns on whether or not the value needs to be justified (by other values):
if a value provides justification for other values and is not justified by any other
value, it is intrinsic; and if it needs to be justified by, or is valuable in virtue of,
other things being valuable, it is extrinsic (see e.g. James Harold 2005).
Should we now conclude that values that depend on the circumstances are
derivative, and that intrinsic values are non-derivative? As tempting as that
might be, we need to tread carefully here. Consider the case of a valuable ring
(see Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen 2000). The ring might be valuable only
in virtue of the valuable diamond set in its clasp. Here the value of the ring is a
function of the value of one of its parts; it derives from the value of the diamond.¹⁸
¹⁶ As pointed out by Johan Brännmark (2002), Kant suggested that we place the presumed bearer of
value in different contexts to help us determine whether it is intrinsically valuable, i.e. valuable in any
context. Recently, Scott Davison (2012) has suggested that we should imagine the reactions of a fully
informed, properly functioning valuer; if he would not mind the annihilation of an alleged bearer of
value, we should conclude that it has no value; and if he would mind, the value is intrinsic. This test is
problematic. The fully informed valuer might not mind the annihilation of an object because the object
has certain effects, or is bad for something else, which suggests that unless this test is qualified it might
rather be a test of what is valuable on balance.
¹⁷ There are other interpretations, but they are peripheral. In one, IE is associated with a distinction
between trumping and non-trumping values (Patrick R. Frierson 2010); intrinsic values are then
identified with the former, overriding values, and extrinsic ones with values that are, or might be,
overridden by other values. IE has also been read as a separator of instrumental and non-instrumental
values: if a value accrues to a means, it is extrinsic; otherwise it is intrinsic. However, this division is too
indiscriminate to be of any real use. Finally, in recent years IE has come to be seen as a way of indicating
whether a value is perspective-neutral or perspective-relative (see Justin Klocksiem 2011). There are
also closely related value concepts. For example, things have been characterised as having inherent
value (C. L. Lewis 1946). Robert Audi (2006) interprets this notion as follows: ‘something is inherently
good provided that an appropriate experience of it is intrinsically good . . . , where the range of
appropriate experiences is limited to those that are responses to certain of its intrinsic properties’
(p. 86).
¹⁸ In the case of so-called ‘organic unities’ no obvious function of this sort connects the value of the
object and the value of the parts. On a common understanding, the goodness or badness of these
objects is not the mere sum of the goodness or badness of their parts or constituents. For instance, in
the case of ‘pain empathy’, a person is in pain when he realises that someone else is in pain. Pain
14  
It therefore appears to be a (conceptual) possibility that a derivatively valuable

object gets its value from the value of its parts.¹⁹
Undeniably, the supervenience sense of IE is important because it provides an
important taxonomic tool in value theory. However, we also need the finality
sense. From a substantive point of view, it is at least possible for a unique painting
to be valuable even if one of its value-making features is precisely its uniqueness.
Building on examples like this, a number of philosophers have suggested that
value for its own sake—that is what I shall refer to as final value—may well accrue
to something in virtue of its externally relational properties, and that uniqueness is
a bona fide case of a relational feature.²⁰ In the remaining sections I will therefore
assume there are two varieties of ‘value for its own sake’. I will take this to be a
conceptually interesting possibility. In line with this minimal conception of IE,
which is based on I and II, I shall refer to these values as two varieties of final
value. The set of final values, that is of what is valuable for its own sake, is then
constituted by, on the one hand, intrinsic values (understood as the value some-
thing has for its own sake in virtue of the bearer’s internal features alone) and, on
the other hand, final extrinsic values, that is things that are valuable for their own
sakes in virtue of at least some of the bearers’ externally relational properties.
Other considerations may eventually lead us to dismiss the idea that anything
as a matter of fact has final intrinsic or final extrinsic value. Later we shall examine
some considerations of this sort as well as some views that question whether the
notion of a final value is coherent. Meanwhile, here, it is worth noting that there is
a tradition in value theory that tends to understand alleged examples of final
extrinsic value in terms of final intrinsic value. Ben Bradley (2006) refers to this
tradition as the Moorean view of intrinsic value. He takes it to encompass two core
claims: that intrinsic value supervenes on state of affairs, and that promotion is the
proper response to such values. The second, ‘Kantian’ tradition considers what is
intrinsically valuable to be something that accrues to particular things, or objects.
empathy is generally considered to have positive value, despite the pain it involves. The value of such
objects is therefore not derivative in any straightforward way. Retributive justice is another popular
example (deriving from G. E. Moore). Such a whole is said to consist of two bad parts: the crime
committed and the punishment. Advocates of this idea regard the crime committed as something bad,
and they also regard the punishment as something bad, but when we put these bad parts together we
obtain a whole that is good (good, but not necessarily good on the whole, of course).
¹⁹ The derivative–non-derivative value distinction raises more issues than I can pursue here. David
Matheson (2011) has argued that something might be a non-derivative value in one domain but
derivative in another. I think there are more or less plausible ways to understand this idea, depending
on whether we have in mind a pro tanto value (i.e. something that is valuable in one respect) or an all-
things-considered value.
²⁰ It is, of course, a matter of some controversy quite what substantive role uniqueness and
properties like rarity play. It may be that in some cases such properties are best regarded as enablers
or enhancers (Jonathan Dancy 2004), i.e. properties that make it possible for other properties to be
value-making. In fact, it might also be the case that for uniqueness to be a value-making feature, some
other properties need to play the role of enablers or enhancers. For a recent discussion of the different
kinds of value-related roles uniqueness can play, see the blog discussion on PEA SOUP (http://peasoup.
us/2017/11/uniqueness-gwen-bradford/). See also the discussion in Section 1.5.
  -  15
Objects like people, rather than states of affairs, are the fundamental bearers of
values, and the appropriate response is respect (rather than promotion).²¹ Note
that Bradley recognises that whether there are one, two, or more concepts of
intrinsic value is in fact debatable. If we broaden the perspective of value so that it
is not only about what should be promoted or respected, then it seems that there
are a great many other kinds of (attitudinal) responses, and accordingly, a great
many value concepts. Later, when I introduce the FA analysis of value properly we
shall see that it can, quite unsurprisingly, subsume all these values under the
concept of what is valuable for its own sake, that is final (intrinsic and extrinsic)
value. In fact, as I have argued elsewhere (Rønnow-Rasmussen 2002a, 2011), from
a substantive point of view pluralism seems clearly more attractive than a monistic
view. Unless we suppose that all value accruing to a person is dependent in some
way on the value of some state of affairs, we will need, if we are to make a plausible
case for a pluralist version of an FA analysis, to embrace the logical idea that
while some attitudes require as their appropriate object persons, others require
some propositional entity. In my view, as I hinted earlier, it is logically odd to say
that we respect a state of affairs, or admire a fact. But there is no logical oddity
involved in respecting or admiring a person. Again, it is incoherent to say ‘I hope
you’, and I would at least ask for further clarification if you were you to say ‘I
desire you/person/car’. Desires (as I pointed out in Sec. 1.1) are best understood as
taking state of affairs as their objects (‘I desire that you should stay/that this
person stays, etc.).
That intrinsic values are not supposed to be occasion-sensitive in the way
extrinsic values are is one of the cornerstones of a Moorean axiology.²²
However, this view certainly seems to overlook the obvious fact that if value
supervenes on some contingent internal features, the object might lose its value;
all it would take is for the object to lose those features that made it valuable in the
first place. Mooreans generally agree that this appears to be so, but they insist the
appearance is misleading. They tend (somewhat overconfidently, in my view) to
handle the relevant counter-examples by arguing that they rest on a mistaken view
of the bearer of value; once the correct bearer is identified, it should be evident
whether it exemplifies final intrinsic or non-final extrinsic value. Suppose you
think, for instance, that a historical object x is valuable for its own sake in virtue of
its relation to some historically important figure. Mooreans might suggest that
what you really mean by this is that the value accrues to a state of affairs, or in
other words the fact that the object x with this relation exists. Mooreans would
then point out that this valuable state of affairs contains the relation as its
²¹ The idea that there is a consequentialist response to value (promoting) and a deontological one
(respecting) goes back to Philip Pettit (1988).
²² See Moore (1903a [1993], p. 81).
16  
component, so its value may be seen as intrinsic: the value of the state is based on
the internal features of the state itself.
If all ascriptions of final extrinsic value can be reduced in this way, there is no
reason to assume the existence of final values that are not intrinsic. This sort of
response has been criticised, though. Wlodek Rabinowicz and I have argued that
not all such reductions are reasonable. In some cases, the reduction would put the
cart before the horse: for example a dress once owned by Princess Diana might be
valuable for its own sake in virtue of having been owned by Princess Diana.
However, the value of the dress does not seem explicable in terms of the value
of the state of affairs consisting in the fact that Princess Diana’s dress exists;
whatever value this state has it does seem to derive from the value of the dress (see
Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen 2000).²³
The identity of the fundamental bearers of final intrinsic and final extrinsic
value has been debated a great deal in value theory.²⁴ However, if a dress having
belonged to Princess Diana is valuable, we have an additional argument for the
idea that we should be pluralists about the bearers of value. The first argument in
favour of pluralism set out from the idea that if we accept that attitudes may be
appropriately or inappropriately directed on objects (in a wide sense), and that
there are many kinds of appropriate response beyond promoting and respecting,
then the project of reducing every specific thing-value to state-value, or vice versa,
seems hard to defend.
The IE approach suggested here differs, if not in spirit, then in substance, from
Korsgaard’s widely discussed proposal that we should not confuse the ways things
have value with the ways we value things. For Korsgaard (1983, 1996), IE concerns
the ways things have value. Intrinsic value is the value something has in itself;
extrinsic value is the value a thing has from another ‘source’. She contrasts the way
we value things. We can value objects as ends or as having instrumental value
regardless of the location of the source of value.
Korsgaard’s position here is problematic (as she acknowledges: Korsgaard 1998,
pp. 63–64). It has been argued that her notion of a ‘source’ is ambiguous.²⁵ What
she has in mind appears to be something other than the supervenience base of a
valuable object (i.e. those features, internal and/or external, that are the value-
making properties of the object).²⁶ Her ‘source’ plays the role of what confers
²³ Not all reduction manoeuvres can be dismissed in this way, though. See Zimmerman (2001b). For
a response, see Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen (2003).
²⁴ For a collection of work on the issue of the ontological categories of the bearers of intrinsic (final)
value, see Rønnow-Rasmussen and Zimmerman (2005).
²⁵ See Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen (2000), Dancy (2004), and Hussein and Shah (2006). Cf.
Rae Langton (2007).
²⁶ What I more specifically mean by ‘supervenience base’ is what (following Jonathan Dancy 2004,
pp. 85–88) is often now referred to as the ‘resultance base’ of value.
  - (  )  17
value on an object, or what constitutes the value of the object.²⁷ The question
whether value requires such a subjective source is fundamentally an issue about
whether value objectivism or subjectivism is correct. To answer it we will need to
adjudicate between objectivist theories that reject the idea that there is any need to
talk about a subject’s conferring value on things and the kind of subjectivism
implying that we need to turn to the evaluator’s (non-cognitive) attitudes to
understand why certain natural properties are value-making.
This is no place to explore the debate between subjectivists and objectivists.²⁸
Suffice it to say that, given the taxonomy suggested earlier (which can be accepted
by both positions), intrinsic value and extrinsic final value become subcategories
within the class of final values, which is the more crucial concept in axiology and
ethics.
Thus, an object’s being finally valuable amounts to its being valuable for its own
sake, either in virtue of the value bearer’s purely internal features (intrinsic value)
or because of some of its externally relational features. Should we then expect all
non-final values to be extrinsic values?
It might seem reasonable to do so. If something is valuable for something else’s
sake, it is not clear how it could have its value in virtue of its internal features
alone. However, recently it has been argued that not even this is quite accurate;
some non-final values possess value in virtue of only internal features. If that is
correct, it follows that some non-final values are intrinsic in nature, so the view
that all intrinsic values are final values will no longer be tenable. As I will suggest
in Section 3, where I also consider some recent work on non-final extrinsic values,
we should resist this radical position.
1.4 Varieties of Non-Final (Extrinsic) Value
Among the non-final values, instrumental value—intuitively, the value attaching

to a means to what is finally valuable—stands out as a bona fide example of what is
not valuable for its own sake. Instrumental value has not received the same
scrutiny as (final) intrinsic value. This is surprising, since it plays an important
role in our evaluative outlook. Moreover, instrumental values are commonly
introduced by philosophers to explain the very notion of intrinsic value.
Beardsley (1965), in his classic paper, referred to this kind of explanation as the
²⁷ Korsgaard (1998, p. 63) repeats the idea that particular ends ‘have only extrinsic value, since their
value depends on our own desires and interests in them and is conferred on them by our own rational
choices’.
²⁸ See here Rabinowicz and Österberg (1996), Rønnow-Rasmussen (2003, 2011), Fritzson (2014,
2016) and Garcia and Green Werkmäster (2018). Intrinsic (but not extrinsic) value is sometimes
thought to be an objective feature (cf. Langton 2007). But if what determines whether a value is intrinsic
or extrinsic is whether or not it supervenes on internal features alone, subjectivists too may ascribe
intrinsic value to objects.
18  
‘dialectical demonstration of intrinsic value’: if x derives its value from being a

means to y, and y derives its value from being a means to z, and so on, we need at
some point to put an end to this chain: we need to be able to refer to something
that is valuable for its own sake and not for the sake of something else (of value).
Beardsley was sceptical about this line of reasoning. It ‘projects a certain kind of
ideal justification that cannot be completed if the series of means and ends has no
last term’ (p. 7). But to demand this kind of ideal justification is excessive, he
thought, since in other contexts we seem to be able to do without it.
Beardsley might be right to insist that we do not ultimately need another kind
of value in order to justify our claims about what has instrumental value. In fact,
we might even take his scepticism a step further. The idea that instrumental value
is a kind of value should not be simply assumed: the claim that something which
leads to value is itself valuable has to be argued for (Rønnow-Rasmussen 2002b).²⁹
However, suppose we set this issue aside. If instrumental value is carried by
means, causes, or instruments (in a sufficiently general sense of these terms),
and we can explain what a means, cause, or instrument is without appealing to a
value (or a non-instrumental value, at least), then it seems there is an opening for
an analysis of instrumental value in which no reference to some other kind of
value is made. The FA analysis of value provides answers both to the question of
what it is that makes an instrumental value into a value and to the question
whether such a value can be analysed without invoking a second kind of value.
The FA analyst understands value in terms of a normative notion (fittingness, or
reason) and a pro- or contra response (typically an attitude like desire or prefer-
ence). It has also been pointed out that on one version of FA analysis, x is
instrumentally valuable if and only if there is a reason to favour x for the sake
of something else, where the latter might, but need not, oblige us to refer to what is
valuable for its own sake. Thus, the FA theory has two advantages: first, it provides
an account of what it is to be valuable as a means (i.e. being fitting or what there is
reason to favour as a means); and second, it offers an analysis that does not require
yet another value. Not all means are valuable on this account—only those that are
either fitting to favour or such that we have the right kind of reason to favour.
Instrumental value is not, it seems, the only kind of non-final extrinsic value.³⁰
Kagan (1998, p. 109; Rønnow-Rasmussen 2002b, p. 33) speaks of ‘symbolic value’,
that is the value accruing to symbols. Bradley (1998, p. 110) discusses the related
notion of a ‘signatory value’, observing that ‘something could be good not because
²⁹ For Moore (1903, p. 24), instrumental value seems not to have been a genuine kind of value: being
instrumentally good was simply being a means to something good; it was not being good in virtue of
being such a means (compare what Moore says about contributory value (Moore 1903, p. 35). See also
Lewis (1946, pp. 384–385), who distinguishes what is instrumentally valuable from what is merely
instrumental or useful.
³⁰ There may be a yet finer distinction to be made. For instance, Conee (1982), and more recently
Bradley (2013), argue that an axiology should make room for a notion of overall instrumental value.
  - (  )  19
of what it causes or is a means to, but rather because of what it signifies’.³¹ And
much earlier Lewis (1946) suggested that a constitutive part of a whole might have
value even if it lacks instrumental or intrinsic value.³²
Very recently, Dorsey (2012) has defended a quite radical view of instrumental
values. He thinks such values might supervene on dispositional features that are
genuine internal properties. Let us conclude this section by examining this last
proposal.
Suppose we agree that dispositional properties³³ are genuine properties. Should
we then say that instrumental values supervene on them? Perhaps. Certainly, there
is an ex ante usage of the phrase ‘instrumental value’ that might suggest as much:
we speak, for example, about the value of a hammer even if it has never been used
as a hammer. Still, on an ex post usage it might make sense to confine the notion of
instrumental value to objects which (de facto) have been means to something with
(final) value. Conee underlines this de facto approach, saying that ‘an event’s
instrumental value of any sort turns on only what would accompany it, not what it
makes just likely’ (1982, p. 353). Dorsey does not entirely reject the idea that his
notion describes, not instrumental value, but rather what accrues to something
that is disposed in a certain context to be a means to what has value. This kind of
value would not, then, be the same as that which accrues to what is a means, in a
certain context and in a certain world, to what is valuable. Indeed, it might be
argued that Dorsey is in the business of characterising a merely potential value. On
the other hand, I do not see why we should exclude from the outset the possibility
that value accrues to potentiality. The real issue is rather what kind of value we are
dealing with here.
Consider a new spare tyre. This seems to have the kind of value Dorsey has in
mind. Given that the value-making features of the tyre are dispositional, it might
be felt that it is reasonable to infer that Dorsey has refuted the view that all
intrinsic value is final value. However, I think we should reject this conclusion.
Suppose the tyre is located in a climate so cold it turns into something very fragile.
³¹ Signatory value has played an important role in recent discussions of the value of knowledge. See,
for example, Campbell Brown (2012).
³² In a recent paper (2020), Johan Olsterhoorn draws attention to a value notion that Hobbes
employed, which is another non-final extrinsic value notion. Hobbes referred to it as ‘Pulchrume’.
Olsterhoorn explains the notion as follows:
Pulchrum ‘signifies that, which by some apparent signes promiseth Good’; turpe ‘that,
which promiseth Evil’ (Leviathan 6.8). Anything we imagine to bode well we call ‘pulchrum’
as ‘pulchritudo is that quality in an object that makes one expect good from it’ (DH 11.5).
According to Elements, ‘pulchritudo’ refers to ‘the signs of that goodness’—i.e. of that power
or quality by which a thing pleases us (Elements of Law, Natural and Politic 7.3).
(Olsterhoorn 2020; p. 247.).
This Pulchrume can be understood, I think, in a strong (evaluative) and weak sense, in which case the
Pulchrume is not a species of the good but only ‘promiseth Good’. Cf. Rønnow-Rasmussen (2002b) in
which a similar observation is made about instrumental value.
³³ Being soluble and being fragile are typical examples of dispositional properties.
20  
Here it would no longer be ‘potentially’ valuable (at least, not in the same way, and
of course it is irrelevant that it might now come to have another instrumental
value). But this suggests that the tyre’s value is in fact extrinsic. Should we
therefore conclude that its dispositional features are, after all, not intrinsic fea-
tures? Not necessarily. A perhaps more plausible suggestion is that the value does
not supervene exclusively on the internal features of the tyre. Rather, what has
value is the combination of internal dispositional features and certain relational
properties describing what a tyre is capable of in a certain circumstance. The
value-making features would be dispositional (internal) features of the object, but
also relational features of the world in which it is located.
1.5 The Coherence of IE
Recent discussions in formal value theory underscore the need to deepen our
understanding of IE. The pivotal issue—one that reappears in all these
discussions—is whether there is one, more than one, or perhaps no, kind of
fundamental non-derivative goodness. The assumption here is that intrinsic
value is the more fundamental of the two kinds of value.
What I shall refer to as ‘final extrinsicalism’—the view that there are (at least)
two kinds of final value, one intrinsic and the other extrinsic—challenges ‘final
intrinsicalism’, which denies this, committing us instead to the view that there is
only one final value, namely the intrinsic kind. The two positions do not exhaust
the theoretical space available, but they are widely discussed and therefore deserve
special attention.³⁴
Examples appearing to be inconsistent with final intrinsicalism abound.
Consider the property of being rare, which is an externally relational feature of
an object. Imagine a rare stamp. If a stamp that is rare can be finally valuable, we
have a final extrinsic value, which means final intrinsicalism is seriously
challenged.
An example provided by Jonathan Dancy adds considerable complexity to this
picture. It concerns a joke that is funny only when the butt of the joke is present
(Dancy 2004, p. 172). Dancy’s example raises a number of questions (see e.g.
Garcia 2018), but the general idea can be summarised as follows: objects are
valuable in virtue of underlying properties, the value-making function of which
appears to be conditional on the existence (or non-existence) of other properties
that are not themselves value-makers. Thus, in this case the butt needs to be
present, but his presence is not a funny-making feature of the story.
³⁴ A more restrictive version of extrinsicalism claims there is only extrinsic final value. This sort of
view has not been taken up much in recent discussion, however.
    21
Contrast this with the earlier example of the dress that once belonged to Princess
Diana and might have final extrinsic value (Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen
2000; cf. Kagan 1998; O’Neill 1992). Intuitively, the property of being Princess
Diana’s is a value-maker, not merely a condition of the dress being valuable. Being at
one time the property of a celebrity makes the object valuable.
These examples tell us different things. The presence of the butt does not make
the story funny; it is rather a condition of the story’s being funny. But is the joke a
case of intrinsic or final extrinsic value? That will depend, I think, on whether we
want to include, in our definition of intrinsicality and extrinsicality, conditions
that enable properties to have a value-making function or disenable them from
doing so. Such an expansion would probably give rise to new boundary-drawing
issues. It will therefore simplify matters greatly if we keep to the original idea that
it is the nature of the value-making properties alone that determines whether a
value is extrinsic or intrinsic. In accordance with this suggestion, the joke can be
understood as carrying a special kind of intrinsic value—one that is conditional on
some other features being present.³⁵ This is in keeping with the idea, maintained
from the outset, that we should describe values as intrinsic or extrinsic depending
on whether the value-makers are, internally or externally, relational features of the
value bearer.³⁶
The idea that something can be, as is sometimes said, good simpliciter—
whether the good is final intrinsic or final extrinsic—has been challenged by a
number of philosophers. In the next chapter we shall consider a recent attack
arguing that this idea plays no useful normative role and can be dispensed with.
Here, however, I would like comment on the persistent general scepticism about
the idea that predicative uses of ‘good’ (e.g. ‘John is good’) make any sense. This
scepticism dates back to Peter Geach’s seminal paper ‘Good and Evil’.³⁷
Consider the two following statements: ‘x is a good watch’ and ‘pleasure is
good’. In the first, ‘good’ modifies the category watches. This is an attributive use
of ‘good’. However, there seems also to be a predicative usage in which we express
that something is (simply) good (where this is understood to typically express that
the object is intrinsically good). In this usage—‘pleasure is good’ is an example of
it—‘good’ stands on its own.
Now, Geach argued that every meaningful assertive use of ‘good’ is attributive.
Meaningful judgements of goodness are always, ultimately, of the form ‘x is a good
C’, where C is a noun that picks out a kind. Where this is not explicitly the case,
³⁵ Cf. Jonas Olson (2004), where intrinsicalism is distinguished from what the author calls ‘con-
ditionalism’.
³⁶ In Dancy’s terms, the distinction turns on the nature of the properties located in the ‘resultance
base of value’ (Dancy 2004). See Garcia (2018, pp. 125ff.), which illuminates well the complex nature of
Dancy’s joke example. See also Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen (2021), which argues that the
essential features of an attitude (i.e., those properties that determine the nature of the attitude) can be
seen as a kind of enabler different from the ones Dancy describes.
³⁷ Geach (1956).
22  
the relevant use of ‘good’ is either nonsensical or capable of being reformulated in

attributive terms. Apparently predicative uses of ‘good’ of the form ‘x is good’ are,
on this view, incomplete expressions that need to be filled out with a specification
of the appropriate object category to which x is supposed to belong and within
which it is taken to be an exemplary specimen. Geach maintained that ‘x is a good
C’ never meaningfully breaks down into ‘x is C and x is good (period)’. For
instance, ‘x is a good watch’ cannot be understood as ‘x is a watch and x is good
(period)’. Attributivists tend to think that this generalises to all evaluative expres-
sions. So if we assert ‘John is good’ or ‘the Tour d’Eiffel is majestic’, this must be
because we take the former to be shorthand for, say, the claim that John is a good
philosopher, or sprinter (or person?), and the latter to express something like the
proposition that the Tour d’Eiffel is a majestic building, or structure, or tower, and
so on. John cannot be good, period. The Tour d’Eiffel cannot be simply majestic.³⁸
There is no consensus over whether Geach and his supporters succeeded in
showing that it is nonsensical to employ ‘good’ predicatively. Zimmerman
(2001a), for example, argues that we cannot dismiss intrinsic goodness just
because ‘good, period’ appears to be nonsensical.³⁹ All-encompassing attributi-
vism about ‘good’ is therefore controversial. Many value theorists accept it, but at
least as many reject it. In my view, there is a diluted version of attributivism that is
acceptable. But it is not very exciting, as it does not clearly differ from predicati-
vism. If one takes statements such as ‘that p is the case is good’, which ascribe
goodness or badness to states of affairs (facts), as elliptical shorthand for attribu-
tive statements of the form ‘that p is the case is a good/bad state of affairs’, then
predicativists may well have no problems with accepting such attributive rede-
scriptions. A radical and more controversial version of attributivism rejects this
manoeuvre, though. It opposes the idea that states of affairs are proper bearers of
value.⁴⁰
³⁸ Philosophers sympathetic to the Geachian view have nuanced it in important ways. For example,
Judith J. Thomson (1997, 2008) argues that if something is good it is always good ‘in a way’ (but not
necessarily, as Geach thought, good of its kind, which is a special form of being good in a way). See also
Philippa Foot (1985).
³⁹ For a defence of Geach, see Sven Danielsson (2001). For predicativist replies see, for example,
Charles R. Pigden (1990, 2012). Garcia (2019) convincingly argues that FA analysis can ‘leave the door
wide open for the possibility that value in a way should come in both the final and instrumental variety’
(p. 73). Christian Piller (2014, p. 181) provides an interesting example and an illuminating discussion:
‘Geach’s point, important as it is, has its limitations. A good car is good as a car but good weather is not
good as weather. In fact “being good as weather” does not seem to make much sense. Good weather
means sunshine, warmth, a light breeze maybe. It is weather which people typically enjoy. Good
weather is weather good for people.’
⁴⁰ In principle, attributivists need not resist the idea that facts or states or affairs can be good.
However, what I have in mind with radical attributivists do so. They would say that categories such as
‘state of affairs’, ‘event’, ‘thing’, and so on, are too general to play the role of category-fillers in value
statements: they do not provide standards allowing us to identify their exemplary representatives. Cf.
Geach (1956). Thomson (2008) explicitly rules out states of affairs from what she refers to as ‘goodness
fixing kinds’.
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conviction, painted a new and another Jacob. She was aware that the whole
world set sternly against him and, misreading the attempted murder,
suspected that, perhaps, even Adam Winter might not have forgiven him.
Surely it must have been some fiery word from Adam that prompted
Samuel to his attempt. Yet there she hesitated and, on second thoughts,
remembered Adam better. Doubtless he had pardoned long ago; but mad
Samuel none the less echoed the people, and she knew, from what her father
had told her, that the country side was more interested in Jacob's disaster
than regretful of it. Their sole regret went out for the brother and the aunt of
the man responsible.
Now, despondent and bewildered, Margery found some comfort in

talking openly to her brother and his wife.
She took tea with them on a Sunday and was unguarded and indifferent
as to what they might say, or think, of her opinion. They perceived the
change in her and set it down to Jacob's situation; but though that had
largely served to stimulate Margery and offer a point for argument with her
parents, it did not account for the radical and growing operations of her
soul. The inevitable had happened, and with all its sorrows and trials, she
yet wanted back her life as it was, sanctified to her by custom. She yearned
for the home that she had made and her spirit could rise to no other. She
was changed, weakened a little mentally, as well as much physically, by her
experiences, more frightened of life and less desirous to face it. Now she
longed only for quiet—to be secluded and hidden away, forgotten and left
alone. She did not dread solitude, silence, peace any more. She desired
them before all things and wearied inexpressibly of the noise of the street,
the bustle of business and the din of activity round about her. Among the
many facts learned with increasing certainty, was the assurance that she
would soon sicken and die, cooped here under the eyes of her parents—an
object of pity for her father, of triumph for Judith.
These convictions she voiced to Jane, and whimsically lamented that

situation which all just persons supposed she was most thankful to have
escaped for ever.
"Time blots out the bad and leaves the good still to remind you," she
said. "You may not believe it, but it is so. I always remember the happy
things and slip the unhappy. It's not only things that happen, but people that
made them happen. Get far enough away from people, and you find the
parts in them you hate grow dimmer and the parts you like grow brighter.
That's why the natural feeling is to speak kindly of the dead. We generally
feel kindly to them. At least I do."
"It's true," declared Jane. "When anybody's dead, part of 'em always
rises up again on people's tongues, and we don't speak well of them who are
dead only because they are dead and can't defend themselves, but because
time, as you say, Margery, keeps the good and lets the bad go. I can say it to
you and Jeremy, though I wouldn't to anybody else. Take your own mother.
I always feel ever so much kinder to her when I escape from hearing her, or
seeing her for a week or so."
"You oughtn't to say that, Jane," declared her husband. "It's a very
doubtful speech."
"Not it," she answered. "No use pretending. You don't see your mother
like the rest of the world, because she don't see you like the rest of the
world. And Margery's right. If she don't know, who should?"
"Ask yourself, Jane. You're married and have got plenty of sense to see
things. Suppose Jeremy and you was parted for some great, terrible deed
done by him: a bee in Jeremy's bonnet, for which he was sorry enough. And
suppose, with time, you hadn't only forgiven him, as a Christian, but really
and truly, as a wife and a woman. And suppose everything—everything that
had made your life, and that you'd made of your life, was taken away, and
you were left stranded. What would it be to you?"
"Hell," said Jane frankly. "There's no other word for it."
"And what would you do, Jeremy, if that had happened to you?"
continued his sister. "Would you feel that, for her soul's sake, Jane must
never come back to you?"
"I'm glad to say no such thing could happen to me, and it's idle worrying
to think what you'd do if a thing happened that can't happen," answered the
man. "And now you're here, it will be good for you to get away from your
own vexations for a bit and lend a hand with mine. And first I may tell you
that I've seen your husband that was."
"Seen him? Oh, Jeremy!"
"Keep it dark. I didn't seek him. He cornered me and would talk. Don't
think I yielded about it. Not at all. I was firm as a rock with him, because,
of course, mother's dead right in that matter; but there it is. Jacob Bullstone
was very wishful indeed to get into touch with you, and seemed to think he
had a right. But I hit out from the shoulder fearlessly, and he heard my
honest opinion of him and so on. However, I'm a man of the world
notwithstanding, and nobody knows how difficult the world is better than I
do. So up to a certain point and, well within my conscience, I may do as I'm
done by in the matter."
Margery regarded him with parted lips.
"He wants to see me?"
"I was the last to have speech with him before he was smashed, and
there's no doubt he had a near squeak of his life. I remember Amelia Winter
telling me years ago, when I was a huckster, that in the case of Samuel
Winter, as a young child, it was a great question whether he'd turn out
amazingly clever, or weak in his head. Unfortunately he proved one of the
Lord's own, and now, since this business, Adam feels it a difficult question
whether Sammy didn't ought to be put away. Why I tell you this is because
I'm coming to the point, and that is our mother's fine rule of life that nothing
happens by chance."
"Go on," said Margery.
"Well, granted nothing happens by chance, then we've got the

satisfaction of knowing we are doing Heaven's will from morning till night.
Therefore, if you help me in a vital matter and I help you in a vital matter,
we're both doing Heaven's will; and whatever came of it, mother would be
the first to confess it was so."
"Lord, Jeremy!" cried Jane. "D'you mean to say——"

"I mustn't come into it," explained Jeremy. "I don't say I'll lift a hand;
but I do say that, if it was established that Jane and I go to the post-office
when the old people retire, I should feel a great deal clearer in my mind and
kinder to the world at large. It is high time I had a bit of light on that
subject, and I'm a good deal puzzled the light hasn't shone. I've been hoping
a long time to hear we was to go in, and so I feel that you might find good
and useful work ready to your hand in that matter, Margery. And—and one
good turn deserves another. That's well within a clear conscience."
"A 'good' turn—yes," declared Jane doubtfully.
"It would be a good turn if I decide to help Margery, because we must

all do as the Lord intends, and therefore it couldn't be a bad one," explained
the casuist. "In a word, if Margery impressed upon mother that the right and
proper thing was to trust the business and the post-office to us, that might
determine the point. As a matter of fact I'm uneasy. Father's been into
Plymouth more than once of late and, of course, they're looking ahead.
They always do."
"They are," answered Margery, "and I'll tell you something. Mother
wants you and Jane to take over the business—under father. And father,
seeing you've never stuck to nothing in your life, feels very doubtful if
you're the man. They differ."
"Just as I thought," murmured Jeremy, "and some people might be

vexed with their fathers; but that's only to waste time. So there it is. You're
all powerful with father—eh, Margery?—and surely to God you know Jane
and me well enough to know mother is right."
Margery perceived the nature of the bargain. She believed with Jeremy
that their father was to be won. Indeed he sometimes came near yielding to
Judith's steadfast conviction. She might very possibly settle the point in her
brother's favour; but what could he do for her? Nothing with her parents.
The problems that had looked vague and, indeed, had never been
considered in her mind before, now rose and began to take a definite shape,
Until now nothing but a dim, undefined desire for something that must not
be—for something her parents held unthinkable—had stolen through her
mind and settled over it, like a sad fog. She had accepted the situation and
supposed that the craving for some return to vanished conditions was at best
weakness, at worst evil. Yet now she had moved beyond that point to an
acute nostalgia. Jacob's tribulation was augmented by the startling news that
he desired to see her. She found comfort in Jeremy's sophistries, but knew,
even while he uttered them in his mother's words, that they echoed anything
but his mother's spirit. Jeremy was a humbug, as charming people are so apt
to be; but the fact still remained: nothing happened but what Providence
planned.
She began to think of details and they made her giddy. To move from
secret wishes to open words was enough for one day. She had never dared
to be so explicit, and her confession in the ear of sympathetic Jane
comforted her. But her constitutional timidity, developed much of late, now
drew her in.
What could Jeremy do? Deeds were not in Jeremy's line. Time must
pass. Jacob must get well again—then, perhaps—she would see how she
felt then. He might change his mind. Possibly he only wanted to mention
some trifle. Margery doubted whether her present emotions were healthy or
dangerous; then she fell back on her brother's affairs.
"You've given me something to think about; and I will think of it," she
said.
"And Jeremy shall think of what you've told us," promised Jane, "for I'll
remind him to do so."
"The thing is the greatest good to the greatest number," declared Jeremy.
"That's always been my rule and always will be. And clearly the greatest
good to me and my wife and children lies at the post-office. Others see it
beside us. As for your greatest good, Margery—that's a very difficult
question."
"I know it. I hope I haven't said too much; but you'll forgive me if I
have. I feel—I feel, somehow, that I ought to see my husband, if he still
wishes it."
"You would," answered Jane, "and so would any nice woman feel the
same."
"That's the point," argued Jeremy. "You may be right, or you may be
wrong. But the general opinion is that you show what a fine creature you
are by keeping away from him. Why don't you put it to mother?"
"Put it to a man," advised Jane. "Ax parson. It's a free country and
though we're all Chosen Fews, that don't prevent parson from being a very
sensible chap. Or, if you don't like the thought of him, try somebody else."
But Margery gave no promise. She went home vaguely heartened and
determined at least to work for Jeremy. She felt, indeed, that what he
desired would be sure to happen presently without any word from her; still
to work for him was good. She had nobody to work for now.
Next morning she went to chapel with Mrs. Huxam and, finding herself
brave afterwards, actually followed Jeremy's suggestion and gave Judith a
shock of unexpected pain.
"Mother," she said. "I've got great thoughts and you should hear them.
We can't think anything we're not meant to think, and now my thoughts
have taken a turn. You know how it was with me. After our trouble I didn't
want to live; I'd have been glad to shut my eyes and sleep and never wake
up. Then I got better and braver. And then I grew to miss the life of my
home terribly, because, whatever the cause, to be wrenched out of the little
holding of your days must hurt. And so I got worse again—body and mind.
And now I've looked on and asked myself about it."
"Better you looked still farther on and put away all that joins you to the
past. That I've told you more than once, Margery."
"You have; but I can't do it. You can't forget your whole married life and
your motherhood and the father of your children. If you do, there's nothing
left for a woman. And I've come to see this very clearly. I'm Jacob's wife."
"No longer in the Lord's sight."

"Let me speak. I'm Jacob's wife; and what I'm sure now is that Jacob is
a very different man from what he was. God Almighty has changed Jacob,
and the poison that did these dreadful things is poured out, and he's left, like
the man from whom the devil was drawn by Jesus Christ. Mother, when
first I even thought about Red House, I felt shame and dursn't tell you, for I
feared the longing to see it again came from the devil. Now I don't feel
shame, and I know the longing don't come from the devil. There's duty to be
done there yet."
"Thank God you've told me this," answered Judith, "for we've got to do
some fierce fighting, I fear. Not the devil? Why, I see his claws, Margery!
"'Tis his last and deadliest stroke, to make his temptation look like duty
and come before you clothed like an angel of light. An old trick that's
snapped many a soul. Never, never do you hide your thoughts from me,
Margery, after this."
"But wait. Suppose, by forgiving in act as well as heart, I went back

presently. Then I might save Jacob himself."
"Oh, the cunning of the Enemy—the craft—the sleepless cleverness!

No, you can't save Jacob Bullstone; but you can lose yourself. There's
always the chance of losing yourself while breath is in your body, and
Lucifer knows it, and he'll often win at the last gasp on a man's deathbed.
He's proud, remember, and his pride leads him to try the difficult things.
Can't you see? How is it so few can see the net he weaves, while the lotion
of the Gospel's at everybody's hand to wash their eyes clear if they would?
He's vain as a peacock and likes to do the difficult things and catch the
souls in sight of Heaven's gates. I know; I read him; not many women have
conned over his ways like I have. And now he's saying 'Jacob Bullstone is
mine—a gift from his youth up—and there's no cleverness in keeping your
own; but the woman he's cast down is not mine.' And your soul would be
worth the winning. And what's cleverer than to make you think you can
save your doomed husband's soul when, to try, would be to lose your own?
You'd best to pray on your knees about this and call loudly on your Saviour.
I'm a lot put about to hear of such dreadful thoughts. They've crept in
through the chinks in the armour of salvation, Margery, and you must look
to it this instant moment."
"There's a human side, mother. The man has been called to face death.
He lies there in hospital and——"
"And where did he fling you to lie? Where was hospital for the ills you
have suffered and the death you have died? There is a human side, and to
return good for evil is our duty; but there's a higher duty than that. Don't
argue. I know all about the human side; but humanity was never yet called
upon to risk its immortality and hope of salvation. I'll hear no more
touching this at all, Margery. I'm suffering for you a good bit. I've failed to
make the truth clear seemingly."
"No, no, you haven't failed. I know how you view it."
"Set your trust where only trust can be set," said Mrs. Huxam, "and trust
your God, like a little child, to show you, in His good time, how your future
life's got to go. And first He wills for you to get up your health of mind and
body. Your mind before everything. Your body's nought; but your mind's
sick—far, far sicker than I thought—and we must see to it. There's fighting
to be done and we'll fight. I thought all that was over; but the devil smells a
sick soul, like a cat smells fish, and I might have known there was danger
lurking."
They returned home, to find that somebody had called upon Margery's
mother. Old William Marydrew awaited them in his Sunday black.
Margery he welcomed kindly, though she responded in doubt; but Mrs.

Huxam, who knew the ancient man for her son-in-law's friend, showed
open suspicion and seemed little inclined to grant the speech he begged.
"I've no quarrel with you," she said, "and I very well remember your
godly daughter, for Mercy Marydrew had the light; but——"
"The better the day the better the deed," ventured Billy. "Don't stand
against me till you've heard me. I don't come from Mr. Bullstone. I'm here
on my own—for a friendly tell—and I hope you'll respect my age and give
ear to what I'd like to say."
Mr. Huxam, who had been talking to William until his wife's return,
supported the proposition.
"Hear him, Judy," he said. "Nobody's ever heard nothing from William
that he shouldn't hear, but on the contrary, much that was well worth
hearing. Wisdom like his, when it's mellow and not turned sour, as wisdom
will with some old folk, be all to the good. We'll go into the kitchen and see
after dinner and leave you to it."
He departed with Margery, and Mrs. Huxam took off her black thread
gloves and blew her nose.
"Speak then," she said, "and take the easy-chair. I'm not one to deny
respect and attention to any religious-minded man; but I warn you that there
are some things don't admit of dragging up. You understand."
William plunged at once into the great matter of his visit.
"Single-handed I come," he said, "and I wish I was cleverer and better

skilled to bend speech to my purpose; but you must allow for that. In a
word, there's a general feeling in a good few minds that Jacob Bullstone is
indecent and blameworthy to want his wife to go back to him; while,
against that, in a good few other, well-meaning minds—women as well as
men—there's a feeling it might be a very decent thing to happen, and
wouldn't hasten the end of the world anyway. And I, for one, incline to
think the same."
"The end of the world's not our business," said Judith, "but the souls of
ourselves and our children and grand-children are our business. You strike
in on ground where I've just been treading, and I'm very sorry to hear you
can say what you have said. Whether it's indecent and blameworthy for
Jacob Bullstone to want his wife don't matter at all. What those doomed to
eternal death want, or don't want, is nought. But we've got to think of the
living, and we've got to save the souls that are still open to be saved."
"Certainly; and who, under God, has the right to damn woman, or child,
or man, or mouse, my dear? I saw Bullstone in hospital yesterday, and
seeing and hearing him, it came over me like a flame of fire to have a word
with you, because well I know you are the turning point—the angel of life,
or death I might say—to these two. Everything depends upon you
seemingly—or so he reckons. You hold their future lives in your hand.
That's a lot to say, but not too much. And I should much like to hear your
point of view on this high subject. Bullstone, I must tell you, have suffered
a very great deal, and his eyes are opened to his lunatic act. He was just as
mad every bit as Sammy Winter, who set the bull on him to mangle him.
Just as mad, my dear; but with a far worse sort of madness; and yet a
madness that can be cured, which Sammy's can't in this world. And afore
the God we both obey, I tell you that Jacob is cured. His sufferings have
been all you could wish, and his broken thigh, and so on, was nothing in
comparison. He's gone through tortures that make his broken bones no
worse than a cut finger; and I want you to understand that he's long ways
different from what he was, Mrs. Huxam, and an object for good Christian
forgiveness all round. And now you tell me what you think about it?"
Judith looked, almost with pity, at the ancient prattler. It seemed to her
that such people as Mr. Marydrew could hardly have more souls to save, or
lose, than a bird on a bough. They were apparently innocent and went
through the world, like unconscious creatures, doing neither harm nor good.
But Billy suddenly appeared in harmful guise. It was as though an amiable,
domestic animal had showed its teeth, threatened attack and became a
danger.
"You're touching subjects a thought too deep for your intellects, Mr.
Marydrew, if you'll excuse me for saying so," she began.
"Don't say that. I venture to think——"
"You think, but I know. I know that no man or woman can interfere
between Jacob Bullstone and his Maker, or undo what's done. For once
even the doubtful sense of the world at large sees it. A child could see it.
My daughter has come to the gate of salvation by a bitter road, like many
do. She's faced great sufferings and escaped awful perils; but she's through
the gate; it's fast home behind her, and she ain't going to open it again to her
death—be sure of that. He dares to want to see her, and you say he's
changed. But, after you've done some things, it's too late to change. He's
lost. Why? Because, like a lot of this generation, he's listened to false
teachers and thought the Powers of Evil were growing weak. To hear some
people, you'd think the devil was no more than a scarecrow set up to
frighten the world into the paths of goodness."
"True," admitted Billy. "It was so with me. Looking back I can plainly
see, as a lad, the fear of Old Nick had a lot more to do with my keeping
straight than love of God. God was above my highest imaginings. I only
knew He was wishful to get me into Heaven some day, if I gave Him half a
chance. But the devil seemed much nearer and much more of a live person.
Somehow you find that bad folk always are nearer and more alive than
good ones—don't you?"
"Because we all know bad people and have every chance to see them
misbehaving," said Mrs. Huxam, "but good people are rare, and always will
be."
"I wouldn't say that. I'm so hopeful that I rather share the growing
opinion against hell. I believe the next generation will knock the bottom out
of hell, my dear, because they'll find something better. There's a lot of
things far better than in my youth, and new love be better than ancient fear.
Grant that and you can't say Jacob's down and out. He's a very penitent
man, and he's turned to God most steadfast of late, and it would be a great
triumph for the mercy of God, his Maker, if he came through, and a great
sign of the Almighty's power in human hearts."
She regarded Billy with mild interest, but hardly concealed her
contempt.
"And you in sight of your grave and your judgment, and so wrong in
opinions," she said. "'A sign?' Yes. This generation seeks after a sign no
doubt; and that's an impious thing to do at any time. And I dare say the day
is not very far off when it will get the sign it deserves. D'you know what
you're doing, you perilous old man? You're trying to hold back the mills of
God—you, that know so little of the truth, that you can say the bottom's
going to be knocked out of hell! I didn't ought to listen, I reckon, for from
your own mouth you've told me you are with the fallen ones, and I never
thought the father of Mercy Marydrew had missed salvation. But 'tis a very
true thing that most of us are judged out of our mouths. No devil! Poor
soul! Poor, lost soul! But, such is the will of God, that I see clearer and
clearer how only them that have escaped Satan know him for what he is.
The world lies in his keeping, and the people don't know no more what has
caught them than the fish in a net. But I know. I see his ways and his awful
art. I see him as he is—black—black—and you can smell the smeech of
him when some people are talking. And not the swearers and lewd ones
only, but many, as think, like you, they are doing God's work. That's the last
and awfulest trick of him, William Marydrew—to make his work look like
God's."
Billy was amused and distracted from the object of his visit.
"My!" he said. "Blessed if I thought there was anybody in Brent knew

such a lot about Old Nick as you do, Mrs. Huxam. A proper witch doctor
you be! But even the saved make mistakes. 'Tis on the cards you may be
wrong, and I hope you are. You'm terrible high-minded, but them that want
to be high-minded must be single-minded, and the clever ones often come
to grief. You know a lot too much about the Black Man, and I'd like to hear
who told you. But be that as it may, there's a very fine thing called mercy—
come now."
"There is," said Mrs. Huxam, "or the bolt would fall a lot oftener than it
does. Mercy belongs to God, else heaven would be empty when the Trump
sounds; but there's also such a thing as justice, and justice is man's business.
He can leave mercy where it belongs and not dare to think of such a thing
when a sinner falls. For that's to know better than Him that made the sinner.
Justice is what we understand, because our Maker willed that we should.
Our first parents had their taste of justice, and justice is within our reach. To
talk of showing mercy to the wicked as you do, is to say a vain thing and
range yourself against justice. Only through justice can come hope for any
of us, William Marydrew. Our business is to do justly and not pander with
evil, or try to touch the thing with merciful hands."
"And that's what life have taught you," murmured Billy. "And you
thrive and keep pretty well on it. I've always heard you was a wonder, my
dear, but how wonderful I never did guess. Now tell me, is Adam Winter,
who be of the Chosen Few, in the right to forgive the man that did him so
much harm, or in the wrong?"
They talked for an hour, then, weary and conscious that Mrs. Huxam
was not made of material familiar to him, William rose and went his way.
"No offence given where none is taken, I hope. I'm sorry you can't see it
might be a vitty thing for husband and wife to come together in fulness of
time; because if you can't see it, it won't happen perhaps. But turn over the
thought, like the good woman you are, and if the Lord should say that
mercy ain't beyond human power, after all—well, listen."
"You needn't tell me to listen, Mr. Marydrew. I'm sorry for your
blindness and I'm sorry for your deafness, but I see clear and I hear clear
still."
"Good day then. No doubt it takes all sorts to make a world."
"Yes," answered she, "but only one sort to make a heaven."
He laughed genially.
"Then I hope they won't knock the bottom out of hell, after all, else
where should us of the common staple go? Must spend eternity
somewhere."
"Scratch a sinner and the devil always peeps out," thought Mrs. Huxam
as William departed.
CHAPTER VII
AT JACOB'S BEDSIDE
A week later William visited Jacob in hospital. He was nearing

recovery, but now knew that he might be lame for the rest of his life. The
sufferer felt indifferent; but he cherished minor grievances and grumbled to
his friend.
"Only Auna ever comes to see me. Would you believe that? Not once
has John Henry visited me, and only once, Avis—and her marriage, that I've
agreed to, and the farm that I've given her and all!" he said.
"Young lovers be selfish toads," explained William; "think nothing of it.

I believe Avis will prove a better daughter after marriage than before. She's
the sort will get sweeter with ripeness. For John Henry there's no excuse. I'll
talk to him some day and open his eyes. But the great truth is that their
amazing grandmother be more to your children than their own parents. A
mystery, Jacob; but the ways of blood are always a mystery. The dead will
come to live in their havage[1] and pass on the good and bad qualities alike.
'Tis a pity Providence don't look to it that only the good be handed down;
because then the breed of men and women would be a lot better by now
than they are; but all qualities are part and parcel, and even goodness often
takes narrowness and coldness of heart along with it."
[1] Havage—offspring.
"Margery's heart was never cold."
"But her mother's—her mother's, Jacob! I may tell you now that I
carried out a little plot in that quarter and went to see Mrs. Huxam on a
Sabbath. I had in my mind that at my great age and with my well-known
good character, I might influence her; because in a few other directions I've
talked round high-minded people and showed 'em that, as things are, nought
could be hopefuller than for you and your wife to come together again."
"You meant well as you always do, Billy."
"An Old Testament fashion of woman is your mother-in-law. The faith

that would move mountains. It's a good thing that she hasn't got much
power, for she'd use it in a very uncomfortable fashion if she had. A great,
mournful wonder in the land. She's like a sloe-bush, Jacob: the older she
grows, the sharper her thorns and the poorer her fruit. I came away with my
tail between my legs, I assure you. I was dust in the wind afore her."
"She'll never change."
"Never. Wild horses wouldn't make her change. Hell comforts her, same
as heaven comforts us, and there's no fear the fires would go out if she had
the stoking."
"The littleness of her—the littleness of her!" cried Jacob. "Can't she see
that all this talk is nothing to tortured flesh and blood? Her power lies in the
weakness and ignorance of other people. Hear this, William: my wife would
see me and listen to me, if her mother allowed it. And when I know that—to
Auna she whispered it—in a weak moment—still Auna heard—and when I
know that, what's hell or heaven to me? They must be nothing, anyway, to a
man who has done what I've done—to a man who has brought such sorrow
on the earth as I have. What is eternity to one who's wasted all his time?
The things I might have done—the happiness I might have given—the good
I might have wrought! Instead, I break the heart of the best, truest woman
ever a man had for wife. What can alter that? Can eternity alter it? Can
heaven make it better, or hell make it worse? Nothing can change it but
what happens here—here—before it's too late. And Judith Huxam is going
to confound all—just that one, old woman, poisoned by religion, as much as
I was poisoned by jealousy."
"A very great thought, Jacob," admitted Mr. Marydrew. "We be in the
hand of principalities and powers, and mystery hides our way, look where
we will. But we must trust. Everything is on the move, and the Lord can
touch the hardest heart."
"Hearts are nothing, William. The head governs the world, and great,
blind forces govern the head. Blind forces, driving on, driving over us, like
the wheel over the mole by night; and despite our wits and our power of
planning and looking ahead and counting the cost, we can't withstand them.
They run over us all."
"We can't withstand 'em; but the God who made 'em can," answered
William. "Be patient still and trust the turn of the lane. You be paying the
wages of your sin, Jacob; you be paying 'em very steady and regular; and I
hope that a time will come when you'll be held to have paid in full. We
never know how much, or how little our Maker calls us to pay for our
mistakes. You may have very near rubbed off the score by God's mercy; for
He's well known for a very generous creditor and never axes any man to
pay beyond his powers."
He chattered on and, from time to time, patted Jacob's big hand, that lay
on the counterpane of his bed.
The sick man thanked him presently and then there came Peter, to see
his father on business. He asked after Jacob's health and expressed
satisfaction to know that he was making progress. Having received
necessary instructions, he went his way and William praised him.
"There's more humanity in Peter than there is in my eldest," admitted

Peter's father.
He grew calmer before Billy left him and promised to keep his soul in
patience.
"First thing you've got to do is to get well and up on your legs again
against the wedding," urged William.
"I hope much from it," answered Jacob. "I'm planning to beg Barlow
Huxam to see me on the subject. That's reasonable—eh?"
"Very reasonable indeed. He's one with a good deal of sense to him. In
fact the man as have lived all his life with your mother-in-law must have
qualities out of the common," declared William. "But he haven't
neighboured with that amazing character all these years for nothing. How
much of his soul he calls his own, you may know better than me. 'Tis a case
of Aaron's rod swallowing the lesser, and he won't gainsay Mrs. Huxam in
anything, I'm afraid."
When he was gone, one thought of a comforting character remained
with the sick man. He had been much daunted with the tremendous moral
significance of the opinion of the world and its crushing censure. It had
weakened resolution and increased his self-condemnation. Now his friend
was able to assert that public emotion grew quieter against him; that even,
in some quarters, he had won an admission it might be reasonable for
husband and wife to come together again. This fact soothed Bullstone, for
like many, who do not court their fellow-creatures, he had been, none the
less, sensitive of their opinions and jealous of their approval. Herein,
therefore, appeared hope. He felt grateful to his old companion, who,
among so many words that to Jacob meant no comfort, was yet able to drop
this salutary consolation. He much desired to tell Auna, who had long been
the recipient of all his confidences and made older than her years by them.
CHAPTER VIII
JEREMY EVASIVE
After Margery knew her husband's desires, she was animated fitfully to
make an effort and return. But she lacked strength to do any such thing
single-handed. She had been losing vitality, yet so gradually, that none
about her appeared conscious of the fact. Even Auna saw her too often to
appreciate it. The girl came every week, but won no further opportunity to
see her mother alone. She opposed a sulky obstinacy to her grandmother
and Judith began to fear for her.
Then Margery saw her brother again and, with even less reticence than
on a former occasion, appealed to him. She had kept her original contract
and succeeded in winning her father. It was understood that Jeremy and
Jane would take over the post-office and the draper's shop, when the
Huxams went to their private house; and Jeremy, now accustomed to the
idea, argued that his sister had really not influenced the decision and that
she might not, therefore, fairly ask him to assist her present project. In fact
he much desired to be off the bargain, and but for Jane, would have evaded
it. She showed him, however, that this might not honourably be done and,
with very ill grace, Margery's brother listened to her purpose.
"I must go back when he does," explained Jacob's wife. "He's made a
good recovery, and can walk on crutches, and will soon be able to travel
with a stick. And the next thing will be the wedding, I suppose; and I ought
to be at my home for that. Because such a thing will break the ice and help
all round—at least so I feel and hope. I must go back, Jeremy. I'm called
stronger and stronger to it, and mother's awful ideas don't trouble me no
more. I've gone much farther than to forgive Jacob now. He's been very near
death and I ask myself what I'd have felt. But all that's my business. What I
beg from you, Jeremy, is just practical help—to meet me by night with your
trap, unbeknownst to any living thing but ourselves, and drive me back."
"I don't like it—I hate it," he answered. "It's not a religious action and
I'm very doubtful indeed if it's a wise one even from a worldly point of
view. The excitement will certainly be terrible bad for you, because you're
in no state at all to stand it."
"It may be kill or cure; but I'd far rather face it than go on like this—
seeing my bones come through my skin and my hair fail me. It'll soon be
now or never; but I do think, if I get back quietly and quickly, I'll build up
again and be some good to my family. I'm only sorry for mother."
Jeremy exploited the ethical objections.
"You see, Margery, it's quite as difficult for me as for you. As a matter
of fact you're putting a great charge on my conscience, because I've got to
go contrary to mother and behind her back—a thing I've never yet done—
and feeling as I do that she is right——"
"You've promised," interrupted Jane. "You promised to lend Margery a

hand if she helped you; and she did help you. And it's humbug to say you
never hid anything behind your mother's back, my dear man. What about it
when you married me?"
"I'm talking to Margery, not you," he replied, "and I was going to say
that somebody else might help her in the details much better than I could.
You see some think she's right, and such as them would do this with a much
better appetite than I shall. How if I was to drop a hint and get another man
to do it, Margery? It would be just the same to you and a good bit pleasanter
for me."
"There's nobody but you," she answered, "and it's properly unkind if
you're going back on your promise."
"He isn't," declared Jane with diplomacy. "He's a lot too fearless and a
lot too good a brother for that."
"I wouldn't say I promised; but of course if you feel I did——"

continued Jeremy. "However I've got rather a bright idea, and since you're
firm about this, and nobody will thank God better than your husband if you
do go back, then why not let him do it? That would be a natural seemly
arrangement since you both think alike. I'm perfectly willing to go to him
and tell him."
"No," said Margery. "That would upset everything I've planned. My

return must be a surprise for a thousand reasons. I want to go back as I
came out. In plain words, I've got to escape mother to go at all. Set like steel
as she is against any truck with Jacob, I have no choice but to deceive her.
I'm too weak to carry it off with a high hand, and she'd stop me if she
guessed I was thinking of it. Only I can't, of course, walk to Red House, and
so I must be drove; and you must drive me."
"If you're a man, you will, Jeremy," added Jane. "You promised."
"I bargain, then, that my part never comes out," said Jeremy, much
perturbed. "I consider this is something of a trap I'm in, and I don't think
much the better of you for it, Margery. And I believe you're courting a pack
of trouble, not to speak of Everlasting punishment if you go back to such a
man. But since you won't let me out, I'll do as you wish on the one
understanding, that my name's never whispered."
Neither Margery nor Jane, however, felt any sorrow for Jeremy.
"Thank you, then," said his sister. "It's only a question of waiting now
till my husband's well enough to go home. Then you can fix up a night, and
I'll husband my strength and come and meet you at Lydia Bridge, or
somewhere out of the way. We might do better to go round under Brent
Tor."
"We must leave the details for the present," said Jeremy, "and it will be
needful to wait till the nights are longer and darker."
Jane changed the subject.
"What about Avis and Bob?" she asked. "Jacob counts on their wedding
taking place from Red House—so Mr. Marydrew told me."
"It's going to be a difficult subject," answered Margery; "everything

must be difficult till we begin again; and mother won't do anything to make
it less difficult."
"Jacob naturally expects his daughter to be married from her home—

and why not?" asked Jane.
"Because it isn't her home," explained Jeremy. "You can't talk of Red
House being a home no longer, and mother's right there. Red House ceased
to be a home when Margery left it."
"But if I was back that would be altered," declared Margery. "It all
points to my going back. And mother will live to see it was right, if only for
our children's sakes."
Jeremy, however, would not allow this.
"Don't fox yourself to think so. Your children haven't any use for their
father and never will have. He's done for himself with them—all but Auna
—and when she's old enough to see the sense of it, no doubt she will."
"Jeremy's right," said Jane. "You mustn't think that, Margery. The boys
and Avis always did care a lot more for you than their father. They never hit
it, and you knew it, if Jacob did not."

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The Value Gap Toni

The Value Gap

The Value Gap

To Elly, Anna, and Soﬁa

broadly understood to include beliefs), when, again, a more discerning statement

worthy of philosophical probing. My use of it is intuitive, however. I rely therefore

to express an explanation in which the normative element is given metaphysical

consider in detail.¹⁰ In approaching both of these distinctions, it is a good idea to

analysis by considering some of its advantages and disadvantages. I also address

PART II: A FITTING-ATTITUDE

12. Mind the Value Gap 181

Sayer-McCord, Thomas Schmidt, Mark Schroeder, John Skorupski, David Sobel,

1.1 Different Taxonomies

1.2 Intrinsic and Extrinsic Values

    7

1.3 Final and Non-Final Values

A much more recent way of dividing values can be found in G. E. Moore’s

  -  9

approach to the distinction. While Moore described intrinsic value in various

  -  11

attention to any circumstances we believe it is or might be in. The demand that we

  -  13

It therefore appears to be a (conceptual) possibility that a derivatively valuable

  -  15

  - (  )  17

1.4 Varieties of Non-Final (Extrinsic) Value

Among the non-ﬁnal values, instrumental value—intuitively, the value attaching

‘dialectical demonstration of intrinsic value’: if x derives its value from being a

  - (  )  19

1.5 The Coherence of IE

the relevant use of ‘good’ is either nonsensical or capable of being reformulated in

Now, despondent and bewildered, Margery found some comfort in

These convictions she voiced to Jane, and whimsically lamented that

"Hell," said Jane frankly. "There's no other word for it."

"Seen him? Oh, Jeremy!"

Margery regarded him with parted lips.

"He wants to see me?"

"Go on," said Margery.

"Well, granted nothing happens by chance, then we've got the

"Lord, Jeremy!" cried Jane. "D'you mean to say——"

"A 'good' turn—yes," declared Jane doubtfully.

"It would be a good turn if I decide to help Margery, because we must

"Just as I thought," murmured Jeremy, "and some people might be

"No longer in the Lord's sight."

"But wait. Suppose, by forgiving in act as well as heart, I went back

"Oh, the cunning of the Enemy—the craft—the sleepless cleverness!

Margery he welcomed kindly, though she responded in doubt; but Mrs.

William plunged at once into the great matter of his visit.

"Single-handed I come," he said, "and I wish I was cleverer and better

"Don't say that. I venture to think——"

"My!" he said. "Blessed if I thought there was anybody in Brent knew

"Good day then. No doubt it takes all sorts to make a world."

"Yes," answered she, "but only one sort to make a heaven."

A week later William visited Jacob in hospital. He was nearing

"Young lovers be selfish toads," explained William; "think nothing of it.

"Margery's heart was never cold."

"You meant well as you always do, Billy."

"An Old Testament fashion of woman is your mother-in-law. The faith

"She'll never change."

"There's more humanity in Peter than there is in my eldest," admitted

Jeremy exploited the ethical objections.

"You've promised," interrupted Jane. "You promised to lend Margery a

"I wouldn't say I promised; but of course if you feel I did——"