Intrinsic value has traditionally been thought to lie at the heart ofethics. Philosophers use a number of terms to refer to such value. Theintrinsic value of something is said to be the value that that thinghas “in itself,” or “for its own sake,” or“as such,” or “in its own right.” Extrinsicvalue is value that is not intrinsic.

Many philosophers take intrinsic value to be crucial to a variety ofmoral judgments. For example, according to a fundamental form ofconsequentialism, whether an action ismorally right or wronghas exclusively to do with whether its consequences are intrinsicallybetter than those of any other action one can perform under thecircumstances. Many other theories also hold that what it is right orwrong to do has at least in part to do with the intrinsic value of theconsequences of the actions one can perform. Moreover, if, as iscommonly believed, what one ismorally responsible for doingis some function of the rightness or wrongness of what one does, thenintrinsic value would seem relevant to judgments about responsibility,too. Intrinsic value is also often taken to be pertinent to judgmentsaboutmoral justice (whether having to do with moral rightsor moral desert), insofar as it is good that justice is done and badthat justice is denied, in ways that appear intimately tied tointrinsic value. Finally, it is typically thought that judgments aboutmoral virtue and vice also turn on questions of intrinsicvalue, inasmuch as virtues are good, and vices bad, again in ways thatappear closely connected to such value.

All four types of moral judgments have been the subject of discussionsince the dawn of western philosophy in ancient Greece. The Greeksthemselves were especially concerned with questions about virtue andvice, and the concept of intrinsic value may be found at work in theirwritings and in the writings of moral philosophers ever since. Despitethis fact, and rather surprisingly, it is only within the last onehundred years or so that this concept has itself been the subject ofsustained scrutiny, and even within this relatively brief period thescrutiny has waxed and waned.

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

The question “What is intrinsic value?” is morefundamental than the question “What has intrinsic value?,”but historically these have been treated in reverse order. For a longtime, philosophers appear to have thought that the notion of intrinsicvalue is itself sufficiently clear to allow them to go straight to thequestion of what should be said to have intrinsic value. Not even apotted history of what has been said on this matter can be attemptedhere, since the record is so rich. Rather, a few representativeillustrations must suffice.

In his dialogueProtagoras, Plato [428–347 B.C.E.]maintains (through the character of Socrates, modeled after the realSocrates [470–399 B.C.E.], who was Plato’s teacher) that,when people condemn pleasure, they do so, not because they takepleasure to be bad as such, but because of the bad consequences theyfind pleasure often to have. For example, at one point Socrates saysthat the only reason why the pleasures of food and drink and sex seemto be evil is that they result in pain and deprive us of futurepleasures (Plato,Protagoras, 353e). He concludes thatpleasure is in fact good as such and pain bad, regardless of whattheir consequences may on occasion be. In theTimaeus, Platoseems quite pessimistic about these consequences, for he has Timaeusdeclare pleasure to be “the greatest incitement to evil”and pain to be something that “deters from good” (Plato,Timaeus, 69d). Plato does not think of pleasure as the“highest” good, however. In theRepublic,Socrates states that there can be no “communion” between“extravagant” pleasure and virtue (Plato,Republic, 402e) and in thePhilebus, where Philebusargues that pleasure is the highest good, Socrates argues againstthis, claiming that pleasure is better when accompanied byintelligence (Plato,Philebus, 60e).

Many philosophers have followed Plato’s lead in declaringpleasure intrinsically good and pain intrinsically bad. Aristotle[384–322 B.C.E.], for example, himself a student ofPlato’s, says at one point that all are agreed that pain is badand to be avoided, either because it is bad “withoutqualification” or because it is in some way an“impediment” to us; he adds that pleasure, being the“contrary” of that which is to be avoided, is thereforenecessarily a good (Aristotle,Nicomachean Ethics, 1153b).Over the course of the more than two thousand years since this waswritten, this view has been frequently endorsed. Like Plato, Aristotledoes not take pleasure and pain to be the only things that areintrinsically good and bad, although some have maintained that this isindeed the case. This more restrictive view, often called hedonism,has had proponents since the time of Epicurus [341–271 B.C.E.].^[1] Perhaps the most thorough renditions of it are to be found in theworks of Jeremy Bentham [1748–1832] and Henry Sidgwick[1838–1900] (see Bentham 1789, Sidgwick 1907); perhaps its mostfamous proponent is John Stuart Mill [1806–1873] (see Mill1863).

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

Suppose that you were confronted with some proposed list of intrinsicgoods. It would be natural to ask how you might assess the accuracy ofthe list. How can you tell whether something has intrinsic value ornot? This is an epistemological question about which this article willnot be concerned. (Seemoral epistemology.) However, in addressing this epistemological question, you may wonderwhat it is for something to have intrinsic value; the next sectionaddresses this conceptual question.

2. What Is Intrinsic Value?

The concept of intrinsic value has been characterized above in termsof the value that something has “in itself,” or “forits own sake,” or “as such,” or “in its ownright.” The custom has been not to distinguish between themeanings of these terms, but we will see that there is reason to thinkthat there may in fact be more than one concept at issue here. For themoment, though, let us ignore this complication and focus on what itmeans to say that something is valuablefor its own sake asopposed to being valuablefor the sake of something else towhich it is related in some way. Perhaps it is easiest to grasp thisdistinction by way of illustration.

Suppose that someone were to ask you whether it is good to help othersin time of need. Unless you suspected some sort of trick, you wouldanswer, “Yes, of course.” If this person were to go on toask you why acting in this way is good, you might say that it is goodto help others in time of need simply because it is good that theirneeds be satisfied. If you were then asked why it is good thatpeople’s needs be satisfied, you might be puzzled. You might beinclined to say, “It just is.” Or you might accept thelegitimacy of the question and say that it is good that people’sneeds be satisfied because this brings them pleasure. But then, ofcourse, your interlocutor could ask once again, “What’sgood about that?” Perhaps at this point you would answer,“It just is good that people be pleased,” and thus put anend to this line of questioning. Or perhaps you would again seek toexplain the fact that it is good that people be pleased in terms ofsomething else that you take to be good. At some point, though, youwould have to put an end to the questions, not because you would havegrown tired of them (though that is a distinct possibility), butbecause you would be forced to recognize that, if one thing derivesits goodness from some other thing, which derives its goodness fromyet a third thing, and so on, there must come a point at which youreach something whose goodness is not derivative in this way,something that “just is” good in its own right, somethingwhose goodness is the source of, and thus explains, the goodness to befound in all the other things that precede it on the list. It is atthis point that you will have arrived at intrinsic goodness (cf.Aristotle,Nicomachean Ethics, 1094a). That which isintrinsically good is nonderivatively good; it is good for itsown sake. That which is not intrinsically good butextrinsically good is derivatively good; it is good, not (insofar asits extrinsic value is concerned) for its own sake, but for the sakeof something else that is good and to which it is related in some way.Intrinsic value thus has a certain priority over extrinsic value. Thelatter is derivative from or reflective of the former and is to beexplained in terms of the former. It is for this reason thatphilosophers have tended to focus on intrinsic value inparticular.

The account just given of the distinction between intrinsic andextrinsic value is rough, but it should do as a start. Certaincomplications must be immediately acknowledged, though. First, thereis the possibility, mentioned above, that the terms traditionally usedto refer to intrinsic value in fact refer to more than one concept;again, this will be addressed later (in this section and the next).Another complication is that it may not in fact be accurate to saythat whatever is intrinsically good is nonderivatively good; someintrinsic value may be derivative. This issue will be taken up (inSection 5) when the computation of intrinsic value is discussed; itmay be safely ignored for now. A third complication arises due to thewidely accepted thesis that value is “supervenient on” or“grounded in” nonevaluative features of the thing that hasvalue. Roughly, what this means is that, if something has value, itwill have this value in virtue of certain nonevaluative features thatit has; its value can be attributed to these features. For example,the value of helping others in time of need might be attributed to thefact that such behavior has the feature of being causally related tocertain pleasant experiences induced in those who receive the help.Suppose we accept this. Moreover, suppose we accept that theexperiences in question are intrinsically good and, hence, (barringthe complication to be discussed in Section 5) that we take the valueof the experiences to be nonderivative. This does not foreclose thatwe take their value to be supervenient, or grounded in, some of theirnonevaluative features, say, that of being pleasant. This brings outthe subtle but important point that the question whether the value ofan object is supervenient on its other features is distinct from thequestion whether its value is derivative or nonderivative, intrinsicor extrinsic. Even nonderivative value (value that something has inits own right; value that is, in some way, not attributableto thevalue of anything else) is usually understood to be supervenienton certain nonevaluative features of the thing that has value (andthus to be attributable, in a different way,to thesefeatures).

To repeat: whatever is intrinsically good is (barring the complicationto be discussed in Section 5) nonderivatively good. It would be amistake, however, to affirm the converse of this and say that whateveris nonderivatively good is intrinsically good. As “intrinsicvalue” is traditionally understood, it refers to aparticular way of being nonderivatively good; there are otherways in which something might be nonderivatively good. For example,suppose that your interlocutor were to ask you whether it is good toeat and drink in moderation and to exercise regularly. Again, youwould say, “Yes, of course.” If asked why, you would saythat this is because such behavior promotes health. If asked what isgood about being healthy, you might cite something else whose goodnesswould explain the value of health, or you might simply say,“Being healthy just is a good way to be.” If the latterwere your response, you would be indicating that you took health to benonderivatively good in some way. In what way, though? Well, perhapsyou would be thinking of health as intrinsically good. But perhapsnot. Suppose that what you meant was that being healthy just is“good for” the person who is healthy (in the sense that itis in each person’s interest to be healthy), so thatJohn’s being healthy is good for John, Jane’s beinghealthy is good for Jane, and so on. You would thereby be attributinga type of nonderivative interest-value to John’s being healthy,and yet it would be perfectly consistent for you to deny thatJohn’s being healthy isintrinsically good. If Johnwere a villain, you might well deny this. Indeed, you might want toinsist that, in light of his villainy, his being healthy isintrinsicallybad, even though you recognize that his beinghealthy is goodfor him. If you did say this, you would beindicating that you subscribe to the common view that intrinsic valueis nonderivative value of some peculiarlymoral sort.^[2]Thus it seems important to distinguish between what we mightcall intrinsic moral goodness and intrinsic prudential goodness; theformer rather than the latter is the main target of this article.(When something is “morally” good in the sense we have inmind here, it follows only that we have a moral requirement to favorit. In a more common, narrower sense, “moral” goodnessmight be possessed only by things like moral virtue, and not by justanything relevant to our moral favorings, such as pleasure (Zimmerman2001, p. 24).)

Let us now see whether this still rough account of intrinsic value canbe made more precise. One of the first writers to concern himself withthe question of what exactly is at issue when we ascribe intrinsicvalue to something was G. E. Moore [1873–1958]. In his bookPrincipia Ethica, Moore asks whether the concept of intrinsicvalue (or, more particularly, the concept of intrinsic goodness, uponwhich he tended to focus) is analyzable. In raising this question, hehas a particular type of analysis in mind, one which consists in“breaking down” a concept into simpler component concepts.(One example of an analysis of this sort is the analysis of theconcept of being a vixen in terms of the concepts of being a fox andbeing female.) His own answer to the question is that the concept ofintrinsic goodness isnot amenable to such analysis (Moore1903, ch. 1). In place of analysis, Moore proposes a certain kind ofthought-experiment in order both to come to understand the conceptbetter and to reach a decision about what is intrinsically good. Headvises us to consider what things are such that, if they existed bythemselves “in absolute isolation,” we would judge theirexistence to be good; in this way, we will be better able to see whatreally accounts for the value that there is in our world. For example,if such a thought-experiment led you to conclude that all and onlypleasure would be good in isolation, and all and only pain bad, youwould be a hedonist.^[3] Moore himself deems it incredible that anyone, thinking clearly,would reach this conclusion. He says that it involves our saying thata world in which only pleasure existed—a world without anyknowledge, love, enjoyment of beauty, or moral qualities—isbetter than a world that contained all these things but in which thereexisted slightly less pleasure (Moore 1912, p. 102). Such a view hefinds absurd. Moore’s isolation test is closely related to hislater claim, in “The Conception of Intrinsic Value” (inMoore 1922), that a thing’s intrinsic value depends solely onits intrinsic properties, since presumably only something with thatsort of value could have its value were it to be isolated.

Regardless of the merits of this isolation test, it remains unclearexactly why Moore finds the concept of intrinsic goodness to beunanalyzable. At one point he attacks the view that it can be analyzedwholly in terms of “natural” concepts—the view, thatis, that we can break down the concept of being intrinsically goodinto the simpler concepts of beingA, beingB, beingC…, where these component concepts are all purelydescriptive rather than evaluative. (One candidate that Moorediscusses is this: for something to be intrinsically good is for it tobe something that we desire to desire.) He argues that any suchanalysis is to be rejected, since it will always be intelligible toask whether (and, presumably, to deny that) it is good that somethingbeA,B,C,…, which would not be thecase if the analysis were accurate (Moore 1903, pp. 15–16). Evenif this argument is successful (a complicated matter about which thereis considerable disagreement), it of course does not establish themore general claim that the concept of intrinsic goodness is notanalyzable at all, since it leaves open the possibility that thisconcept is analyzable in terms of other concepts, some or all of whichare not “natural” but evaluative. Moore apparently thinksthat his objection works just as well where one or more of thecomponent conceptsA,B,C,…, isevaluative; but, again, many dispute the cogency of his argument.Indeed, several philosophers have proposed analyses of just this sort.For example, Roderick Chisholm [1916–1999] has argued thatMoore’s own isolation test in fact provides the basis for ananalysis of the concept of intrinsic value. He formulates a viewaccording to which (to put matters roughly) to say that a state ofaffairs is intrinsically good or bad is to say that it is possiblethat its goodness or badness constitutes all the goodness or badnessthat there is in the world (Chisholm 1978).

Eva Bodanszky and Earl Conee have attacked Chisholm’s proposal,showing that it is, in its details, unacceptable (Bodanszky and Conee1981). However, the general idea that an intrinsically valuable stateis one that could somehow account for all the value in the world issuggestive and promising; if it could be adequately formulated, itwould reveal an important feature of intrinsic value that would helpus better understand the concept. Rather than pursue such a line ofthought, Chisholm himself responded (Chisholm 1981) in a different wayto Bodanszky and Conee. He shifted from what may be called anontological version of Moore’s isolation test—theattempt to understand the intrinsic value of a state in terms of thevalue that there would be if it were the only valuable stateinexistence—to anintentional version of thattest—the attempt to understand the intrinsic value of a state interms of the kind of attitude it would be fitting to have if one weretocontemplate the valuable state as such, without referenceto circumstances or consequences.

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

Though undoubtedly attractive, this analysis can be and has beenchallenged. Brand Blanshard [1892–1987], for example, arguesthat the analysis is to be rejected because, if we askwhysomething is such that it is fitting to value it for its own sake, theanswer is that this is the case preciselybecause the thingin question is intrinsically good; this answer indicates that theconcept of intrinsic goodness is more fundamental than that of thefittingness of some pro attitude, which is inconsistent with analyzingthe former in terms of the latter (Blanshard 1961, pp. 284–86).Ewing and others have resisted Blanshard’s argument, maintainingthat what grounds and explains something’s being valuable is notits being good but rather its having whatever non-value property it isupon which its goodness supervenes; they claim that it is because ofthis underlying property that the thing in question is“both” good and valuable (Ewing 1948, pp. 157 and 172. Cf.Lemos 1994, p. 19). Thomas Scanlon calls such an account of therelation between valuableness, goodness, and underlying properties abuck-passing account, since it “passes the buck” ofexplaining why something is such that it is fitting to value it fromits goodness to some property that underlies its goodness (Scanlon1998, pp. 95 ff.). Whether such an account is acceptable has been thesubject of intense debate. Many, like Scanlon, endorse passing thebuck; some, like Blanshard, object to doing so. If such an account isacceptable, then Ewing’s analysis survives Blanshard’schallenge; but otherwise not. (Note that one might endorse passing thebuck and yet reject Ewing’s analysis for some other reason.Hence a buck-passer may, but need not, accept the analysis. Indeed,there is reason to think that Moore himself is a buck-passer, eventhough he takes the concept of intrinsic goodness to be unanalyzable;cf. Olson 2006).

Even if Blanshard’s argument succeeds and intrinsic goodness isnot to beanalyzed in terms of the fittingness of some proattitude, it could still be that there is astrictcorrelation between something’s being intrinsically goodand its being such that it is fitting to value it for its own sake;that is, it could still be both that (a) it is necessarily true thatwhatever is intrinsically good is such that it is fitting to value itfor its own sake, and that (b) it is necessarily true that whatever itis fitting to value for its own sake is intrinsically good. If thiswere the case, it would reveal an important feature of intrinsicvalue, recognition of which would help us to improve our understandingof the concept. However, this thesis has also been challenged.

Krister Bykvist has argued that what he calls solitary goods mayconstitute a counterexample to part (a) of the thesis (Bykvist 2009,pp. 4 ff.). Such (alleged) goods consist in states of affairs thatentail that there is no one in a position to value them. Suppose, forexample, that happiness is intrinsically good, and good in such a waythat it is fitting to welcome it. Then, more particularly, the stateof affairs of there being happy egrets is intrinsically good; so too,presumably, is the more complex state of affairs of there being happyegrets but no welcomers. The simpler state of affairs would appear topose no problem for part (a) of the thesis, but the more complex stateof affairs, which is an example of a solitary good, may pose aproblem. For if to welcome a state of affairs entails that that stateof affairs obtains, then welcoming the more complex state of affairsis logically impossible. Furthermore, if to welcome a state of affairsentails that one believes that that state of affairs obtains, then thepertinent belief regarding the more complex state of affairs would benecessarily false. In neither case would it seem plausible to say thatwelcoming the state of affairs is nonetheless fitting. Thus, unlessthis challenge can somehow be met, a proponent of the thesis mustrestrict the thesis to pro attitudes that are neither truth- norbelief-entailing, a restriction that might itself prove unwelcome,since it excludes a number of favorable responses to what is good(such as promoting what is good, or taking pleasure in what is good)to which proponents of the thesis have often appealed.

As to part (b) of the thesis: some philosophers have argued that itcan be fitting to value something for its own sake even if that thingis not intrinsically good. A relatively early version of this argumentwas again provided by Blanshard (1961, pp. 287 ff. Cf. Lemos 1994, p.18). Recently the issue has been brought into stark relief by thefollowing sort of thought-experiment. Imagine that an evil demon wantsyou to value him for his own sake and threatens to cause you severesuffering unless you do. It seems that you have good reason to do whathe wants—it is appropriate or fitting to comply with his demandand value him for his own sake—even though he is clearly notintrinsically good (Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen 2004, pp.402 ff.). This issue, which has come to be known as “the wrongkind of reason problem,” has attracted a great deal ofattention. Some have been persuaded that the challenge succeeds, whileothers have sought to undermine it.

One final cautionary note. It is apparent that some philosophers usethe term “intrinsic value” and similar terms to expresssome concept other than the one just discussed. In particular,Immanuel Kant [1724–1804] is famous for saying that the onlything that is “good without qualification” is a good will,which is good not because of what it effects or accomplishes but“in itself” (Kant 1785, Ak. 1–3). This may seem tosuggest that Kant ascribes (positive) intrinsic value only to a goodwill, declaring the value that anything else may possess merelyextrinsic, in the senses of “intrinsic value” and“extrinsic value” discussed above. This suggestion is, ifanything, reinforced when Kant immediately adds that a good will“is to be esteemed beyond comparison as far higher than anythingit could ever bring about,” that it “shine[s] like a jewelfor its own sake,” and that its “usefulness…canneither add to, nor subtract from, [its] value.” For here Kantmay seem not only to be invoking the distinction between intrinsic andextrinsic value but also to be in agreement with Brentanoetal. regarding the characterization of the former in terms of thefittingness of some attitude, namely, esteem. (The term“respect” is often used in place of “esteem”in such contexts.) Nonetheless, it becomes clear on further inspectionthat Kant is in fact discussing a concept quite different from thatwith which this article is concerned. A little later on he says thatall rational beings, even those that lack a good will, have“absolute value”; such beings are “ends inthemselves” that have a “dignity” or“intrinsic value” that is “above all price”(Kant 1785, Ak. 64 and 77). Such talk indicates that Kant believesthat the sort of value that he ascribes to rational beings is one thatthey possess to an infinite degree. But then, if this were understoodas a thesis about intrinsic value as we have been understanding thisconcept, the implication would seem to be that, since it containsrational beings, ours is the best of all possible worlds.^[4] Yet this is a thesis that Kant, along with many others, explicitlyrejects elsewhere (Kant,Lectures in Ethics). It seems bestto understand Kant, and other philosophers who have since written inthe same vein (cf. Anderson 1993), as being concerned not with thequestion of what intrinsic value rational beings have—in thesense of “intrinsic value” discussed above—but withthe quite different question of how we ought to behave toward suchcreatures (cf. Bradley 2006).

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

In the history of philosophy, relatively few seem to have entertaineddoubts about the concept of intrinsic value. Much of the debate aboutintrinsic value has tended to be about what things actually do havesuch value. However, once questions about the concept itself wereraised, doubts about its metaphysical implications, its moralsignificance, and even its very coherence began to appear.

Consider, first, the metaphysics underlying ascriptions of intrinsicvalue. It seems safe to say that, before the twentieth century, mostmoral philosophers presupposed that the intrinsic goodness ofsomething is a genuine property of that thing, one that is no lessreal than the properties (of being pleasant, of satisfying a need, orwhatever) in virtue of which the thing in question is good. (Severaldissented from this view, however. Especially well known for theirdissent are Thomas Hobbes [1588–1679], who believed the goodnessor badness of something to be constituted by the desire or aversionthat one may have regarding it, and David Hume [1711–1776], whosimilarly took all ascriptions of value to involve projections ofone’s own sentiments onto whatever is said to have value. SeeHobbes 1651, Hume 1739.) It was not until Moore argued that this viewimplies that intrinsic goodness, as a supervening property, is a verydifferent sort of property (one that he called“nonnatural”) from those (which he called“natural”) upon which it supervenes, that doubts about theview proliferated.

One of the first to raise such doubts and to press for a view quitedifferent from the prevailing view was Axel Hägerström[1868–1939], who developed an account according to whichascriptions of value are neither true nor false (Hägerström1953). This view has come to be called “noncognitivism.”The particular brand of noncognitivism proposed byHägerström is usually called “emotivism,” sinceit holds (in a manner reminiscent of Hume) that ascriptions of valueare in essence expressions of emotion. (For example, an emotivist of aparticularly simple kind might claim that to say “A isgood” is not to make a statement aboutA but to saysomething like “Hooray forA!”) This view wastaken up by several philosophers, including most notably A. J. Ayer[1910–1989] and Charles L. Stevenson [1908–1979] (see Ayer1946, Stevenson 1944). Other philosophers have since embraced otherforms of noncognitivism. R. M. Hare [1919–2002], for example,advocated the theory of “prescriptivism” (according towhich moral judgments, including judgments about goodness and badness,are not descriptive statements about the world but rather constitute akind of command as to how we are to act; see Hare 1952) and SimonBlackburn and Allan Gibbard have since proposed yet other versions ofnoncognitivism (Blackburn 1984, Gibbard 1990). (SeeMoral Cognitivism vs Non-Cognitivism.)

One might take noncognitivism of any kind to constitute a rejection ofthe very idea of intrinsic value. But this would be a mistake. Weshould distinguish questions aboutvalue from questions aboutevaluation. Questions about value fall into two main groups,conceptual (of the sort discussed in the last section) andsubstantive (of the sort discussed in the first section).Questions about evaluation have to do with what precisely is going onwhenwe ascribe value to something. Cognitivists claim thatour ascriptions of value constitute statements that are either true orfalse; noncognitivists deny this. But even noncognitivists mustrecognize that our ascriptions of value fall into two fundamentalclasses—ascriptions of intrinsic value and ascriptions ofextrinsic value—and so they too must concern themselves with thevery same conceptual and substantive questions about value ascognitivists address. It may be that noncognitivism dictates or rulesout certain answers to these questions that cognitivism does not, butthat is of course quite a different matter from rejecting the veryidea of intrinsic value on metaphysical grounds.

Another type of metaphysical challenge to intrinsic value stems fromthe theory of “pragmatism,” especially in the formadvanced by John Dewey [1859–1952] (see Dewey 1922). Accordingto the pragmatist, the world is constantly changing in such a way thatthe solution to one problem becomes the source of another, what is anend in one context is a means in another, and thus it is a mistake toseek or offer a timeless list of intrinsic goods and evils, of ends tobe achieved or avoided for their own sakes. This theme has beenelaborated by Monroe Beardsley, who attacks the very notion ofintrinsic value (Beardsley 1965; cf. Conee 1982). Denying that theexistence of something with extrinsic value presupposes the existenceof something else with intrinsic value, Beardsley argues that allvalue is extrinsic. (In the course of his argument, Beardsley rejectsthe sort of “dialectical demonstration” of intrinsic valuethat was attempted in the last section, when an explanation of thederivative value of helping others was given in terms of somenonderivative value.) A quick response to Beardsley’s misgivingsabout intrinsic value would be to admit that it may well be that, theworld being as complex as it is, nothing is such that its value iswholly intrinsic; perhaps whatever has intrinsic value also hasextrinsic value, and of course many things that have extrinsic valuewill have no (or, at least, neutral) intrinsic value. Far fromrepudiating the notion of intrinsic value, though, this admissionwould confirm its legitimacy. But Beardsley would insist that thisquick response misses the point of his attack, and that it really isthe case, not just that whatever has value has extrinsic value, butalso that nothing has intrinsic value. His argument for this view isbased on the claim that the concept of intrinsic value is“inapplicable,” in that, even if something had such value,we could not know this and hence its having such value could play norole in our reasoning about value. But here Beardsley seems to beoverreaching. Even if it were the case that we cannotknowwhether something has intrinsic value, this of course leaves open thequestion whether anythingdoes have such value. And even ifit could somehow be shown that nothingdoes have such value,this would still leave open the question whether somethingcould have such value. If the answer to this last question is“yes,” then the legitimacy of the concept of intrinsicvalue is in fact confirmed rather than refuted.^[5]

As has been noted, some philosophers do indeed doubt the legitimacy,the very coherence, of the concept of intrinsic value. Before we turnto a discussion of this issue, however, let us for the moment presumethat the concept is coherent and address a different sort of doubt:the doubt that the concept has any great moral significance. Recallthe suggestion, mentioned in the last section, that discussions ofintrinsic value may have been compromised by a failure to distinguishcertain concepts. This suggestion is at the heart of ChristineKorsgaard’s “Two Distinctions in Goodness”(Korsgaard 1983). Korsgaard notes that “intrinsic value”has traditionally been contrasted with “instrumentalvalue” (the value that something has in virtue of being a meansto an end) and claims that this approach is misleading. She contendsthat “instrumental value” is to be contrasted with“final value,” that is, the value that something has as anend or for its own sake; however, “intrinsic value” (thevalue that something has in itself, that is, in virtue of itsintrinsic properties) is to be contrasted with “extrinsicvalue” (the value that something has in virtue of its extrinsic,relational properties). (An example of an intrinsic property is theproperty of being round; an example of an extrinsic property is theproperty of being loved.) As an illustration of final value, Korsgaardsuggests that gorgeously enameled frying pans are, in virtue of therole they play in our lives, good for their own sakes. In likefashion, Beardsley wonders whether a rare stamp may be good for itsown sake (Beardsley 1965); Shelly Kagan says that the pen that AbrahamLincoln used to sign the Emancipation Proclamation may well be goodfor its own sake (Kagan 1998); and others have offered similarexamples (cf. Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen 1999 and 2003 andBradford 2023 and 2024). Notice that in each case the value beingattributed to the object in question is (allegedly) had in virtue ofsomeextrinsic property of the object. This puts the moralsignificance ofintrinsic value into question, since (as isapparent from our discussion so far) it is with the notion ofsomething’s being valuable for its own sake that philosophershave traditionally been, and continue to be, primarily concerned.

There is an important corollary to drawing a distinction betweenintrinsic value and final value (and between extrinsic value andnonfinal value), and that is that, contrary to what Korsgaard herselfinitially says, it may be a mistake to contrast final value withinstrumental value. If it is possible, as Korsgaard claims, that finalvalue sometimes supervenes on extrinsic properties, then it might bepossible that it sometimes supervenes in particular on the property ofbeing a means to some other end. Indeed, Korsgaard herself suggeststhis when she says that “certain kinds of things, such asluxurious instruments, … are valued for their own sakes underthe condition of their usefulness” (Korsgaard 1983, p. 185).Kagan also tentatively endorses this idea. If the idea is coherent,then we should in principle distinguish two kinds of instrumentalvalue, one final and the other nonfinal.^[6] If somethingA is a means to something elseB andhas instrumental value in virtue of this fact, such value will benonfinal if it is merely derivative from or reflective ofB’s value, whereas it will be final if it isnonderivative, that is, if it is a value thatA has in itsown right (due to the fact that it is a means toB),irrespective of any value thatB may or may not have inits own right.

Even if it is agreed that it is final value that is central to theconcerns of moral philosophers, we should be careful in drawing theconclusion that intrinsic value is not central to their concerns.First, there is no necessity that the term “intrinsicvalue” be reserved for the value that something has in virtue ofits intrinsic properties; presumably it has been used by many writerssimply to refer to what Korsgaard calls final value, in which case themoral significance of (what is thus called) intrinsic value has ofcourse not been thrown into doubt. Nonetheless, it should probably beconceded that “final value” is a more suitable term than“intrinsic value” to refer to the sort of value inquestion, since the latter term certainly does suggest value thatsupervenes on intrinsic properties. But here a second point can bemade, and that is that, even if use of the term “intrinsicvalue” is restricted accordingly, it is arguable that, contraryto Korsgaard’s contention, all final value does after allsupervene on intrinsic properties alone; if that were the case, therewould seem to be no reason not to continue to use the term“intrinsic value” to refer to final value. Whether this isin fact the case depends in part on just what sort of thingcan be valuable for its own sake—an issue to be takenup in the next section.

In light of the matter just discussed, we must now decide whatterminology to adopt. It is clear that moral philosophers sinceancient times have been concerned with the distinction between thevalue that something has for its own sake (the sort of nonderivativevalue that Korsgaard calls “final value”) and the valuethat something has for the sake of something else to which it isrelated in some way. However, given the weight of tradition, it seemsjustifiable, perhaps even advisable, to continue, despiteKorsgaard’s misgivings, to use the terms “intrinsicvalue” and “extrinsic value” to refer to these twotypes of value; if we do so, however, we should explicitly note thatthis practice is not itself intended to endorse, or reject, the viewthat intrinsic value supervenes on intrinsic properties alone.

Let us now turn to doubts about the very coherence of the concept ofintrinsic value, so understood. InPrincipia Ethica andelsewhere, Moore embraces the consequentialist view, mentioned above,that whether an action is morally right or wrong turns exclusively onwhether its consequences are intrinsically better than those of itsalternatives. Some philosophers have recently argued that ascribingintrinsic value to consequences in this way is fundamentallymisconceived. Peter Geach, for example, argues that Moore makes aserious mistake when comparing “good” with “yellow.”^[7] Moore says that both terms express unanalyzable concepts but are tobe distinguished in that, whereas the latter refers to a naturalproperty, the former refers to a nonnatural one. Geach contends thatthere is a mistaken assimilation underlying Moore’s remarks,since “good” in fact operates in a way quite unlike thatof “yellow”—something that Moore wholly overlooks.This contention would appear to be confirmed by the observation thatthe phrase “x is a yellow bird” splits uplogically (as Geach puts it) into the phrase “x is abird andx is yellow,” whereas the phrase“x is a good singer” does not split up in thesame way. Also, from “x is a yellow bird” and“a bird is an animal” we do not hesitate to infer“x is a yellow animal,” whereas no similarinference seems warranted in the case of “x is a goodsinger” and “a singer is a person.” On the basis ofthese observations Geach concludes that nothing can be good in thefree-standing way that Moore alleges; rather, whatever is good is goodrelative to a certain kind.

Judith Thomson has recently elaborated on Geach’s thesis(Thomson 1997). Although she does not unqualifiedly agree thatwhatever is good is good relative to a certain kind, she does claimthat whatever is good is good in some way; nothing can be “justplain good,” as she believes Moore would have it. Philippa Foot,among others, has made a similar charge (Foot 1985). It is a chargethat has been rebutted by Michael Zimmerman, who argues thatGeach’s tests are less straightforward than they may seem andfail after all to reveal a significant distinction between the ways inwhich “good” and “yellow” operate (Zimmerman2001, ch. 2). He argues further that Thomson mischaracterizesMoore’s conception of intrinsic value. According to Moore, heclaims, what is intrinsically good is not “just plaingood”; rather, it is good in a particular way, in keeping withThomson’s thesis that all goodness is goodness in a way. Hemaintains that, for Moore and other proponents of intrinsic value,such value is a particular kind ofmoral value. MahradAlmotahari and Adam Hosein have revived Geach’s challenge(Almotahari and Hosein 2015). They argue that if, contrary to Geach,“good” could be used predicatively, we would be able touse the term predicatively in sentences of the form ‘ais a goodK’ but, they argue, the linguistic evidenceindicates that we cannot do so (Almotahari and Hosein 2015,1493–4). However, Poppy Mankowitz argues that the linguisticevidence in fact vindicates the Moorean view; she argues that thereare two senses of ‘good,’ a moral one and a non-moral one,and that the moral sense is not relative to a kind, standard or end(Mankowitz 2024).

4. What Sort of Thing Can Have Intrinsic Value?

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

Moore would thus appear to be a “pluralist” concerning thebearers of intrinsic value. Others take a more conservative,“monistic” approach, according to which there is just onekind of bearer of intrinsic value. Consider, for example,Frankena’s long list of intrinsic goods, presented in Section 1above: life, consciousness, etc. To whatkind(s) of entity dosuch terms refer? Various answers have been given. Some (such asPanayot Butchvarov) claim that it isproperties that are thebearers of intrinsic value (Butchvarov 1989, pp. 14–15). On thisview, Frankena’s list implies that it is the properties of beingalive, being conscious, and so on, that are intrinsically good. Others(such as Chisholm) claim that it isstates of affairs thatare the bearers of intrinsic value (Chisholm 1968–69, 1972,1975; also see Wedgwood 2009, pp. 327–330). On this view,Frankena’s list implies that it is the states of affairs ofsomeone (or something) being alive, someone being conscious, and soon, that are intrinsically good. Still others (such as Ross) claimthat it isfacts that are the bearers of intrinsic value(Ross 1930, pp. 112–13; cf. Lemos 1994, ch. 2 and Tucker 2024).On this view, Frankena’s list implies that it is the facts thatsomeone (or something) is alive, that someone is conscious, and so on,that are intrinsically good. (The difference between Chisholm’sand Ross’s views would seem to be this: whereas Chisholm wouldascribe intrinsic value even to states of affairs, such as that ofeveryone being happy, that do not obtain, Ross would ascribe suchvalue only to states of affairs that do obtain.) It has also beensuggested that it istropes that have intrinsic value.^[8] Tropes are supposed to be a sort of particularized property, a kindof property-instance (rather than simply a property). (Thus theparticular whiteness of a particular piece of paper is to bedistinguished, on this view, from the property of whiteness.) It hasalso been suggested that it is states, understood as a kind ofinstance of states of affairs, that have intrinsic value (cf.Zimmerman 2001, ch. 3).

Distinguishing these views is complicated by the fact that the naturesof properties, property instances, states of affairs, facts, andinstances of states are all in dispute; there is no consensus aboutwhat any of these things are. It may be helpful to frame disputesabout value-bearers as concerning whether the bearers of value areabstract orconcrete. Of course, the nature of thisdistinction is no less controversial. Miles Tucker characterizes an“orthodox” definition of abstractness as follows:“an entity is abstract if and only if (i) it exists necessarily(ii) it lacks a spacetime location and (iii) it is non-causal”(Tucker 2024, p. 699). Some see an advantage to ascribing intrinsicvalue to abstract, necessarily existing entities: in comparing twopossible outcomes, we need to ascribe value to them, but at most oneof them will be concrete (see Wedgwood 2009, p. 329). But we mightdeny that making this comparison requires ascribing values to thepossible outcomes; rather, we can talk about what value each concreteoutcomewould have were it to obtain (Tucker 2024, p 701).Tucker follows Ross in thinking that abstract entities cannot be thebearers of intrinsic value; the bearers of intrinsic value are thingslikelives, which are contingent, located in spacetime, andcausal (Tucker 2024, p. 701). Abstract propositions, properties, orstates of affairs canmodel intrinsically good things, butcannot be intrinsically good themselves.

Those who make monistic proposals of the sort just mentioned are awarethat intrinsic value is sometimes ascribed to kinds of entitiesdifferent from those favored by their proposals. They claim that allsuch ascriptions can be reduced to, or translated into, ascriptions ofintrinsic value of the sort they deem proper. Consider, for example,Korsgaard’s suggestion that a gorgeously enameled frying pan isgood for its own sake. Ross would say that this cannot be the case. Ifthere is any intrinsic value to be found here, it will, according toRoss, not reside in the pan itself but in the fact that it plays acertain role in our lives, or perhaps in the fact that something playsthis role, or in the fact that something that plays this role exists.(Others would make other translations in the terms that they deemappropriate.) On the basis of this ascription of intrinsic value tosome fact, Ross could go on to ascribe a kind ofextrinsicvalue to the pan itself, in virtue of its relation to the fact inquestion.

Whether reduction of this sort is acceptable has been a matter ofconsiderable debate. Proponents of monism maintain that it introducessome much-needed order into the discussion of intrinsic value,clarifying just what is involved in the ascription of such value andsimplifying the computation of such value—on which point, seethe next section. (A corollary of some monistic approaches is that thevalue that something has for its own sake supervenes on the intrinsicproperties of that thing, so that there is a perfect convergence ofthe two sorts of values that Korsgaard calls “final” and“intrinsic”. On this point, see the last section;Zimmerman 2001, ch. 3; Tucker 2016; and Tucker 2019.) Opponents arguethat reduction results in distortion and oversimplification; theymaintain that, even if there is intrinsic value to be found in such afact as that a gorgeously enameled frying pan plays a certain role inour lives, there may yet beintrinsic, and not merelyextrinsic, value to be found in the pan itself and perhaps also in itsexistence (cf. Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen 1999 and 2003).Some propose a compromise according to which the kind of intrinsicvalue that can sensibly be ascribed to individual objects like fryingpans is not the same kind of intrinsic value that is the topic of thisarticle and can sensibly be ascribed to items of the sort onFrankena’s list (cf. Bradley 2006). (See again the cautionarynote in the final paragraph of Section 2 above.)

5. How Is Intrinsic Value to Be Computed?

In our assessments of intrinsic value, we are often and understandablyconcerned not only withwhether something is good or bad butwithhow good or bad it is, since ‘good’ and‘bad’ are gradable predicates. Arriving at an answer tothe latter question is not straightforward. At least three problemsthreaten to undermine the computation of intrinsic value.

First, there is the possibility that the relation of intrinsicbetterness is not transitive (that is, the possibility that somethingA is intrinsically better than something elseB,which is itself intrinsically better than some third thingC,and yetA is not intrinsically better thanC).Despite the very natural assumption that this relation is transitive,it has been argued that it is not (Rachels 1998; Temkin 1987, 1997,2012; for a response, see Nebel 2017). Should this in fact be thecase, it would seriously complicate comparisons, and henceassessments, of intrinsic value.

Second, there is the possibility that certain values areincommensurate. For example, Ross at one point contends that it isimpossible to compare the goodness of pleasure with that of virtue.Whereas he had suggested inThe Right and the Good thatpleasure and virtue could be measured on the same scale of goodness,inFoundations of Ethics he declares this to be impossible,since (he claims) it would imply that pleasure of a certain intensity,enjoyed by a sufficient number of people or for a sufficient time,would counterbalance virtue possessed or manifested only by a smallnumber of people or only for a short time; and this he professes to beincredible (Ross 1939, p. 275). But there is some confusion here. Inclaiming that virtue and pleasure are incommensurate for the reasongiven, Ross presumably means that they cannot be measured on the sameratio scale. (A ratio scale is one with an arbitrary unit buta fixed zero point. Mass and length are standardly measured on ratioscales.) But incommensurability on a ratio scale does not implyincommensurability onevery scale—an ordinal scale, forinstance. (An ordinal scale is simply one that supplies an orderingfor the quantity in question, such as the measurement of arm-strengththat is provided by an arm-wrestling competition.) Ross’sremarks indicate that he in fact believes that virtue and pleasureare commensurate on an ordinal scale, since he appears tosubscribe to the arch-puritanical view that any amount of virtue isintrinsically better than any amount of pleasure. This view is justone example of the thesis that some goods are “higher”than others, in the sense that any amount of the former is better thanany amount of the latter. This thesis can be traced to the ancientGreeks (Plato,Philebus, 21a-e; Aristotle,NicomacheanEthics, 1174a), and it has been endorsed by many philosopherssince, perhaps most famously by Mill (Mill 1863, paras. 4 ff).Interest in the thesis has recently been revived by a set of intricateand intriguing puzzles, posed by Derek Parfit, concerning the relativevalues of low-quantity/high-quality goods andhigh-quantity/low-quality goods (Parfit 1984, Part IV). One responseto these puzzles (eschewed by Parfit himself) is to adopt the thesisof the nontransitivity of intrinsic betterness. Another is to insiston the thesis that some goods are higher than others. Such a responsedoes not by itself solve the puzzles that Parfit raises, but, to theextent that it helps, it does so at the cost of once againcomplicating the computation of intrinsic value.

To repeat: contrary to what Ross says, the thesis that some goods arehigher than others implies that such goods are commensurate, and notthat they are incommensurate. Some people do hold, however, thatcertain values really are incommensurate and thus cannot be comparedon any meaningful scale. (Isaiah Berlin [1909–1997], forexample, is often thought to have said this about the values ofliberty and equality. Whether he is best interpreted in this way isdebatable. See Berlin 1969.) This view constitutes a more radicalthreat to the computation of intrinsic value than does the view thatintrinsic betterness is not transitive. The latter view presupposes atleast some measure of commensurability. IfA is better thanB andB is better thanC, thenAis commensurate withB andB is commensurate withC; and even if it should turn out thatA is notbetter thanC, it may still be thatA iscommensurate withC, either because it is as good asC or because it is worse thanC. But ifAis incommensurate withB, thenA is neither betterthan nor as good as nor worse thanB. (Some claim, however,that the reverse does not hold and that, even ifA is neitherbetter than nor as good as nor worse thanB, stillAmay be “on a par” withB and thus be roughlycomparable with it. Cf. Chang 1997, 2002.) If such a case can arise,there is an obvious limit to the extent to which we can meaningfullysay how good a certain complex whole is (here, “whole” isused to refer to whatever kind of entity may have intrinsic value);for, if such a whole comprises incommensurate goodsA andB, then there will be no way of establishing just how good itis overall, even if there is a way of establishing how good it is withrespect to each ofA andB.

There is a third, still more radical threat to the computation ofintrinsic value. Quite apart from any concern with thecommensurability of values, Moore famously claims that there is noeasy formula for the determination of the intrinsic value of complexwholes because of the truth of what he calls the “principle oforganic unities” (Moore 1903, p. 96). According to thisprinciple, the intrinsic value of a whole must not be assumed to bethe same as the sum of the intrinsic values of its parts (Moore 1903,p. 28) As an example of an organic unity, Moore gives the case of theconsciousness of a beautiful object; he says that this has greatintrinsic value, even though the consciousness as such and thebeautiful object as such each have comparatively little, if any,intrinsic value. If the principle of organic unities is true, thenthere is scant hope of a systematic approach to the computation ofintrinsic value. Although the principle explicitly rules out onlysummation as a method of computation, Moore’s remarks stronglysuggest that there is no relation between the parts of a whole and thewhole itself that holds in general and in terms of which the value ofthe latter can be computed by aggregating (whether by summation or bysome other means) the values of the former. Moore’s position hasbeen endorsed by many other philosophers. For example, Ross says thatit is better that one person be good and happy and another bad andunhappy than that the former be good and unhappy and the latter badand happy, and he takes this to be confirmation of Moore’sprinciple (Ross 1930, p. 72). Broad takes organic unities of the sortthat Moore discusses to be just one instance of a more generalphenomenon that he believes to be at work in many other situations, aswhen, for example, two tunes, each pleasing in its own right, make fora cacophonous combination (Broad 1985, p. 256). Others have furnishedstill further examples of organic unities (Chisholm 1986, ch. 7; Lemos1994, chs. 3 and 4, and 1998; Hurka 1998).

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

Recently, a special spin has been put on the principle of organicunities by so-called “particularists.” Jonathan Dancy, forexample, has claimed (in keeping with Korsgaard and others mentionedin Section 3 above), that something’s intrinsic value need notsupervene on its intrinsic properties alone; in fact, thesupervenience-base may be so open-ended that it resistsgeneralization. The upshot, according to Dancy, is that the intrinsicvalue of something may vary from context to context; indeed, thevariation may be so great that the thing’s value changes“polarity” from good to bad, orvice versa (Dancy2000). This approach to value constitutes an endorsement of theprinciple of organic unities that is even more subversive of thecomputation of intrinsic value than Moore’s; for Moore holdsthat the intrinsic value of something is and must be constant, even ifits contribution to the value of wholes of which it forms a part isnot, whereas Dancy holds that variation can occur at both levels.

Not everyone has accepted the principle of organic unities; some haveheld out hope for a more systematic approach to the computation ofintrinsic value. However, even someone who is inclined to measureintrinsic value in terms of summation must acknowledge that there is asense in which the principle of organic unities is obviously true.Consider some complex whole,W, that is composed of threegoods,X,Y, andZ, which are whollyindependent of one another. Suppose that we had a ratio scale on whichto measure these goods, and that their values on this scale were 10,20, and 30, respectively. We would expect someone who takes intrinsicvalue to be summative to declare the value ofW to be (10 +20 + 30 =) 60. But notice that, ifX,Y, andZ are parts ofW, then so too, presumably, are thecombinationsX-and-Y,X-and-Z, andY-and-Z; the values of these combinations, computedin terms of summation, will be 30, 40, and 50, respectively. If thevalues of these parts ofW were also taken into considerationwhen evaluatingW, the value ofW would balloon to180. Clearly, this would be a distortion. Someone who wishes tomaintain that intrinsic value is summative must thus show not only howthe various alleged examples of organic unities provided by Moore andothers are to be reinterpreted, but also how, in the sort of case justsketched, it is only the values ofX,Y, andZ, and not the values either of any combinations of thesecomponents or of any parts of these components, that are to be takeninto account when evaluatingW itself. In order to bring somesemblance of manageability to the computation of intrinsic value, thisis precisely what some writers, by appealing to the idea of“basic” intrinsic value, have tried to do. The generalidea is this. In the sort of example just given, each ofX,Y, andZ is to be construed as having basicintrinsic value; if any combinations or parts ofX,Y, andZ have intrinsic value, this value is notbasic; and the value ofW is to be computed by appealing onlyto those parts ofW that have basic intrinsic value.

Gilbert Harman was one of the first explicitly to discuss basicintrinsic value when he pointed out the apparent need to invoke suchvalue if we are to avoid distortions in our evaluations (Harman 1967).However, he offers no precise account of the concept of basicintrinsic value and ends his paper by saying that he can think of noway to show that nonbasic intrinsic value is to be computed in termsof the summation of basic intrinsic value. Several philosophers havesince tried to do better. Many have argued that nonbasic intrinsicvaluecannot always be computed by summing basic intrinsicvalue. Suppose that states of affairs can bear intrinsic value. LetX be the state of affairs of John being pleased to a certaindegreex, andY be the state of affairs of Janebeing displeased to a certain degreey, and suppose thatX has a basic intrinsic value of 10 andY a basicintrinsic value of −20. It seems reasonable to sum these valuesand attribute an intrinsic value of −10 to the conjunctive stateof affairsX&Y. But what of the disjunctive state ofaffairsXvY or the negative state of affairs~X? Howaretheir intrinsic values to be computed? Summation seems tobe a nonstarter in these cases. Nonetheless, attempts have been madeeven in such cases to show how the intrinsic value of a complex wholeis to be computed in a nonsummative way in terms of the basicintrinsic values of simpler states, thus preserving the idea thatbasic intrinsic value is the key to the computation of all intrinsicvalue (Quinn 1974, Chisholm 1975, Oldfield 1977, Carlson 1997). (Theseattempts have generally been based on the assumption that states ofaffairs are thesole bearers of intrinsic value. Matterswould be considerably more complicated if it turned out that entitiesof several different ontological categories could all have intrinsicvalue.)

Suggestions as to how to compute nonbasic intrinsic value in terms ofbasic intrinsic value of course presuppose that there is such a thingas basic intrinsic value, but few have attempted to provide an accountof what basic intrinsic value itself consists in. Fred Feldman is oneof the few (Feldman 2000; cf. Feldman 1997, pp. 116–18).Subscribing to the view that only states of affairs bear intrinsicvalue, Feldman identifies several features that any state of affairsthat has basic intrinsic value in particular must possess. Hemaintains, for example, that whatever has basic intrinsic value musthave it to a determinate degree and that this value cannot be“defeated” by any Moorean organic unity. In this way,Feldman seeks to preserve the idea that intrinsic value is summativeafter all. He does not claim that all intrinsic value is to becomputed by summing basic intrinsic value, but he does insist that thevalue of entire worlds is to be computed in this way.

Despite the detail in which Feldman characterizes the concept of basicintrinsic value, he offers no strict analysis of it. Others have triedto supply such an analysis. For example, by noting that, even if it istrue that only states have intrinsic value, it may yet be that not allstates have intrinsic value, Zimmerman suggests (to put matterssomewhat roughly) that basic intrinsic value is the intrinsic valuehad by states none of whose proper parts have intrinsic value(Zimmerman 2001, ch. 5). On this basis he argues that disjunctive andnegative states in fact have no intrinsic value at all, and therebyseeks to show how all intrinsic value is to be computed in terms ofsummation after all.

A final point: we are now in a position to see why it was said above(in Section 2) that perhaps not all intrinsic value is nonderivative.If it is correct to distinguish between basic and nonbasic intrinsicvalue and also to compute the latter in terms of the former, thenthere is clearly a respectable sense in which nonbasic intrinsic valueis derivative.

6. What Is Extrinsic Value?

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

Two questions arise. The first is whether so-called extrinsic value isreally a type of value at all. There would seem to be a sense in whichit is not, for it does not add to or detract from the value in theworld. Consider some long chain of derivation. Suppose that theextrinsic value ofA can be traced to the intrinsic value ofZ by way ofB,C,D… ThusA is good (for example) because ofB, which is goodbecause ofC, and so on, until we get toY’sbeing good because ofZ; when it comes toZ,however, we have something that is good, not because of somethingelse, but “because of itself,” i.e., for its own sake. Inthis sort of case, the values ofA,B, …,Y are all parasitic on the value ofZ. It isZ’s value that contributes to the value there is in theworld;A,B, …,Y contribute novalue of their own. (As long as the value ofZ is the onlyintrinsic value at stake, no change of value would be effected in orimparted to the world if a shorter route fromA toZwere discovered, one that bypassed some letters in the middle of thealphabet.)

Why talk of “extrinsic value” at all, then? The answer canonly be that we just do say that certain things are good, and othersbad, not for their own sake but for the sake of something else towhich they are related in some way. To say that these things are goodand bad only in a derivative sense, that their value is merelyparasitic on or reflective of the value of something else, is onething; to deny that they are good or bad in any respectable sense isquite another. The former claim is accurate; hence the latter wouldappear unwarranted.

If we accept that talk of “extrinsic value” can beappropriate, however, a second question then arises: what sort ofrelation must obtain betweenA andZ ifAis to be said to be good “because of”Z? It isnot clear just what the answer to this question is. Philosophers havetended to focus on just one particular causal relation, the means-endrelation. This is the relation at issue in the example given earlier:helping others is a means to their needs being satisfied, which isitself a means to their experiencing pleasure. The term most oftenused to refer to this type of extrinsic value is “instrumentalvalue,” although there is some dispute as to just how this termis to be employed. (Remember also, from Section 3 above, that on someviews “instrumental value” may refer to a type ofintrinsic, or final, value.) Suppose thatA is ameans toZ, and thatZ is intrinsically good. Shouldwe therefore say thatA is instrumentally good? What ifA has another consequence,Y, and this consequenceis intrinsically bad? What, especially, if the intrinsic badness ofY is greater than the intrinsic goodness ofZ? Somewould say that in such a caseA is both instrumentally good(because ofZ) and instrumentally bad (because ofY). Others would say that it is correct to say thatA is instrumentally good only if all ofA’scausal consequences that have intrinsic value are, taken as a whole,intrinsically good. Still others would say that whether something isinstrumentally good depends not only on what it causes to happen butalso on what it prevents from happening (cf. Bradley 1998). Forexample, if pain is intrinsically bad, and taking an aspirin puts astop to your pain but causes nothing of any positive intrinsic value,some would say that taking the aspirin is instrumentally good despiteits having no intrinsically good consequences.

Many philosophers write as if instrumental value is the only type ofextrinsic value, but that is a mistake. Suppose, for instance, thatthe results of a certain medical test indicate that the patient is ingood health, and suppose that this patient’s having good healthis intrinsically good. Then we may well want to say that the resultsare themselves (extrinsically) good (Bradley 1998). But notice thatthe results are of course not a means to good health; they are simplyindicative of it. Or suppose that making your home available to astruggling artist while you spend a year abroad provides him with anopportunity he would otherwise not have to create some masterpieces,and suppose that either the process or the product of this creationwould be intrinsically good. Then we may well want to say that yourmaking your home available to him is (extrinsically) good because ofthe opportunity it provides him, even if he goes on to squander theopportunity and nothing good comes of it. Or suppose thatsomeone’s appreciating the beauty of theMona Lisawould be intrinsically good. Then we may well want to say that thepainting itself has value in light of this fact, a kind of value thatsome have called “inherent value” (Lewis 1946, p. 391; cf.Frankena 1973, p. 82). (“Inherent value” may notbe the most suitable term to use here, since it may well suggestintrinsic value, whereas the sort of value at issue issupposed to be a type ofextrinsic value. The valueattributed to the painting is one that it is said to have in virtue ofits relation to something else that would supposedly be intrinsicallygood if it occurred, namely, the appreciation of its beauty.) Manyother instances could be given of cases in which we are inclined tocall something good in virtue of its relation to something else thatis or would be intrinsically good, even though the relation inquestion is not a means-end relation; part-whole relations might be anexample (Bradley 1998, 2001, 2002).

One final point. It is sometimes said that there can be no extrinsicvalue without intrinsic value. This thesis admits of severalinterpretations. First, it might mean that nothing can occur that isextrinsically good unless something else occurs that is intrinsicallygood, and that nothing can occur that is extrinsically bad unlesssomething else occurs that is intrinsically bad. Second, it might meanthat nothing can occur that is either extrinsically good orextrinsically bad unless something else occurs that is eitherintrinsically good or intrinsically bad. On both theseinterpretations, the thesis is dubious. Suppose that no one everappreciates the beauty of Leonardo’s masterpiece, and thatnothing else that is intrinsically either good or bad ever occurs;still his painting may be said to be inherently good. Or suppose thatthe aspirin prevents your pain from even starting, and hence inhibitsthe occurrence of something intrinsically bad, but nothing else thatis intrinsically either good or bad ever occurs; still your taking theaspirin may be said to be instrumentally good. On a thirdinterpretation, however, the thesis might be true. That interpretationis this: nothing can occur that is either extrinsically good orextrinsically neutral or extrinsically bad unless something elseoccurs that is either intrinsically good or intrinsically neutral orintrinsically bad. This would be trivially true if, as some maintain,the nonoccurrence of something intrinsically either good or badentails the occurrence of something intrinsically neutral. But even ifthe thesis should turn out to be false on this third interpretation,too, it would nonetheless seem to be true on a fourth interpretation,according to which the concept of extrinsic value, in all itsvarieties, is to be understood in terms of the concept of intrinsicvalue.

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Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Fred Feldman, Noah Lemos, Terry McConnell, and ToniRønnow-Rasmussen for helpful comments on a previous draft.