Given any monistic theory, everything that is of value must be either the one intrinsic value, or else must lead to the one intrinsic value. This means that if some things that are intuitively of value, such as knowledge, do not, in fact, always lead to what a theory holds to be the one intrinsic value for example, pleasure , then the theory is committed to denying that these things are really always of value after all.
Monists, in contrast, have a choice. They can change their mind about the basic intrinsic value and try all over again, they can work on developing resourceful arguments that knowledge really does lead to pleasure, or they can bite the bullet and conclude that knowledge is really not, after all, always good, but only under certain specific conditions. If the explanatory commitments of the pluralist are not different in kind from those of the monist, but only different in number , then it is natural for the pluralist to think that this kind of slavish adherence to the number one is a kind of fetish it is better to do without, if we want to develop a theory that gets things right.
This is a perspective that many historical pluralists have shared. The third important issue in the debate between monists and pluralists, and the most central over recent decades, is that over the relationship between pluralism and incommensurability. If one state of affairs is better than another just in case it contains more value than the other, and there are two or more basic intrinsic values, then it is not clear how two states of affairs can be compared, if one contains more of the first value, but the other contains more of the second.
Which state of affairs is better, under such a circumstance? Reasoning like this has led some philosophers to believe that pluralism is the key to explaining the complexity of real moral situations and the genuine tradeoffs that they involve. If some things really are incomparable or incommensurable, they reason, then pluralism about value could explain why. Very similar reasoning has led other philosophers, however, to the view that monism has to be right: practical wisdom requires being able to make choices, even in complicated situations, they argue.
But that would be impossible, if the options available in some choice were incomparable in this way. So if pluralism leads to this kind of incomparability, then pluralism must be false. But even if we grant all of the assumptions on both sides so far, monists have the better of these two arguments.
Value pluralism may be one way to obtain incomparable options, but there could be other ways, even consistently with value monism. For example, take the interpretation of Mill on which he believes that there is only one intrinsic value — happiness — but that happiness is a complicated sort of thing, which can happen in each of two different ways — either through higher pleasures, or through lower pleasures. If Mill has this view, and holds, further, that it is in some cases indeterminate whether someone who has slightly more higher pleasures is happier than someone who has quite a few more lower pleasures, then he can explain why it is indeterminate whether it is better to be the first way or the second way, without having to appeal to pluralism in his theory of value.
The pluralism would be within his theory of happiness alone. See a more detailed discussion in the entry on value pluralism. We have just seen that one of the issues at stake in the debate between monists and pluralists about value turns on the question vaguely put of whether values can be incomparable or incommensurable.
This is consequently an area of active dispute in its own right. There are, in fact, many distinct issues in this debate, and sometimes several of them are run together. One of the most important questions at stake is whether it must always be true, for two states of affairs, that things would be better if the first obtained than if the second did, that things would be better if the second obtained than if the first did, or that things would be equally good if either obtained. The claim that it can sometimes happen that none of these is true is sometimes referred to as the claim of incomparability , in this case as applied to good simpliciter.
However, we can distinguish between weak incomparability, defined as above, and strong incomparability, further requiring the lack of parity, whatever that turns out to be.
It is important to distinguish the question of whether good simpliciter admits of incomparability from the question of whether good for and attributive good admit of incomparability.
Many discussions of the incomparability of values proceed at a very abstract level, and interchange examples of each of these kinds of value claims. For example, a typical example of a purported incomparability might compare, say, Mozart to Rodin. Is Mozart a better artist than Rodin? Is Rodin a better artist than Mozart? Are they equally good? If none of these is the case, then we have an example of incomparability in attributive good, but not an example of incomparability in good simpliciter.
These questions may be parallel or closely related, and investigation of each may be instructive in consideration of the other, but they still need to be kept separate. For example, one important argument against the incomparability of value was mentioned in the previous section. It is that incomparability would rule out the possibility of practical wisdom, because practical wisdom requires the ability to make correct choices even in complicated choice situations.
Choices are presumably between actions, or between possible consequences of those actions. So it could be that attributive good is sometimes incomparable, because neither Mozart nor Rodin is a better artist than the other and they are not equally good, but that good simpliciter is always comparable, so that there is always an answer as to which of two actions would lead to an outcome that is better.
Even once it is agreed that good simpliciter is incomparable in this sense, many theories have been offered as to what that incomparability involves and why it exists.
One important constraint on such theories is that they not predict more incomparabilities than we really observe. For example, though Rodin may not be a better or worse artist than Mozart, nor equally good, he is certainly a better artist than Salieri — even though Salieri, like Mozart, is a better composer than Rodin.
This is a problem for the idea that incomparability can be explained by value pluralism. The argument from value pluralism to incomparability suggested that it would be impossible to compare any two states of affairs where one contained more of one basic value and the other contained more of another.
If that were the correct explanation, then Rodin and Salieri would also be incomparable, but intuitively, they are not. Constraints like these can narrow down the viable theories about what is going on in cases of incomparability, and are evidence that incomparability is probably not going to be straightforwardly explained by value pluralism. There are many other kinds of theses that go under the title of the incomparability or incommensurability of values. Some have interpreted Kant to be holding simply that respect for rational agents is of infinite value, or that it is to be lexically ordered over the value of anything else.
Another thesis in the neighborhood, however, would be somewhat weaker. A more detailed discussion of the commensurability of values can be found in the entry on incommensurable values. One of the biggest and most important questions about value is the matter of its relation to the deontic — to categories like right , reason , rational , just , and ought. According to teleological views, of which classical consequentialism and universalizable egoism are classic examples, deontic categories are posterior to and to be explained in terms of evaluative categories like good and good for.
The contrasting view, according to which deontic categories are prior to, and explain, the evaluative categories, is one which, as Aristotle says, has no name. Teleological theories are not, strictly speaking, theories about value. They are theories about right action, or about what one ought to do. But they are committed to claims about value, because they appeal to evaluative facts, in order to explain what is right and wrong, and what we ought to do — deontic facts. The most obvious consequence of these theories, is therefore that evaluative facts must not then be explained in terms of deontic facts.
The evaluative, on such views, is prior to the deontic. According to classical consequentialism, every agent ought always to do whatever action, out of all of the actions available to her at that time, is the one such that if she did it, things would be best.
Not all defenders of consequentialism interpret it in such classical terms; other prominent forms of consequentialism focus on rules or motives, and evaluate actions only derivatively. Classical consequentialism is sometimes supported by appeal to the intuition that one should always do the best action, and then the assumption that actions are only instrumentally good or bad — for the sake of what they lead to compare especially Moore [].
The problem with this reasoning is that non-consequentialists can agree that agents ought always to do the best action. The important feature of this claim to recognize is that it is a claim not about intrinsic or instrumental value, but about attributive good. And as noted in section 2. Just as how good of a can opener something is or how good of a torturer someone is does not depend on how good the world is, as a result of the fact that they exist, how good of an action something is need not depend on how good the world is, as a result that it happens.
Indeed, if it did, then the evaluative standards governing actions would be quite different from those governing nearly everything else. Classical consequentialism, and its instantiation in the form of utilitarianism, has been well-explored, and its advantages and costs cannot be surveyed here.
Many of the issues for classical consequentialism, however, are issues for details of its exact formulation or implementation, and not problems in principle with its appeal to the evaluative in order to explain the deontic. For another example, problems faced by certain consequentialist theories, like traditional utilitarianism, about accounting for things like justice can be solved by other consequentialist theories, simply by adopting a more generous picture about what sort of things contribute to how good things are Sen [].
In section 3. This issue does pose an in-principle general problem for the aspiration of consequentialism to explain deontic categories in terms of the evaluative. For more, see the entry on consequentialism and utilitarianism. Universalizable egoism is another familiar teleological theory. According to universalizable egoism, each agent ought always to do whatever action has the feature that, of all available alternatives, it is the one such that, were she to do it, things would be best for her.
Rather than asking agents to maximize the good, egoism asks agents to maximize what is good for them. Universalizable egoism shares many features with classical consequentialism, and Sidgwick found both deeply attractive.
Many others have joined Sidgwick in holding that there is something deeply attractive about what consequentialism and egoism have in common — which involves, at minimum, the teleological idea that the deontic is to be explained in terms of the evaluative Portmore [].
Of course, not all teleological theories share the broad features of consequentialism and egoism. Classical Natural Law theories Finnis [], Murphy [] are teleological, in the sense that they seek to explain what we ought to do in terms of what is good, but they do so in a very different way from consequentialism and egoism.
According to an example of such a Natural Law theory, there are a variety of natural values, each of which calls for a certain kind of distinctive response or respect, and agents ought always to act in ways that respond to the values with that kind of respect. For more on natural law theories, see the entry on the natural law tradition in ethics. As Pettit notes, classical consequentialists hold that all values are to be promoted, and one way of thinking of some of these other kinds of teleological theories is that like consequentialism they explain what we ought to do in terms of what is good, but unlike consequentialism they hold that some kinds of good call for responses other than promotion.
In contrast to teleological theories, which seek to account for deontic categories in terms of evaluative ones, Fitting Attitudes accounts aspire to account for evaluative categories — like good simpliciter , good for , and attributive good — in terms of the deontic. Whereas teleology has implications about value but is not itself a theory primarily about value, but rather about what is right, Fitting Attitudes accounts are primarily theses about value — in accounting for it in terms of the deontic, they tell us what it is for something to be good.
Hence, they are theories about the nature of value. If being good just is being desirable, and being desirable just is being correctly or appropriately desired, it follows that being good just is being correctly or appropriately desired. But correct and appropriate are deontic concepts, so if being good is just being desirable, then goodness can itself be accounted for in terms of the deontic.
Different Fitting Attitudes accounts, however, work by appealing to different deontic concepts. Some of the problems facing Fitting Attitudes views can be exhibited by considering a couple exemplars. According to a formula from Sidgwick, for example, the good is what ought to be desired.
But this slogan is not by itself very helpful until we know more: desired by whom? By everyone? By at least someone? By someone in particular?
We observed in section 1. Scanlon offered an influential contemporary view with much in common with Fitting Attitudes accounts, which he called the Buck-Passing theory of value. But despite these differences, the Scanlonian slogan shares with the Sidgwickian slogan the feature of being massively underspecified. So does the theory require that there is some particular set of certain ways, such that a thing is good just in case there are reasons to respond to it in any of those ways?
This is a matter that would need to be sorted out by any worked out view. Plausibly, the thing under consideration should not turn out to be good in such a case. Even once these kinds of questions are sorted out, however, other significant questions remain. The problem arises from the observation that intuitively, some factors can affect what you ought to desire without affecting what is good. It may be true that if we make something better, then other things being equal, you ought to desire it more.
But we can also create incentives for you to desire it, without making it any better. For example, you might be offered a substantial financial reward for desiring something bad, or an evil demon might credibly threaten to kill your family unless you do so.
If these kinds of circumstances can affect what you ought to desire, as is at least intuitively plausible, then they will be counterexamples to views based on the Sidgwickian formula. Similarly, if these kinds of circumstances can give you reasons to desire the thing which is bad, then they will be counterexamples to views based on the Scanlonian formula. One reason to think that the distinction may not be general enough, is that situations very much like Wrong Kind of Reasons situations can arise even where no mental states are in play.
Moore apparently thinks that his objection works just as well where one or more of the component concepts A , B , C ,…, is evaluative; but, again, many dispute the cogency of his argument. Indeed, several philosophers have proposed analyses of just this sort. He formulates a view according to which to put matters roughly to say that a state of affairs is intrinsically good or bad is to say that it is possible that its goodness or badness constitutes all the goodness or badness that there is in the world Chisholm However, the general idea that an intrinsically valuable state is one that could somehow account for all the value in the world is suggestive and promising; if it could be adequately formulated, it would reveal an important feature of intrinsic value that would help us better understand the concept.
We will return to this point in Section 5. Rather than pursue such a line of thought, Chisholm himself responded Chisholm in a different way to Bodanszky and Conee. This new analysis in fact reflects a general idea that has a rich history. Franz Brentano [—], C. Broad [—], W. Ross [—], and A. It would thus seem very natural to suppose that for something to be intrinsically good is simply for it to be such that it is fitting to value it for its own sake.
The underlying point is that those who value for its own sake that which is intrinsically good thereby evince a kind of moral sensitivity.
Though undoubtedly attractive, this analysis can be and has been challenged. Brand Blanshard [—], for example, argues that the analysis is to be rejected because, if we ask why something is such that it is fitting to value it for its own sake, the answer is that this is the case precisely because the thing in question is intrinsically good; this answer indicates that the concept of intrinsic goodness is more fundamental than that of the fittingness of some pro attitude, which is inconsistent with analyzing the former in terms of the latter Blanshard , pp.
Lemos , p. Whether such an account is acceptable has recently been the subject of intense debate. Many, like Scanlon, endorse passing the buck; some, like Blanshard, object to doing so. Hence a buck-passer may, but need not, accept the analysis. Indeed, there is reason to think that Moore himself is a buck-passer, even though he takes the concept of intrinsic goodness to be unanalyzable; cf. Olson If this were the case, it would reveal an important feature of intrinsic value, recognition of which would help us to improve our understanding of the concept.
However, this thesis has also been challenged. Krister Bykvist has argued that what he calls solitary goods may constitute a counterexample to part a of the thesis Bykvist , pp. Such alleged goods consist in states of affairs that entail that there is no one in a position to value them.
Suppose, for example, that happiness is intrinsically good, and good in such a way that it is fitting to welcome it. Then, more particularly, the state of affairs of there being happy egrets is intrinsically good; so too, presumably, is the more complex state of affairs of there being happy egrets but no welcomers. The simpler state of affairs would appear to pose no problem for part a of the thesis, but the more complex state of affairs, which is an example of a solitary good, may pose a problem.
For if to welcome a state of affairs entails that that state of affairs obtains, then welcoming the more complex state of affairs is logically impossible.
Furthermore, if to welcome a state of affairs entails that one believes that that state of affairs obtains, then the pertinent belief regarding the more complex state of affairs would be necessarily false.
In neither case would it seem plausible to say that welcoming the state of affairs is nonetheless fitting. Thus, unless this challenge can somehow be met, a proponent of the thesis must restrict the thesis to pro attitudes that are neither truth- nor belief-entailing, a restriction that might itself prove unwelcome, since it excludes a number of favorable responses to what is good such as promoting what is good, or taking pleasure in what is good to which proponents of the thesis have often appealed.
As to part b of the thesis: some philosophers have argued that it can be fitting to value something for its own sake even if that thing is not intrinsically good. A relatively early version of this argument was again provided by Blanshard , pp. Recently the issue has been brought into stark relief by the following sort of thought-experiment. Imagine that an evil demon wants you to value him for his own sake and threatens to cause you severe suffering unless you do.
Some have been persuaded that the challenge succeeds, while others have sought to undermine it. One final cautionary note. Nonetheless, it becomes clear on further inspection that Kant is in fact discussing a concept quite different from that with which this article is concerned. Such talk indicates that Kant believes that the sort of value that he ascribes to rational beings is one that they possess to an infinite degree. But then, if this were understood as a thesis about intrinsic value as we have been understanding this concept, the implication would seem to be that, since it contains rational beings, ours is the best of all possible worlds.
It seems best to understand Kant, and other philosophers who have since written in the same vein cf. Bradley In the history of philosophy, relatively few seem to have entertained doubts about the concept of intrinsic value. Much of the debate about intrinsic value has tended to be about what things actually do have such value.
However, once questions about the concept itself were raised, doubts about its metaphysical implications, its moral significance, and even its very coherence began to appear. Consider, first, the metaphysics underlying ascriptions of intrinsic value.
It seems safe to say that, before the twentieth century, most moral philosophers presupposed that the intrinsic goodness of something is a genuine property of that thing, one that is no less real than the properties of being pleasant, of satisfying a need, or whatever in virtue of which the thing in question is good. Several dissented from this view, however. See Hobbes , Hume Ayer [—] and Charles L. Stevenson [—] see Ayer , Stevenson Other philosophers have since embraced other forms of noncognitivism.
But this seems to be a mistake. We should distinguish questions about value from questions about evaluation. Questions about value fall into two main groups, conceptual of the sort discussed in the last section and substantive of the sort discussed in the first section.
Questions about evaluation have to do with what precisely is going on when we ascribe value to something. Cognitivists claim that our ascriptions of value constitute statements that are either true or false; noncognitivists deny this.
But even noncognitivists must recognize that our ascriptions of value fall into two fundamental classes—ascriptions of intrinsic value and ascriptions of extrinsic value—and so they too must concern themselves with the very same conceptual and substantive questions about value as cognitivists address. It may be that noncognitivism dictates or rules out certain answers to these questions that cognitivism does not, but that is of course quite a different matter from rejecting the very idea of intrinsic value on metaphysical grounds.
According to the pragmatist, the world is constantly changing in such a way that the solution to one problem becomes the source of another, what is an end in one context is a means in another, and thus it is a mistake to seek or offer a timeless list of intrinsic goods and evils, of ends to be achieved or avoided for their own sakes.
This theme has been elaborated by Monroe Beardsley, who attacks the very notion of intrinsic value Beardsley ; cf. Conee Denying that the existence of something with extrinsic value presupposes the existence of something else with intrinsic value, Beardsley argues that all value is extrinsic. Far from repudiating the notion of intrinsic value, though, this admission would confirm its legitimacy.
But Beardsley would insist that this quick response misses the point of his attack, and that it really is the case, not just that whatever has value has extrinsic value, but also that nothing has intrinsic value.
But here Beardsley seems to be overreaching. Even if it were the case that we cannot know whether something has intrinsic value, this of course leaves open the question whether anything does have such value. And even if it could somehow be shown that nothing does have such value, this would still leave open the question whether something could have such value. As has been noted, some philosophers do indeed doubt the legitimacy, the very coherence, of the concept of intrinsic value. Before we turn to a discussion of this issue, however, let us for the moment presume that the concept is coherent and address a different sort of doubt: the doubt that the concept has any great moral significance.
Recall the suggestion, mentioned in the last section, that discussions of intrinsic value may have been compromised by a failure to distinguish certain concepts. An example of a nonrelational property is the property of being round; an example of a relational property is the property of being loved.
As an illustration of final value, Korsgaard suggests that gorgeously enameled frying pans are, in virtue of the role they play in our lives, good for their own sakes. In like fashion, Beardsley wonders whether a rare stamp may be good for its own sake Beardsley ; Shelly Kagan says that the pen that Abraham Lincoln used to sign the Emancipation Proclamation may well be good for its own sake Kagan ; and others have offered similar examples cf.
Notice that in each case the value being attributed to the object in question is allegedly had in virtue of some extrinsic property of the object. There is an important corollary to drawing a distinction between intrinsic value and final value and between extrinsic value and nonfinal value , and that is that, contrary to what Korsgaard herself initially says, it may be a mistake to contrast final value with instrumental value. If it is possible, as Korsgaard claims, that final value sometimes supervenes on extrinsic properties, then it might be possible that it sometimes supervenes in particular on the property of being a means to some other end.
Kagan also tentatively endorses this idea. If the idea is coherent, then we should in principle distinguish two kinds of instrumental value, one final and the other nonfinal. Even if it is agreed that it is final value that is central to the concerns of moral philosophers, we should be careful in drawing the conclusion that intrinsic value is not central to their concerns.
Whether this is in fact the case depends in part on just what sort of thing can be valuable for its own sake—an issue to be taken up in the next section. In light of the matter just discussed, we must now decide what terminology to adopt.
Let us now turn to doubts about the very coherence of the concept of intrinsic value, so understood. In Principia Ethica and elsewhere, Moore embraces the consequentialist view, mentioned above, that whether an action is morally right or wrong turns exclusively on whether its consequences are intrinsically better than those of its alternatives.
Some philosophers have recently argued that ascribing intrinsic value to consequences in this way is fundamentally misconceived. Philippa Foot, among others, has made a similar charge Foot He maintains that, for Moore and other proponents of intrinsic value, such value is a particular kind of moral value. Among those who do not doubt the coherence of the concept of intrinsic value there is considerable difference of opinion about what sort or sorts of entity can have such value.
Moore does not explicitly address this issue, but his writings show him to have a liberal view on the matter. There are times when he talks of individual objects e. To what kind s of entity do such terms refer? Various answers have been given. Some such as Panayot Butchvarov claim that it is properties that are the bearers of intrinsic value Butchvarov , pp.
Others such as Chisholm claim that it is states of affairs that are the bearers of intrinsic value Chisholm —69, , Still others such as Ross claim that it is facts that are the bearers of intrinsic value Ross , pp. Lemos , ch. Ontologists often divide entities into two fundamental classes, those that are abstract and those that are concrete. Unfortunately, there is no consensus on just how this distinction is to be drawn. Most philosophers would classify the sorts of entities just mentioned properties, states of affairs, and facts as abstract.
So understood, the claim that intrinsic value is borne by such entities is to be distinguished from the claim that it is borne by certain other closely related entities that are often classified as concrete. For example, it has recently been suggested that it is tropes that have intrinsic value.
Thus the particular whiteness of a particular piece of paper is to be distinguished, on this view, from the property of whiteness. It has also been suggested that it is states, understood as a kind of instance of states of affairs, that have intrinsic value cf.
Zimmerman , ch. Those who make monistic proposals of the sort just mentioned are aware that intrinsic value is sometimes ascribed to kinds of entities different from those favored by their proposals. They claim that all such ascriptions can be reduced to, or translated into, ascriptions of intrinsic value of the sort they deem proper.
Ross would say that this cannot be the case. If there is any intrinsic value to be found here, it will, according to Ross, not reside in the pan itself but in the fact that it plays a certain role in our lives, or perhaps in the fact that something plays this role, or in the fact that something that plays this role exists. Others would make other translations in the terms that they deem appropriate. On the basis of this ascription of intrinsic value to some fact, Ross could go on to ascribe a kind of extrinsic value to the pan itself, in virtue of its relation to the fact in question.
Whether reduction of this sort is acceptable has been a matter of considerable debate. Proponents of monism maintain that it introduces some much-needed order into the discussion of intrinsic value, clarifying just what is involved in the ascription of such value and simplifying the computation of such value—on which point, see the next section.
On this point, see the last section; Zimmerman , ch. Opponents argue that reduction results in distortion and oversimplification; they maintain that, even if there is intrinsic value to be found in such a fact as that a gorgeously enameled frying pan plays a certain role in our lives, there may yet be intrinsic , and not merely extrinsic, value to be found in the pan itself and perhaps also in its existence cf. See again the cautionary note in the final paragraph of Section 2 above.
In our assessments of intrinsic value, we are often and understandably concerned not only with whether something is good or bad but with how good or bad it is. Arriving at an answer to the latter question is not straightforward. At least three problems threaten to undermine the computation of intrinsic value. First, there is the possibility that the relation of intrinsic betterness is not transitive that is, the possibility that something A is intrinsically better than something else B , which is itself intrinsically better than some third thing C , and yet A is not intrinsically better than C.
Despite the very natural assumption that this relation is transitive, it has been argued that it is not Rachels ; Temkin , , Should this in fact be the case, it would seriously complicate comparisons, and hence assessments, of intrinsic value. Second, there is the possibility that certain values are incommensurate. For example, Ross at one point contends that it is impossible to compare the goodness of pleasure with that of virtue. Whereas he had suggested in The Right and the Good that pleasure and virtue could be measured on the same scale of goodness, in Foundations of Ethics he declares this to be impossible, since he claims it would imply that pleasure of a certain intensity, enjoyed by a sufficient number of people or for a sufficient time, would counterbalance virtue possessed or manifested only by a small number of people or only for a short time; and this he professes to be incredible Ross , p.
But there is some confusion here. In claiming that virtue and pleasure are incommensurate for the reason given, Ross presumably means that they cannot be measured on the same ratio scale. A ratio scale is one with an arbitrary unit but a fixed zero point. Mass and length are standardly measured on ratio scales.
But incommensurability on a ratio scale does not imply incommensurability on every scale—an ordinal scale, for instance. An ordinal scale is simply one that supplies an ordering for the quantity in question, such as the measurement of arm-strength that is provided by an arm-wrestling competition.
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