= Instrumental and intrinsic value =

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= Instrumental and intrinsic value =
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Introduction
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Instrumental and intrinsic value name a fundamental distinction in
moral philosophy between valuing something as a means to an end and
valuing something as an end in itself. Things are deemed to have
instrumental value if they help one achieve a particular end.
Intrinsic values, by contrast, are understood to be desirable in and
of themselves. A tool or appliance, such as a hammer or washing
machine, has instrumental value because it helps you pound in a nail
or cleans your clothes. Happiness and pleasure are typically
considered to have intrinsic value insofar as asking 'why' someone
would want them makes little sense: they are desirable for their own
sake irrespective of their possible instrumental value.

Overview
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The classic names 'instrumental' and 'intrinsic' were coined by
sociologist Max Weber, who spent years studying good meanings people
assigned to their actions and beliefs. Here are Weber's original
definitions with a comment showing his doubt that conditionally
efficient means can achieve unconditionally legitimate ends, followed
by three modern definitions from the 'Oxford Handbook of Value
Theory.'

When people judge efficient means and legitimate ends at the same
time, both can be considered as good. But when ends are judged
separately from means, it may result in a conflict. What works may
not be right; what is right may not work. Separating the criteria
contaminates reasoning about the good.

Philosopher John Dewey argued that separating criteria for good ends
from those for good means necessarily contaminates recognition of
efficient and legitimate patterns of behavior. Economist J. Fagg
Foster explained why only instrumental value is capable of correlating
good ends with good means. Philosopher Jacques Ellul argued that
instrumental value has become completely contaminated by inhuman
technological consequences, and must be subordinated to intrinsic
supernatural value. Philosopher Anjan Chakravartty argued that
instrumental value is only legitimate when it produces good scientific
theories compatible with the intrinsic truth of mind-independent
reality.

The word "value is ambiguous, being both a verb and a noun and meaning
both a criterion of judgment and a result of applying a criterion. To
reduce ambiguity, throughout this article the noun "value" names a
criterion of judgment but not an object judged valuable, which is
named "valuation." The plural noun "values" identifies collections of
valuations, without identifying the criterion applied.

John Dewey
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John Dewey thought that belief in intrinsic value was a mistake.
Although the application of instrumental value is easily contaminated,
it is the only means humans have to coordinate group behaviour
efficiently and legitimately.

Every social transaction has good or bad consequences depending on
prevailing conditions, which may or may not be satisfied. Continuous
reasoning adjusts institutions to keep them working on the right track
as conditions change. Changing conditions demand changing judgments
to maintain efficient and legitimate correlation of behavior.

For Dewey, "restoring integration and cooperation between man's
beliefs about the world in which he lives and his beliefs about the
values [valuations] and purposes that should direct his conduct is the
deepest problem of modern life." "A culture which permits science to
destroy traditional values [valuations] but which distrusts its power
to create new ones is a culture which is destroying itself."

Dewey agreed with Weber that people talk as if they apply instrumental
and intrinsic criteria. And he agreed with Weber's observation that
intrinsic value is problematic because it ignores the relationship
between context and consequences of beliefs and behaviors. Both men
questioned how anything valued intrinsically "for its own sake" can
have operationally efficient consequences.

But Dewey rejected the common belief�shared by Weber�that supernatural
intrinsic value is necessary to show humans what is permanently
"right." He argued that both efficient and legitimate qualities must
be discovered in daily life.

Finding no evidence of "antecedent immutable reality of truth, beauty,
and goodness", Dewey argued that both efficient and legitimate 'goods'
are discovered in the continuity of human experience.

Philosophers label a "fixed reference point outside of conduct' a
"natural kind," and presume it to have eternal existence knowable in
itself without being experienced. Natural kinds are intrinsic
valuations presumed to be "mind-independent" and "theory-independent."

Dewey granted the existence of "reality" apart from human experience,
but denied that it is structured as intrinsically real natural kinds.
Instead, he saw reality as functional continuity of ways-of-acting
rather than as interaction among pre-structured intrinsic kinds.
Humans may intuit static kinds and qualities, but such private
experience cannot warrant inferences or valuations about
mind-independent reality. Reports or maps of perceptions or intuitions
are never equivalent to territories mapped.

People reason daily about what they ought to do and how they ought to
do it. Inductively, they discover sequences of efficient means that
achieve consequences. Once an end is reached�a problem
solved�reasoning turns to new conditions of means-end relations.
Valuations which ignore conditions that determine consequences cannot
coordinate behavior to solve real problems. They contaminate
rationality.

In brief, Dewey rejected the traditional belief that judging things
good-in-themselves, apart from existing means-end relations, can be
rational. The sole rational criterion is instrumental value. Each
valuation is conditional but, cumulatively, all are developmental�and
therefore socially legitimate solutions of problems. Competent
instrumental valuations treat the "function of consequences as
necessary tests of the validity of propositions, 'provided' these
consequences are operationally instituted and are such as to resolve
the specific problems evoking the operations �";

J. Fagg Foster
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John Fagg Foster made John Dewey's rejection of intrinsic value more
operational by showing that its competent use rejects the legitimacy
of utilitarian ends�satisfaction of whatever ends individuals adopt.
It requires recognizing developmental sequences of means and ends.

Utilitarians hold that individual wants cannot be rationally
justified. They are intrinsically worthy subjective valuations and
cannot be judged instrumentally. This belief supports philosophers
who hold that facts ("what is") can serve as instrumental means for
achieving ends, but cannot authorize ends ("what ought to be"). This
fact-value distinction creates what philosophers label the is-ought
problem: wants are intrinsically fact-free, good in themselves, while
efficient tools are valuation-free, usable for good or bad ends. In
modern North American culture, this utilitarian belief supports the
Libertarian assertion that every individual's intrinsic right to
satisfy wants makes it illegitimate for anyone�but especially
governments�to tell people what they ought to do.

Foster found the is-ought problem a useful place to attack the
irrational separation of good means from good ends. He argued that
want-satisfaction ("what ought to be") cannot serve as an intrinsic
moral compass because wants are themselves consequences of transient
conditions.

Since wants are shaped by social conditions, they must be judged
instrumentally. They arise in problematic situations when habitual
patterns of behavior fail to maintain instrumental correlations.

Foster supported with homely examples his thesis that problematic
situations--"what is"--contain the means for judging legitimate ends:
"what ought to be." Rational efficient means achieve rational
developmental ends.

Consider the problem all infants face learning to walk. They
spontaneously recognize that walking is more efficient than
crawling�an instrumental valuation of a desirable end. They learn to
walk by repeatedly moving and balancing, judging the efficiency with
which these means achieve their instrumental goal. When they master
this new way-of-acting, they experience great satisfaction, but
satisfaction is never their end-in-view.

To guard against contamination of instrumental value by judging means
and ends independently, Foster revised his definition to embrace both.

;Instrumental value
Instrumental value is the criterion of judgment which seeks
instrumentally-efficient means that "work" to achieve
developmentally-continuous ends. This definition stresses the
condition that instrumental success is never short term; it must not
lead down a dead-end street. The same point is made by the currently
popular concern for sustainability�a synonym for instrumental value.

Dewey's and Foster's argument that there is no intrinsic alternative
to instrumental value continues to be ignored rather than refuted.
Scholars continue to accept the possibility and necessity of knowing
"what ought to be" independently of transient conditions that
determine actual consequences of every action. Jacques Ellul and
Anjan Chakravartty were prominent exponents of the truth and reality
of intrinsic value as constraint on relativistic instrumental value.

Jacques Ellul
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Jacques Ellul made scholarly contributions to many fields, but his
American reputation grew out of his criticism of the autonomous
authority of instrumental value, the criterion that Dewey and Foster
found to be the core of human rationality. And he specifically
criticized the valuations central to Dewey's and Foster's thesis:
evolving instrumental technology.

His principal work, published in 1954, bore the French title 'La
technique.' It addressed the problem Dewey addressed in 1929: a
culture in which the authority of evolving technology destroys
traditional valuations without creating legitimate new ones. Both men
agreed that conditionally efficient valuations�"what is"�become
irrational when viewed as unconditionally efficient in
themselves�"what ought to be." But while Dewey argued that
contaminated instrumental valuations can be self-correcting, Ellul
concluded that technology had become intrinsically destructive. The
only escape from this evil is to restore authority to unconditional
sacred valuations:

'La technique' was published in English in 1964 with the title 'The
Technological Society', and quickly entered ongoing disputes in the
United States over the responsibility of instrumental value for
destructive social consequences. The translator of 'Technological
Society' summarized Ellul's thesis:

Ellul opened 'The Technological Society' by asserting that
instrumental efficiency is no longer a conditional criterion. It has
become autonomous and absolute.

He blamed instrumental valuations for destroying intrinsic meanings of
human life. "Think of our dehumanized factories, our unsatisfied
senses, our working women, our estrangement from nature. Life in such
an environment has no meaning. Weber had labeled the discrediting of
intrinsic valuations "disenchantment;" Ellul came to label it
"terrorism." He dated its domination to the 1800s, when centuries-old
handicraft techniques were massively eliminated by inhuman industry.

Ellul's core accusation was that instrumental efficiency had become
absolute�a good-in-itself. It wraps societies in a new technological
milieu with six intrinsically inhuman characteristics:

Philosophers Tiles and Oberdiek found Ellul's characterization of
instrumental value inaccurate. They criticized him for
anthropomorphizing and demonizing instrumental value. They countered
by examining the moral reasoning of scientists whose work led to
nuclear weapons. Those scientists demonstrated the capacity of
instrumental judgments to provide them with a moral compass to judge
nuclear technology. They were morally responsible without intrinsic
rules. Tiles's and Oberdiek's conclusion coincided with that of Dewey
and Foster: instrumental value, when competently applied, is
self-correcting and provides humans with a developmental moral
compass.

Anjan Chakravartty
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Anjan Chakravartty came indirectly to question the autonomous
authority of instrumental value. He viewed it as a foil for the
currently dominant philosophical school labeled "scientific realism,"
with which he identifies. In 2007, he published a work defending the
ultimate authority of intrinsic valuations to which realists are
committed. He linked the pragmatic instrumental criterion to
discredited anti-realist empiricist schools including logical
positivism and instrumentalism

Chakravartty began his study with rough characterizations of realist
and anti-realist valuations of theories. Anti-realists believe "that
theories are merely instruments for predicting observable phenomena or
systematizing observation reports." They assert that theories can
never report or prescribe truth or reality "in itself." By contrast,
scientific realists believe that theories can "correctly describe both
observable and unobservable parts of the world." Well-confirmed
theories--"what ought to be" as the end of reasoning�are more than
tools. They are maps of intrinsic properties of an unobservable and
unconditional territory--"what is" as natural-but-metaphysical real
kinds.

Chakravartty treated criteria of judgment as ungrounded opinion, but
admitted that realists apply the instrumental criterion to judge
theories that "work." He restricted that criterion's scope, claiming
that every instrumental judgment is inductive, heuristic, accidental.
Later experience might confirm a singular judgment only if it proves
to have universal validity, meaning it possesses "detection
properties" of natural kinds. This inference is his fundamental
ground for believing in intrinsic value.

He committed modern realists to three metaphysical valuations or
intrinsic kinds of knowledge of truth. Competent realists affirm that
natural kinds 1) exist in a mind-independent territory possessing 2)
meaningful and 3) mappable intrinsic properties.

He labeled these intrinsic valuations semirealist, meaning they are
currently the most accurate theoretical descriptions of
mind-independent natural kinds. He found these carefully qualified
statements necessary to replace earlier realist claims of intrinsic
reality discredited by advancing instrumental valuations.

Science has destroyed for many people the supernatural intrinsic value
embraced by Weber and Ellul. But Chakravartty defended intrinsic
valuations as necessary elements of all science�belief in unobservable
continuities. He advanced the thesis of semirealism, according to
which well-tested theories are good maps of natural kinds, as
confirmed by their instrumental success. Their predictive success
means they conform to mind-independent, unconditional reality.

Chakravartty argued that these semirealist valuations legitimize
scientific theorizing about pragmatic kinds. The fact that
theoretical kinds are frequently replaced does not mean that
mind-independent reality is changing, but simply that theoretical maps
are approximating intrinsic reality.

In sum, Chakravartty argued that contingent instrumental valuations
are warranted only as they approximate unchanging intrinsic
valuations. Scholars continue to perfect their explanations of
intrinsic value, as they deny the developmental continuity of
applications of instrumental value.

Realist intrinsic value as proposed by Chakravartty, is widely
endorsed in modern scientific circles, while the supernatural
intrinsic value endorsed by Weber and Ellul maintains its popularity
throughout the world. Doubters about the reality of instrumental and
intrinsic value are few.

See also
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* Fact-value distinction
* Instrumentalism
* Instrumental and value rationality
* Instrumental and value-rational action
* Natural kind
* Value (ethics)
* Value theory

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