A disanalogy between instrumental value and other kinds of extrinsic value

X has instrumental value insofar as it helps to achieve something else that's valuable. Now, instrumental value is always classified as a kind of extrinsic value. Indeed, it is one of the most commonly-cited examples of extrinsic value. However, it seems to me that there's an odd disanalogy between instrumental value and other kinds of extrinsic value.

1) Preliminaries

Nobody agrees on how exactly to define intrinsic value. However, intrinsic value and extrinsic value are generally assumed to be mutually exclusive, and extrinsic value is generally defined as the value that a thing has by virtue of its relations to other things. Thus, I'll define intrinsic value as the value that a thing has in abstraction from its relations to other things (where "things" is understood as widely as possible).

Now, the sentence "X has value" is still ambiguous. There is a "subjective" and an "objective" way of interpreting it:

1. Subjective: People value X.

2. Objective: X is objectively valuable.

On either interpretation, instrumental value is oddly different from other kinds of extrinsic value.

2) The subjective interpretation

Let's start with the subjective interpretation.

To use an example from Elizabeth Anderson (1993, p. 19-20), suppose that a friend gives me an ugly bracelet. I don't value the bracelet in abstraction from its relations to other things, since it's ugly. But I may value the bracelet because of its relation to my friend. In that case, on the subjective interpretation of value, the bracelet has value. And the value in question is extrinsic, since the bracelet has the value only by virtue of its relation to my friend. Notice that the bracelet could have the exact same relation to my friend and yet not have extrinsic value: if I simply didn't value it, then it wouldn't have any value, either intrinsic or extrinsic.

The extrinsic value in the bracelet example is non-instrumental. It's not as though the bracelet is useful for achieving some other valuable thing. Now let's consider a case of instrumental value. Suppose that I value staying alive more than anything else. And suppose that I need food in order to stay alive. In that case, food clearly has instrumental value. And notice: food has instrumental value regardless of whether I actually value it. Suppose I'm either irrational or unaware of the connection between food and staying alive: in that case, I might not actually value food. Nonetheless, the food still has instrumental value for me; for I value staying alive, and food is necessary for staying alive.

So on the subjective interpretation of value, there's a disanalogy between instrumental value and other kinds of extrinsic value: X can have instrumental value even if no one actually values X, whereas X has other kinds of extrinsic value only if people actually value X.

3) The objective interpretation

A similar disanalogy appears if we interpret value "objectively".

There are various things we might mean when we say that X is objectively valuable, and I don't intend to address them all here. For the sake of argument, let's say that objective value consists in some objective quality that supervenes on certain objects. In that case, as a rough claim, we can say that X is objectively valuable if and only if that objective quality supervenes on X. (As we will see, we'll need to qualify that claim when it comes to instrumental value: that's precisely where the disanalogy lies.)

Imagine two identical-looking paintings: one was painted by a great painter; the other is a copy. We might think that the original has more objective value than the copy, since the original has a special relation to a great person. If that's correct, then the "extra" objective value that the original possesses is extrinsic value: it exists only by virtue of the painting's relation to the great painter. Notice that we might be wrong about this: the original might not actually have more objective value. The original has more objective value only if a certain metaphysical situation obtains—only if there's an objective quality of valuableness that supervenes more heavily on the original than on the copy. If that objective quality doesn't supervene more heavily on the original, then the original simply doesn't have the extrinsic value that we think it has.

The case is different with instrumental value. Suppose that pleasure is the only thing with objective intrinsic value—the only thing that has objective value independently of its relations to other things. Further, suppose that, no matter what we do, global pleasure will decrease if the earth loses its atmosphere. In that case, it immediately follows that the atmosphere has instrumental value. As I have described the situation, the objective quality of valuableness supervenes on only one thing—pleasure. It does not supervene on the atmosphere. Nonetheless, it still follows that the atmosphere has instrumental value, because the atmosphere is necessary for preserving pleasure.

Thus, on the objective interpretation of value, there's (again) a disanalogy between instrumental value and other kinds of extrinsic value: X can have instrumental value even if no objective quality of valuableness supervenes on X, whereas X has other kinds of extrinsic value only if such a quality does supervene on X.

Reference:

Anderson, Elizabeth, 1993. Value in Ethics and Economics. Cambridge: Harvard UP.