BASIC CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS

• x has an intrinsic value (it is intrinsically good or bad) if an only if it has some value (it is good, or it is bad) taken in itself. (Otherwise an object may have only, at most, instrumental or extrinsic value.)
• We determine whether or not something has an intrinsic value by assessing it in isolation from its results (what it leads to) and its causes (how did it arise)

G.E. MOORE AND THE ISOLATION TEST

G.E. Moore (Principia Ethica, 1901) adopted a test that he thought allows us to determine that something has intrinsic value; he called it the isolation test. The isolation test is a thought experiment. Its idea is to think of something (conceive something) in "isolation" from its causes, effects, and other connections with other things or events. If we think that such an isolated thing would still be good, then we think it is good in itself, or it has intrinsic value. If we think that such a thing is not good any more, then we think it is extrinsically valuable (or is good as an instrument to something).

G.E. Moore thought that things like clothing, food, shelter, money are only instrumentally good. They are good because we can use them to obtain other good things. For example, if you live on a desert island and cannot use at all a treasure you just found, then it has no value for you. That is, gold taken in isolation from what t we can do with it is not good at all. That is, gold has merely instrumental value.

On the other hand, pleasure and the experience of beauty seem good even when taken in isolation. They seem to have intrinsic value.

HEDONISM AS A THEORY OF INTRINSIC VALUE

Basic tenets:
Pain and suffering are intrinsically bad no matter whose pain or suffering it is.
Pleasure (happiness?) is intrinsically good no matter whose pleasure it is.
Nothing else is either intrinsically good or bad.

Two kinds of hedonism:
Quantitative hedonism (Bentham). ultimately, only the amount of pleasure/pain matters
Qualitative hedonism (Mill ): there are higher and lower pleasures
Higher pleasure are related to intellectual and aesthetic activities.
They count for more than lower pleasures
Mill thinks that experienced agents would choose those pleasures over lower ones.

CRITICISM OF MENTAL STATES THEORIES OF INTRINSIC VALUE

Are feelings of pleasure and other mental states the only things that have value in themselves? Robert Nozick addresses this issue in his famous book Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Basic Books, 1974):. In this book he wants us to imagine the following experience machine:

Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life's experiences? (P. 42)

Nozick thinks that we would not choose to "plug in." But why not? He suggests three reasons:

First, we want to do certain things, and not just have the experience of doing them. In the case of certain experiences, it is only because first we want to do the actions that we want the experiences of doing them or thinking we've done them.

A second reason for not plugging in is that we want to be a certain way, to be a certain sort of person. Someone floating in a tank is an indeterminate blob. There is no answer to the question of what a person is like who has long been in the tank. Is he courageous, kind, intelligent, witty, loving? It's not merely that it's difficult to tell; there's no way he is. Plugging into the machine is a kind of suicide.

Now, I'm not sure I agree with Nozick that it is "a kind of suicide." For example, if the machine worked like matrix does, in a series of famous movies, maybe we could be persons of a certain kind. Maybe we can develop certain character traits even when we do not have a contact with real people and reality. Still, I agree that we value contact with reality, we want to know the truth. Which brings us to Nozick's last reason:

Thirdly, plugging into an experience machine limits us to a man-made reality, to a world no deeper or more important than that which people can construct. There is no actual contact with any deeper reality, though the experience of it can be stimulated.

To sum up, Nozick observes that a great majority of us would not choose to be plugged in. We value contact with reality in itself, and not just pleasures and any other mental states this contact may cause. We also seem to believe that there may be a deeper reality no human can reproduce. As Nozick observes, "We learn that something matters to us in addition to experience by imagining an experience machine and then realizing that we would not use it." (44)

SOME THEORIES OF INTRINSIC VALUE?

•  HEDONISM (Bentham and Mill, Peter Singer (perhaps, sometimes (?)):
  • Pain and suffering are intrinsically bad no matter whose pain or suffering it is.
  • Pleasure and happiness are intrinsically good no matter whose pleasure or happiness it is. pain and pleasure, no matter whose pleasure it is.
•  EUDAIMONISM (Aristotle): happiness (eudaimonia, flourishing) is intrinsically good unhappiness is intrinsically bad Aristotle rejected the view that happiness is reducible to pleasure. Rather, it involves various intellectual and moral virtues, requires sophisticated enough mind, etc. Pleasure is a component of happiness, but happiness is not reducible to pleasure.
•  PREFERENCE SATISFACTION THEORIES (economists, perhaps Singer (?)):
  • the satisfaction (and frustration) of someone's interests (desires, preferences), no matter whose interests they are.
• "AESTHETICISM" (G.E. Moore, Stef):
  • The experience of beauty is intrinsically good ( no matter who has this experience).
  • Perhaps beauty itself is intrinsically good.
•  "VITALISM" (Paul W. Taylor, "The Ethics of Respect for Nature"):
  • Life itself, there being something alive (no matter whose life it is.
•  "ECO-HARMONISM" (Aldo Leopold, J. Baird Callicott)
  • there being ecosystems that function and develop in harmonious ways.
• PLURALISM (Stef, perhaps Gert): there are many different things that are intrinsically valuable