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In moral philosophy, instrumental and intrinsic value are the distinction between what is a means to an end and what is as an end in itself. [1] Things are deemed to have instrumental value (or extrinsic value [2]) if they help one achieve a particular end; intrinsic values, by contrast, are understood to be desirable in and of themselves.
An intrinsically valuable thing is worth for itself, not as a means to something else. It is giving value intrinsic and extrinsic properties. An ethic good with instrumental value may be termed an ethic mean, and an ethic good with intrinsic value may be termed an end-in-itself. An object may be both a mean and end-in-itself.
Intrinsic value is in contrast to instrumental value (also known as extrinsic value), which is a property of anything that derives its value from a relation to another intrinsically valuable thing. [1] Intrinsic value is always something that an object has "in itself" or "for its own sake", and is an intrinsic property.
However, they deny that these things have intrinsic value. Instead, they say that they have extrinsic value because they affect happiness and suffering. In this regard, they are desirable as a means but, unlike happiness, not as an end. [39] The view that pleasure is the only thing with intrinsic value is called ethical or evaluative hedonism. [40]
Another perspective, called holism about value, asserts that the intrinsic value of a thing depends on its context. Holists can argue that happiness has positive intrinsic value in the context of virtue and negative intrinsic value in the context of vice. Atomists reject this view, saying that intrinsic value is context-independent. [98]
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An intrinsically valuable thing is worth for itself, not as a means to something else. It is giving value intrinsic and extrinsic properties. An ethic good with instrumental value may be termed an ethic mean, and an ethic good with intrinsic value may be termed an end-in-itself. An object may be both a mean and end-in-itself.
An extrinsic (or relational) property is a property that depends on a thing's relationship with other things. For example, mass is an intrinsic property of any physical object , whereas weight is an extrinsic property that varies depending on the strength of the gravitational field in which the respective object is placed.