 A few philosophers – including George Sher (1987) and Julian Lamont (1994) – said things that suggest a pluralistic approach to the question about the justification of desert claims. On this view, there are several different “external values”; different values would be relevant in different cases; different desert claims would be justifiable by appeal to different external values. Thus, for example, consider the claim that you deserve a reward for having saved a life. The external value in this case might be some combination of the value of courage and the alleged value of human life. Consider a different case in which someone claims that you deserve a high grade for having done outstanding work in a course. In this case, the external value might be the value of academic achievement. In every case, a desert claim – if it can be justified at all – can be justified by pointing out that giving the deserver the desert would properly respect the associated external value. A full exposition of this approach would require a detailed account of what makes a certain external value be relevant to a desert claim; it would also require a detailed account of what is meant by saying that some action would “properly respect” some external value. 