Philosophical concept
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". Things are deemed to have instrumental value (or extrinsic 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 one pound in a nail or clean clothes, respectively. 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. 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.
The "Oxford Handbook of Value Theory" provides three modern definitions of intrinsic and instrumental value:
When people judge efficient means and legitimate ends at the same time, both can be considered as good. However, 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 in that it is both a verb and a noun, as well as denoting both a criterion of judgment itself and the result of applying a criterion. To reduce ambiguity, throughout this article the noun "value" names a criterion of judgment, as opposed to "valuation" which is an object that is judged valuable. The plural "values" identifies collections of valuations, without identifying the criterion applied.
Immanuel Kant.
Immanuel Kant is famously quoted as saying:So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as means only. Here, Kant considers both instrumental and intrinsic value, although not calling them by those names.
Max Weber.
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. According to Weber, "[s]ocial action, like all action, may be" judged as:
Weber's original definitions also include a comment showing his doubt that conditionally efficient means can achieve unconditionally legitimate ends:[T]he more the value to which action is oriented is elevated to the status of an absolute [intrinsic] value, the more "irrational" in this [instrumental] sense the corresponding action is. For the more unconditionally the actor devotes himself to this value for its own sake…the less he is influenced by considerations of the [conditional] consequences of his action.
John Dewey.
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." Moreover, 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 Max Weber that people talk as if they apply instrumental and intrinsic criteria. He also agreed with Weber's observation that intrinsic value is problematic in that 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. However, Dewey rejects the common belief—shared by Weber—that supernatural intrinsic value is necessary to show humans what is permanently "right." He argues that both efficient and legitimate qualities must be discovered in daily life:Man who lives in a world of hazards…has sought to attain [security] in two ways. One of them began with an attempt to propitiate the [intrinsic] powers which environ him and determine his destiny. It expressed itself in supplication, sacrifice, ceremonial rite and magical cult.… The other course is to invent [instrumental] arts and by their means turn the powers of nature to account.…
[F]or over two thousand years, the…most influential and authoritatively orthodox tradition…has been devoted to the problem of a purely cognitive certification (perhaps by revelation, perhaps by intuition, perhaps by reason) of the antecedent immutable reality of truth, beauty, and goodness.… The crisis in contemporary culture, the confusions and conflicts in it, arise from a division of authority. Scientific [instrumental] inquiry seems to tell one thing, and traditional beliefs [intrinsic valuations] about ends and ideals that have authority over conduct tell us something quite different.… As long as the notion persists that knowledge is a disclosure of [intrinsic] reality…prior to and independent of knowing, and that knowing is independent of a purpose to control the quality of experienced objects, the failure of natural science to disclose significant values [valuations] in its objects will come as a shock.Finding no evidence of "antecedent immutable reality of truth, beauty, and goodness," Dewey argues that both efficient and legitimate goods are discovered in the continuity of human experience:Dewey's ethics replaces the goal of identifying an ultimate end or supreme principle that can serve as a criterion of ethical evaluation with the goal of identifying a method for improving our value judgments. Dewey argued that ethical inquiry is of a piece with empirical inquiry more generally.… This pragmatic approach requires that we locate the conditions of warrant for our value judgments in human conduct itself, not in any a priori fixed reference point outside of conduct, such as in God's commands, Platonic Forms, pure reason, or "nature," considered as giving humans a fixed telos [intrinsic end].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 grants the existence of "reality" apart from human experience, but denied that it is structured as intrinsically real natural kinds. Instead, he sees 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 that ignore consequence-determining conditions cannot coordinate behavior to solve real problems; they contaminate rationality.Value judgments have the form: if one acted in a particular way (or valued this object), then certain consequences would ensue, which would be valued. The difference between an apparent and a real good [means or end], between an unreflectively and a reflectively valued good, is captured by its value [valuation of goodness] not just as immediately experienced in isolation, but in view of its wider consequences and how they are valued.… So viewed, value judgments are tools for discovering how to live a better life, just as scientific hypotheses are tools for uncovering new information about the world.In brief, Dewey rejects the traditional belief that judging things as "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.
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; whereas 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 finds that the "is-ought problem" is a useful place to attack the irrational separation of good means from good ends. He argues that "want-satisfaction" ("what ought to be") cannot serve as an intrinsic moral compass because 'wants' are themselves consequences of transient conditions.
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;[T]he things people want are a function of their social experience, and that is carried on through structural institutions that specify their activities and attitudes. Thus the pattern of people's wants takes visible form partly as a result of the pattern of the institutional structure through which they participate in the economic process. As we have seen, to say that an economic problem exists is to say that part of the particular patterns of human relationships has ceased or failed to provide the effective participation of its members. In so saying, we are necessarily in the position of asserting that the instrumental efficiency of the economic process is the criterion of judgment in terms of which, and only in terms of which, we may resolve economic problems.
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.
Examples.
Foster uses with homely examples to support 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 differently to 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.
Revised definition of 'instrumental value'.
To guard against contamination of instrumental value by judging means and ends independently, Foster revised his definition to embrace both.
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.
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 John Dewey and J. Fagg Foster found to be the core of human rationality. He specifically criticized the valuations central to Dewey's and Foster's thesis: evolving instrumental technology.
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