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An object with intrinsic value may be regarded as an end, or in Kantian terminology, as an end-in-itself. [2] The term "intrinsic value" is used in axiology, a branch of philosophy that studies value (including both ethics and aesthetics). All major normative ethical theories identify something as being intrinsically valuable.
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.
Ross ascribes intrinsic value to pleasure, knowledge, virtue and justice. [2] It is easy to confuse rightness and goodness in the case of moral goodness. An act is right if it conforms to the agent's absolute duty. [3]: 28 Doing the act for the appropriate motive is not important for rightness but it is central for moral goodness or virtue. [4]
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.
Value theory, also known as axiology and theory of values, is the systematic study of values.As the branch of philosophy examining which things are good and what it means for something to be good, it distinguishes different types of values and explores how they can be measured and compared.
Sen relabeled instrumental and value rationality by naming their traditional defects. Weber's value-rationality became "process-independent" reasoning. It ignores instrumental means as it judges intended consequences: "the goodness of outcomes" always valuable in themselves. Its use produces fact-free intrinsically good knowledge.
Even apparently impersonal scientific inquiry, he argued, depends on intrinsic value-rational beliefs as much as does religion. [ 4 ] : 43–6 A recent study argues that his analysis provides legitimate means for restoring value-rational action as a permanent constraint on instrumental action.
Our knowledge of value in itself comes from self-evident intuitions and is not inferred from other things, unlike our knowledge of goodness as a means or of duties. [6] Among the things that are good in themselves, there is an important difference between the value of a whole and the values of its parts .