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Value

Can you in detail explain the diffrences between intrinsic value and instrumentally value?
Accepted:
September 30, 2010

Comments

Miriam Solomon
September 30, 2010 (changed September 30, 2010) Permalink

"Instrumental value" is the easiest to begin with. It is the value that something has because it helps you get something that you really ("instrinsically") value. So money is valuable because you can buy things that you really like/want with it. Money would not be valuable if you could not use it in that way.

Intrinsic value is "value for its own sake" or "value independent of the consequences." Kant thought that goodness is instrinsically valuable. (Others, for example Bentham, thought that goodness is valuable only in so far as it increases the total happiness of a community.)

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