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Chapter 7

Intrinsic Value   The concept of value is one of the most important subjects in ethics and is particularly significant for animal rights. Philosophers often distinguish two kinds of value: instrumental value and intrinsic value.

Instrumental value is the value or worth that something has because of its usefulness. People value many things because they perform some function, like oxen to pull carts and horses to ride on. Animals are instrumental for furthering human endeavour - fur keeps you warm, animal muscle (meat gives you a meal, animal skin holds up your trousers. You might risk your life to rescue an animal from a blaze, but only if the animal has instrumental value for you. If your animal is a prize bull in a blaze, you might save him. But you may be disinclined to risk your life if he is an ordinary bull whose value you can easily recover from your insurance company.

In contrast, something of intrinsic value is said to have value or worth in itself, irrespective of its usefulness or value to humans. Something can have intrinsic and instrumental value at the same time. You may value a donkey as a donkey in himself and also because he is good for pulling your cart. Inherent value and inherent worth are alternative names for intrinsic value.

Is intrinsic value real or imaginary, like this triangle? Is this triangle an illusion or could it exist in three dimensions?

Intrinsic value has a central place in animal rights. Some philosophers argue that if animals have intrinsic value then we should protect them for their own sake, not just because they might be useful to us.

You can compare intrinsic and instrumental values by asking why it is wrong to beat a donkey. If a donkey has intrinsic value then he has value in his own right and we should treat him properly, irrespective of any other consideration. However, if he has only instrumental value, kicking him is wrong because he may belong to someone and we should respect their property, for which they should reciprocate by respecting our property, and that is useful.

Some philosophers claim that intrinsic value is absolute, that all creatures including humans have the same worth. Contemporary philosophers, such as Peter Singer (1946 - ) and Tom Regan (1938 - ), argue that if a human or animal has certain characteristics, such as interests or is a subject of a life, then they have intrinsic value.

However, other philosophers hold that intrinsic value is a matter of degree. Moreover, they claim that intrinsic value is relative to humans in some way, usually that humans have more intrinsic value than animals, who often have no value. Philosophers like Descartes (1596 - 1650) and Spinoza (1632 - 1677) claimed animals have only instrumental value for humans. They asserted that rationality and consciousness are essential for intrinsic value but that animals have neither of these faculties. Philosophers also argue as to whether intrinsic value actually exists. Does it exist without humans, like the stars, or is it a concept only in the human mind? If intrinsic value exists, where does it come from? Are there qualitatively different kinds of intrinsic value, one quality for humans and other qualities for different species, like one quality for insects, another quality for frogs and yet another quality for wolves?

Four criticisms of intrinsic value are the following. If all animals have equal (that is absolute) intrinsic value and you face a moral conflict to decide whether a man or a dog must die, then the principle cannot help you because dog and man are equal. Absolute intrinsic value then loses its practical power. By necessity you may have to rank creatures in order of their importance to you. Absolute intrinsic value might server better as a global ideal.

Estimating the value of animals from our human perspective may be an error. Only humans may gauge the intrinsic value of a human in terms of human values. Similarly, only chimpanzees can gauge in chimpanzee values the intrinsic value of chimpanzees. Members of species might only be able to assess the intrinsic value of individuals of their own species. In this case intrinsic value cannot help us make moral decisions about non-human animals.

It may be that intrinsic value does not exist, that it is merely an apparent value that humans like to give to things. For example, finding food has instrumental value because it enables you to live. Living has instrumental value because it enables your genes to replicate themselves. Gene replication is a physical-chemical process that has no obvious intrinsic value in itself – it is just a physical-chemical process. Therefore you might say that there is no such thing as intrinsic value. If anything has value then it might only have instrumental value.

However, if intrinsic value exists, but only as a concept in the human mind, all anyone may be saying when they talk about it is that we should be less human-centred (see Anthropocentrism) and more outward-looking and caring of other creatures. Being less human-centred would not be easy. We might assume that each species naturally focuses on itself. Undoubtedly humans do (see Human Superiority).

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