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Intrinsic Value and the Supervenience Principle † — forthcoming in Philosophical Studies

An important, and popular, constraint on the nature of intrinsic value—the “Supervenience Principle” (SP)—holds that some object, event, or state of affairs φ is intrinsically valuable only if the value of φ supervenes entirely on φ’s intrinsic properties.1 To deny SP is to accept that an object, state, or event φ can be intrinsically valuable in a way that is explained at least in part by its extrinsic properties. SP does not tell us which objects, events, or states of affairs actually are intrinsically valuable, on the order of, say, hedonism. Rather, SP purports to identify the concept of intrinsic value, a concept to which any particular first-order conception of intrinsic value must live up. In this paper, I argue that SP should be rejected. SP is inordinately restrictive. In particular, I argue that no SP-respecting conception of intrinsic value can accept the importance of psychological resonance, or the positive endorsement of persons, in explaining value. Given that psychological resonance is often, and plausibly, thought to be an important explanatory dimension of the prudential good, or what is intrinsically valuable for a person, SP’s inability to accommodate it is significant, and is strong reason to seek an alternative characterization of the nature of intrinsic value.