As you move away from the specific desires of individuals, you more towards objectivity. Intrinsic value would be an objective value.
I would say that the intrinsic value of objects cannot be measured at this point in time. It just seems logical that there is some non-zero intrinsic value.
I already broke it down for you.
The english language is an ancient language created by above average primitives.
Words like “value” are deprecated and unsuited for science and Reality.
Value actually breaks down into three words.
Rarity - objective.
Utility - objective.
Value - subjective.
Thanks. What would I do without you? 
If one likes who and what one is and doesn’t want to squander that then having a sense for protecting one’s environment is essential. Protecting means in that sense keeping it in balance. To keep it in balance requires an understanding what is rare and what is plentiful and how it fits together. Having a sense of proportions. Health. Sustainability.
This leads to assigning different values to different things, depending on the balance.
In general, life is rare compared to matter, very rare.
You are welcome.
Don’t know.
Life and matter are not a solid dichotomy.
Life is needed for matter to exist, and matter is needed for life to exist.
Furthermore, it is impossible to not exist, so presumably life (as in consciousness) will always exist.
So we must further break it down, refine the discussion to the assumption that
“Quality of Life” is rare, However this is an assumption because of our short memory of our lives, for perhaps the majority of life is high quality, and only our current lives are low quality, or perhaps the opposite, that our lives are better right now than most other incarnations. Or perhaps the opposite as before, our current lives worse than most of what we will experience in the universe.
But those are values assigned by an individual for a specific purpose and therefore they are extrinsic or instrumental.
Water is more valuable than gold if you are in the desert and you want to survive. Water is more valuable when you are thirsty than when you are not thirsty.
However, intrinsic value would be there in spite of your goals. So, someone who does not value the world and wants to destroy it would not even be able to formulate that thought without the existence of objects. The intrinsic value of those objects is not related to his desires.
It might “seem” that way to you, but a universe with absolutely no life within nor potential for it, has no means of having value.
It is always – Value to Whom?
A biggie misunderstoodness.
Value is TO.
not of.
your quizz is: Does every being have value TO itself.
uew duh yeah.
Otherwise it would not stay alive
Breathing and eating is self-valuing
Means it has value TO itself.
Like James Saint says value is moronically misunderstood.
Value TO.
that is what value alway means. It is value TO someone.
To, to.
That’s only because in such a universe, there would be nobody to formulate thoughts about it. There would also be no gravity or electric charge or mass or objects because those are also products of our thoughts. There would be no intrinsic or extrinsic characteristics.
Sure.
Intrinsic values would be postulated and postulations are usually not made arbitrarily but are based on desires, wishes, even if they are not being acknowledged by the person who postulates them as such - In my view.
Not true.
Mass, gravity, and objects each have an objective definition in our language. “Value” has no objective definition in our language. It is strictly a subjective concept. Gravity or mass are not subjective concepts regardless of the fact that they are only named because we named them. We can’t name or measure value unless there is an entity regarding something as relevant, important, “valuable”.
It is all similar to saying that something is big. We have to have some reference in order to declare that anything is “big”. If there was no other reference at all, “big” would be meaningless. The same is true of “value”. Without a reference, the word has no meaning.
And I do apologize for my all too terse comment:
So not only is the quantification of value is subjective (“water is worth so much to me at this point”) but also the meaning of the word ‘value’ itself? You’re sounding like Iambiguous.
What are we talking about if each of us has our own meaning for the word ‘value’? What’s the point of talking?
In a universe without people, there are no words and no language. There are no objective or subjective definitions. Yet, there is the unnamed ‘stuff’ which is the basis for life and subsequent thought. It comes before the thoughts and evaluations. Hence it’s value as a necessary material for what follows. In hindsight : “We needed that.”
This is an interesting pattern in your brain James …
Basically, it’s another way of saying “affectance”
I’ll pull this out a bit and make the claim that we don’t need bad for there to be good
Value is very simple:
Whatever we want or instant painless poof
And we cease to exist forever…
That’s the ideal of morality, like a platonic form
Anyone can agree that if they don’t find value, ergo impossible, then poof is rational, valuable
Everyone is happy then.
It satisfies all parties.
So there’s a meta solution that satisfies everyone, and there is no contrasting bad to make it obviously good for everyone.
That’s not how reality is thus far , but were it like that, there would only be value without anti value.
Allowing someone to poof on command is making their subjective self valuable… It’s an aspect of adding value to everyone , even though the resultant suicide seems to contradict that
That is why we have dictionaries and philosophers (who on off occasion read them).
You are conflating the hypothesis.
We are not saying that WE are IN the universe of which we are hypothesizing. We (actually I) are saying that IF such a universe existed, the way we would describe it from our universe would be …
And assuming that the hypothesized universe had absolutely no affect upon us in our universe such as to gain possible value for us, the term “value” would be irrelevant and to us, that universe would not even exist as we would not exist to it either. There is nothing that could ever been done with it (as per stipulation) and the concept of “value” is defined as a measure of relevance or importance TO someone. If there is no someone, there can be no relevance nor value.
They are related topics.
For something to exist, it must have potential to affect (if not affect itself) upon something else. And then it only exists TO that something else. Similar with “value”.
If there were intrinsic value in ‘stuff’…
(And I borrow ‘stuff’ because it’s true, without a mind to recognise ‘stuff’ that way, there are no entities, no distinguished objects.)
…then what would the value of water in the desert be? Would it be a value on top of this intrinsic value, would it be another kind of value?
In short, I think it would be something else.
Intrinsic value would be a quality which we assign to ‘stuff’ or to recognised, identified, distinguished objects, which is derived from our observation of what? On what would it be based? On what measurable or recognisable quality about ‘stuff’ would it be based on?
Intrinsic value is only attributed to something and not derived from an inherent quality or said thing.
Let’s say that value is not an inherent quality of an object. Is it reasonable to attribute zero value to the object?
The attributed intrinsic value is separate from how some specific group or person might value it for some specific use at the moment, of course.
Or is all value just based on present/future usefulness?
Were your parents useful for your current existence? If yes, then they must have been useful before you were able to think about their usefulness. They must have been useful just prior to your conception.
If no, then what?
“Choosing to go to the gym in order to strengthen yourself” is an action that is in itself of neutral value.
To determine the value of an actor’s action, in relation to his own being, you need to relate it to his other actions (what is implied here is that beings perform multiple actions at the same time.) If his action is fighting with other actions he is performing, which means it is self-destructive, then it is bad; if it is not, then it is good.
In other words, it comes down to whether your instinct to “go to the gym to strengthen yourself” is repressing other instincts or not.
Repression quite simply means that you are stepping outside of your boundaries. It means that you are paying too much attention to one instinct and too little attention to other instincts.
That’s pretty much it. The rest consists in understanding the phenomenon of repression.
Repression is counter-active (or re-active.) It is an instinctive action that blocks other instinctive actions. It is not pro-rest. In-action is pro-rest. Re-action is anti-doing.
I attribute value to my parents.
And I attribute value to what makes me possible and so forth and things I like and appreciate.
But it’s me now who is looking back.
Though, isn’t your argument that my parents and everything else is being intrinsically valuable no matter what?
Mary Sue must have been good before I thought of her being a good girl because how else could I think of her being a good girl.
If she wasn’t being good before I thought of her then how could I think of her being a good…
Say what?
I think about something in a certain way - That doesn’t actually make it so just because I think of it in a certain way. Not now and not in the past.
I think we agree on that.
Mary Sue is not intrinsically evil or good.
I don’t subscribe to the liberal atheists who think good and bad can be derived universally without god, just so.
Either you listen to your god or you find your own good, as an individual or as a group and you take it from there.
This good will be based on the inherent qualities of the people involved and not be arbitrary.
It’s the narcissist in us that claims:
“All of history must be good because it gave birth to me”
Bullshit!