Is moral value intrinsic, or just non-accidental?

Question

It seems most moral philosophers say that morality needs intrinsic value

Intrinsic value has traditionally been thought to lie at the heart of ethics. Philosophers use a number of terms to refer to such value. The intrinsic value of something is said to be the value that that thing has “in itself,” or “for its own sake,” or “as such,” or “in its own right.” Extrinsic value is value that is not intrinsic.

Many philosophers take intrinsic value to be crucial to a variety of moral judgments

And this isn't the same thing as non-accidental:

As J. Michael Dunn (1990) notes, some authors have used ‘intrinsic’ and ‘extrinsic’ to mean ‘essential’ and ‘accidental’. Dunn is surely right in saying that this is a misuse of the terms.

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Does any philosopher say that all moral value is non-accidental, but not intrinsic?

Philosophers do sometimes seem to characterise "value" as being non-accidental: e.g. Wittgenstein in the Tractatus 6.41

If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental. It must lie outside the world.

that

moral values have their transcendental existence outside the domain of contingent facts

that

Value is non-accidental

that as Anscombe seems to say

Wittgenstein [is]... speaking of value as a non-accidental feature of the world

Answer 1

If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so.

Wittgenstein isn't denying that there are values which are contingent; perhaps historically contingent or culturally specific - the concern of the anthropologist - but he's interested here in isolating a value that is permenant and so 'outside of all happening and being-so'.

It's referring to an argument in Plato of the Form of the Good; and like him he locates it outside of this world by the following reasoning:

For all happening and being-so is accidental.

Accidental meaning contingent here; and thus non-accidental meaning permanent

What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.

And hence

It must lie outside the world.

This may seem like a strange thesis to locate the source of values outside of the world (and perhaps this is where Nietzsche comes in by relocating values to the world);

But a similar argument shows that a physical law such as the law of conservation of energy - which is a permanent law of physics - a law that has value by virtue of its permanance, cannot lie in the world:

For no amount of experiment can establish this law, as it is not deductive but inductive (once a general framework is established, ie Hamiltonian or Lagrangian Mechanics - the law can be deduced); but the fact remains: physical theories that are of permanent value are not in this, our contingent world of accident, happening and being-so.

Answer 2

There is one whole class of moral thinkers for whom there is a single motivation, which is to be served by morality, but for whom that value is imputed by the process of the motivation, and does not lie within the thing itself. I will call these 'Motiviationalists' for my ignorance of what tradition might call them, and I will call their favored yardstick their 'motivation'.

The Cynics' freedom, the Stoics' nature, the dictates of the less abstract and more personal versions of the Jewish/Christian/Muslim God, the hedonist/Utilitarian/economist pleasure, true survival for Schopenhauer, true Will for Nietzsche, etc.

This motivation judges the value of things, and the things to which it lends value have value. They do not have value in-and-of-themselves, but only insofar as they reflect the motivation. The same sex act can be valued or valueless depending upon the pleasure derived in that specific instance. The same decision can be in accord with one persons's will and not in accord with another's, and its value for each of them is still equally absolute.

Sometimes the motivation itself is seen as being the only value, but to trace value in that way robs you of all applications to actual moral situations, the value considered has to be applied to things or people in order to really be value. Pleasure that might be experienced is not pleasure, only that which is experienced. The absolute value of God does not have moral force without instances to which to apply his Law.

Also, God can declare someone's life of infinite value one moment, and in the next, after some abomination, he can find it of no value, and require the person be killed. The same goes for utility, and all the other forms of this same framing. Value can evaporate or spontaneously arise, to the extent it reflects the motivating force.

This makes value contingent, but not accidental. The value is still derived from 'outside the world' and is absolute both before and after the act of alienation from the 'motivation'.

So I think this whole way of looking at things from a single motivation that is not necessarily fixed or objective, produces value that is neither innate, nor accidental, but is still contingent.

Answer 3

What about those that think value is derived from God? Surely that would not be an "intrinsic value": but it seems absurd to say that just because the value is from His law that it cannot really be a moral claim.

So, while I haven't yet encountered any non religious examples which might show that moral value need not be intrinsic, I believe it needn't be.