413TRUTH, VALUE, AND CONSOLATIONThe Journal of Value Inquiry 36: 413–424, 2002.© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Truth, Value, and Consolation

DAMIAN COXSchool of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, University of Queensland, St. Lucia,Queensland, Australia; e-mail: d.cox@mailbox.uq.edu.au

1. Introduction

What is the good of truth? How are we to understand the kind of value it hasfor us, and the kind of role that the pursuit of truth plays in our lives? GottheldLessing famously responded to these questions by conjuring up a remarkablethought experiment. He writes:

If God held all truth in his closed right hand, and in his left hand only theever active drive to seek truth, even under the condition that I would everand always go astray in the search, and told me to choose, I would humblychoose his left hand and say: Father, give this to me! pure truth is reservedfor you alone.1

This might seem paradoxical. How are we to sincerely value the pursuit oftruth over its attainment? Lessing’s response is that our reasons for valuingthe pursuit of truth are independent of, and stronger than, our reasons forvaluing possession of the truth. In the preceding paragraph, Lessing had ex-plained:

Not the truth which a person possesses or thinks he possesses determinesthe worth of that person, but rather the sincere effort he has expended inorder to get at the truth. For it is not through possessing the truth but throughsearching for it that he expands his abilities, and it is in this alone that hisever growing perfection consists. Possession makes one calm, lazy, proud.2

Converting Lessing’s thought into language that employs the concept of in-trinsic value, we may represent the position as follows. The pursuit of truth isvaluable, but not because it is a way of coming to possess the truth, and truthis intrinsically valuable. The pursuit of truth is valuable because it is a way ofexpanding our abilities and the expansion of our abilities is intrinsically valu-able. Lessing even goes so far as to deride the possession of truth. Given thelimitations of our nature, our finally coming to possess the truth has, he thinks,

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fairly disastrous consequences for our character: it makes us proud and lazy.Our pursuit of the truth is thus like a contest that we hope never ends.

The view Lessing presents is unstable. Just as we compete sincerely in acontest in order to win, and winning requires a conclusion, we sincerely pur-sue the truth with the aim of attaining it, and certainty of its attainment marksthe end of the pursuit. Lessing seems to imagine us pursuing the truth in badfaith: sincerely striving for it, but all the while hoping to fail. Surely some-thing must be abandoned in this equation, either hope or sincerity.

Lessing’s predicament is not uncommon. It shares the same apparentlyparadoxical features with any situation in which we desire the pursuit of athing more than the attainment of it, or in spite of the fact that we have nodesire to attain it, or, more strongly, in spite of the fact that we desire not toattain it. For example, a flirtatious person may desire the pursuit of intimacyand yet be genuinely frightened of intimacy and not desire it at all. This kindof ambivalence is not really paradoxical, since there is nothing about ourconstitution as desiring subjects which rules it out. Its presence, however, isa good sign that our desires are not in good order. In the same way, Lessing’sambivalence between the value he finds in pursuing truth and the disvalue hefinds in possessing the truth is a sign that the values he articulates are not ingood order.

The trouble Lessing finds himself in is exacerbated by his oversimplifyingthe role that the pursuit of truth plays in living well. The pursuit of perfectionis not the sole measure of a person’s worth, any more than is the continualexpansion of a person’s mental and spiritual abilities. There is, in any case,much more to the expansion of human capacities than a continual striving afterthe truth. In spite of these oversimplifications, Lessing’s ambivalent attitudetoward the pursuit and possession of truth and his denial that the mere pos-session of truth is valuable for its own sake contain important insights.

2. Intrinsic Value

A thing is often said to have intrinsic value when it is valued for its own sake,but while this is not a false characterization, it is obscure. We may begin toapproach a clearer conception by stipulating that a thing has intrinsic valuewhen it is valued independently of any further good it may bring about. In-trinsic value, thus understood, is naturally contrasted with instrumental value:the value a thing has in virtue of some other good it is apt to bring about.Another important feature of intrinsic value is to be found by considering thecentral role of all attributions of value. Values provide reasons for acting.

Reasons furnished by values need not be conclusive. If we recognize thata state of affairs is intrinsically valuable, then ipso facto we have a reason toact to bring that state of affairs about. If I believe your happiness is intrinsi-

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cally valuable, I have a reason to make you happy. Other reasons, that yourhappiness would tend to enhance your health, or make you a better citizen, abetter friend, or a more productive worker, are not ruled out by the recogni-tion that your happiness is intrinsically valuable. Other reasons are simplynot brought into play by the recognition. The reasons furnished by a recogni-tion of intrinsic value may be readily defeated by other considerations. Cru-cially, however, they are never extinguished by other considerations. If I reallythink that your being presently happy is intrinsically valuable, then I have areason to make you happy and this reason would survive my realization thatthis happiness is only to be obtained by my supplying you with an addictivedrug. The reason remains, but it does not remain decisive. It has been out-weighed by matters of greater concern.

This contrasts with instrumental value. If I believe that a happy person tendsto make for better company than an unhappy person, and I happen to valueyour company, then I have a reason to try to make you happy. But this reasondoes not survive my realization that you require a dose of heroin in order tofeel happy. It does not survive because people undergoing a heroin fix areextremely poor company, or no company at all. Instrumental reasons are notmerely defeated by considerations such as these, they are extinguished by them.They cease to count as reasons, even very weak reasons.

It is at this level of reasons that the distinction between intrinsic value andinstrumental value comes to mark something significant. If we acquire noth-ing else from reflective judgment that a thing or person, state of affairs, orproperty has intrinsic value, we acquire at least the knowledge that we havereason to support the welfare of that thing or that person, the maintenance ofthat state of affairs, or the instantiation of that property. In examining a claimto have sufficient reason to protect something intrinsically valuable, we knowto cast around for things of even greater value, things that may be damagedby our proposed actions. We do not search for reasons to undermine the valueof the intrinsically valuable; we search for values that outweigh them. Thecontrast between intrinsic value and instrumental value is thus drawn notmerely in terms of the reasons we have for holding a thing valuable, but justas importantly, in terms of the kinds of reasons that the recognition of valuesupplies for acting one way rather than another. All this characterizes only afew key variables in the relation between values and reasons. Describing avalue as intrinsic is not to be confused with describing it as objective in thesense of being valuable independently of any subjective attribution of value.An intrinsic value may or may not be an objective value in this sense. Intrin-sic value should also not be confused with absolute value if this is understoodto be the value a thing has which ensures that it could never be rightly actedagainst. It also should not be confused with incommensurable value. The factthat two things are judged to have intrinsic value does not rule out a bona fidejudgment that one of them is of significantly greater value than the other.

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3. The Argument from Trivial Truths

Imagine two people, Gilbert and George, living more or less the same lives,experiencing more or less the same level of happiness, contentment, personal,social, intellectual, and emotional engagement, and having more or less thesame beliefs and styles of belief acquisition, but with one exception. WhileGeorge spends a portion of his spare time relaxing thoughtlessly, Gilbert spendshis time pursuing his favorite hobby, truth collecting. Imagine that the truthsthat Gilbert collects most avidly are numerological truths. Of course, the ob-vious way to collect numerological truths is to count. Gilbert counts andrecords innumerable numerological facts about his neighborhood: that thereare eight thousand two hundred and sixty seven bricks in his house; that thereare three hundred and twenty-two fewer bricks in his neighbor’s house to theleft, and three thousand and fifteen more bricks in the double-story houseacross the road. If truth is intrinsically valuable, then Gilbert leads a betterlife than George because he has more of something intrinsically valuable,namely true beliefs. If truth is intrinsically valuable, we have some defeasi-ble reason to encourage the behavior of Gilbert and discourage the behaviorof George. Given the stark choice of either following Gilbert’s example orGeorge’s example, we ought to follow Gilbert. Nevertheless, Gilbert does notlead a better life than George. Most judgments of Gilbert would portray himas slightly demented.

Perhaps this is unfair. Gilbert’s counting may be a good in itself, but themisfortune of his life may consist of his being made a figure of fun by thosearound him. Being laughed at is humiliating and humiliation is apt to swampany good constituted by the sheer acquisition of truth. But suppose that Gil-bert is not laughed at and that he lives in a counting neighborhood, where hispassion for counting is generally shared. Gilbert’s neighborly counting mayproduce a good, in terms of neighborhood solidarity for example, but this dem-onstrates only the instrumental value of his truth-collecting. To draw out theanalogy, let us suppose that George lives in a matchbox collecting neighborhoodand spends much of his time collecting matchboxes, discussing matchboxes,and getting into friendly matchbox competition with his neighbors. Gilbert isleading a life no better than George, perhaps a life no worse either. Collectingtruths and collecting matchboxes are pretty much on a par. Neither, it seems,is intrinsically a good thing.

The example of Gilbert and George illustrates the clearest and most com-mon argument against the intrinsic value of truth. If believing truly has intrin-sic value, then the acquisition of true belief must be valued for its own sake,whether or not the beliefs acquired are trivial. But inasmuch as our attitudestoward truth do not reflect this at all, we find no intrinsic value in believing truly.

There are two ways of responding to this argument. One is to concede thepoint that trivial truths are valueless, but to regroup under the banner of non-

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trivial truths. A less satisfactory response is to insist that the argument showsonly that trivial truths have trivial value. In acquiring trivial true beliefs, Gil-bert has acquired things of merely trivial value, and thus has not advancedthe condition of his life to an appreciable degree. The point of describing astate as trivially valuable is to hold both that the state in question has somefinite value, but to recognize that the value makes no appreciable differenceto a person’s reasons for acting. This is to allow that value can become sotrivial that it is essentially epiphenomenal and makes no difference to how aperson should think about how they live. Knowing the exact number of bricksin your house, for example, would be trivially valuable state to be in. It wouldbe valuable, but this value would fail to furnish a reason to count. Indeed,unless instrumental reasons enter the fray, the value of this knowledge wouldappear to be so trivial that it could never furnish a reason to act in one wayrather than another.

This appeal to finite but epiphenomenal value is a mistake. The essentialfeature of values, being intrinsic and instrumental, is that they furnish rea-sons for acting. The idea that a thing could really be of value even though therecognition of the value could play no part in the reasoning of a person aboutwhat to do is based on a confusion about value. Something that is incapableof furnishing reasons for acting is simply not valuable. Gilbert’s life is nottrivially better than George’s life. It is not better at all.

If it makes no sense to say that trivial truths have trivial value, then weought to accept that they are valueless. The argument from trivial truths issuccessful in this respect. As a result, it also shows that a state is not intrinsi-cally valuable simply because it is a state of believing truly. What is not ruledout by the argument, however, is the intrinsic value of non-trivial truths. Ifthere is a satisfactory way of describing the class of non-trivial truths, then itremains possible that we attribute intrinsic value to the members of this class.

In an attempt to define non-trivial truths, we might speak of great truths.But for a truth to qualify as great cannot be a matter of mere size or general-ity; truths of astronomy are not obviously greater than truths about the hu-man soul, and the truths of logic, which are the most general truths we canget hold of, seem to have relatively little greatness about them. Perhaps truthsare great in the requisite sense when it is a sublime thing to contemplate them.A great truth, then, would be a truth the contemplation of which is apt to pro-duce, in the right kind of person, a certain aesthetic response. But this is toonarrow. There are a great many important truths that have no such effect uponus. If we restrict our attribution of value to sublime truths, then it must be thesublime or our aesthetic response to the sublime that we find valuable, notour merely registering a truth about the sublime.

Non-trivial truths are better defined more neutrally in terms of their sig-nificance for us. Beliefs are more or less significant for us in proportion totheir impact on our conception of ourselves and our place in the world. That

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there are black holes is an interesting enough thing to believe, but it lacks thesignificance of a belief tying extreme gravitational forces to the origin of thecosmos. It lacks this significance because beliefs about cosmic origins havethe potential to deeply affect our sense of place in the world, in comparisonwith which mere beliefs about black holes may seem like idle curiosities. Inthe same way, beliefs about remote cosmic origins lack the significance forus of beliefs about the possibility of life after death, or about the origins ofmorality.

It may be that the truths in which we hope to invest intrinsic value are allsignificant truths. Thus a perfectly coherent response to the argument fromtrivial truths is simply to concede that trivial, true beliefs have no intrinsicvalue, and yet insist on the intrinsic value of significant true beliefs. This wouldmean that it is better, all else being equal, to have true significant beliefs thanto have false ones. It also means that we have an inextinguishable reason topursue the truth in matters of significance.

4. The Argument from Consolation

The revised version of the thesis of the intrinsic value of truth does not standup to scrutiny. Imagine a junior academic in conversation with an importantvisiting professor, someone the junior academic has met once or twice, andsomeone who has a habit of quickly forming strong opinions about people.The junior academic comes to believe that the visiting professor thinks him aliar, a fool, and a braggart. The junior academic’s belief is moderately sig-nificant since the professor’s opinion carries considerable weight in the aca-demic community. Is it intrinsically better that a belief in the professor’s criticalopinion turn out true rather than false? It is, plainly, of considerable instru-mental value to the junior academic that the belief turns out false. Would it beof any intrinsic value for the belief to turn out true? The junior academic maybe a better person because he has come to possess the significant truth abouthimself that at least one important person thinks him a liar, a fool, and a brag-gart. He may well be better for the experience if it leads him to alter hisbehavior when confronting visiting professors. But suppose that the acquisi-tion of this truth brings with it no beneficial instrumental effects and insteadbrings with it depression and loss of confidence. Does possession of the truthin such an unfortunate circumstance add anything of value? The value itwould add is best expressed in terms of the consolation it would offer a rea-sonable and well-adjusted agent. Finding ourselves in an intrinsically valu-able condition is consoling. If we judge that a reasonable, morally sensitive,and emotionally well-adjusted person would find consolation in the merepossession of the truth about some significant matter, in spite of the fact thatpossession of this truth offers no other benefit but promises significant harm,

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then we ought to conclude that the possession of this truth is intrinsicallyvaluable.

In the case at hand, it may be some consolation to the junior academic tohave had his judgment of the visiting professor’s opinion turn out to be accu-rate. If he had stumbled onto the truth of the professor’s opinion in a fit ofparanoia, then the fact that he stumbled on to the truth should not console him.Unless there is merit in the acquisition of a truth and its acquisition is some-thing in which to take pride, there is no genuine consolation to be had fromacquiring a truth. People may find consolation in all sorts of odd things, forinstance the fact that they have never apologized for their behavior despitecause to do so, or the fact that they have never lost a tennis match even thoughthey have only played against weak opponents. Consolations of these kindsare hollow no matter how keenly they are felt. The consolation of unmeritedpossession of the truth is equally hollow. Whatever genuine consolation thereis in being right does not consist in merely possessing a significantly true belief.If truth were of intrinsic value, then the mere possession of it in these circum-stances would be of genuine consolation. Since it is not, truth has no intrinsicvalue, even for a significant belief.

Consider another case. Suppose someone comes believe that the world isan absurd and coldly indifferent place, and that, on balance, life is not worthliving. It is not better that she believes what she believes truly rather thanfalsely. For straightforwardly instrumental reasons it is better that she believeswhat she believes falsely. It might be some consolation to her to be right inher pessimism, but this is not a matter of possessing something intrinsicallyvaluable, the truth of the matter. The consolation resides elsewhere. Perhapsshe takes pride, not in the mere fact that she possesses the truth, but in herintellectual courage in facing it. It may be the weakness and sentimentality ofothers that she despises, not the mere fact that they happen to have gotten theworld wrong. The consolation she takes in these circumstances must comefrom pride, or some psychological state related to pride, because if she werein no position to take pride in her judgment, then the consolation of truth oughtto disappear. If the mere possession of a significant truth offers no genuineconsolation, then significant truth has no intrinsic value.

Consider one more example. The rapid development of genetic diagnostictools, which is much in advance of corresponding therapies, threatens to makethe acquisition of fatalistic medical knowledge relatively common. Considera person diagnosed with a four in five chance of developing Huntington’schorea in middle age. Huntington’s chorea is a devastating degenerative neu-rological condition for which there is no effective therapy. The acquisition ofthis knowledge may be a good thing, and paternalistic claims that people oughtto be protected from such knowledge are perhaps unjustifiable. Knowledgeof the probability of developing an incurable degenerative condition may leada person to make important and valuable life-changes. It may, for instance,

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lead someone to give up an unsatisfying career pursued in the expectation ofa grand retirement. Such effects testify to the possible instrumental value ofthe knowledge, but not to its intrinsic value. In the same way, a patient’s rightto know the results of his or her tests testifies, not to the intrinsic value of theknowledge, but to the value of the autonomy which requires that a person notbe manipulated through enforced ignorance. To test for intrinsic value, we mustimagine a case in which no instrumental good flows from the acquisition ofthe knowledge. If a person is informed against her will and with only bad orneutral results, we cannot say that the knowledge is genuinely consoling.Unless the person is able to somehow take justified pride in her knowledge,her steadfast maintenance of the truth, and her intellectual courage in the faceof hostile circumstances, then the possession of a true and highly significantbelief about herself is of no genuine consolation. If the mere possession of atruth, even a highly significant truth, does not genuinely console, then truthhas no intrinsic value.

The argument from consolation may be set out in brief. If the possessionof a truth has intrinsic value, then it has intrinsic value whether the state ofaffairs it describes is good or bad. If a state of affairs is bad, then possessionof the truth can only have either instrumental value or an intrinsic value whichis revealed in the genuine consolation found in having grasped the truth. Butconsolation is not genuine when our possession of the truth is unmerited, andour possession of the truth is often unmerited. If the possession of truth hadintrinsic value, it ought to console irrespective of whether it was merited.Therefore, the possession of truth has no intrinsic value.

The first premise of this argument advances a principle of parity betweengood and bad states of affairs. If only good states of affairs are the object ofintrinsically valuable true belief, then clearly it is the good described, and notthe belief held, which is ultimately valued. At the same time, if possession ofa significant truth is intrinsically valuable, then it has value notwithstandingthe character of the state of affairs it describes. The second premise ties thevalue of an unpleasant true belief with the consolation of believing truly. Theconsolation of truth must, however, be something which is capable of mov-ing us even when our recognition of the truth is impotent and unmerited. Butintuitively this is very implausible. While it may be possible to feel consoledby the unmerited possession of truth, the examples show how odd a reactionthis would be. The genuine consolation of believing truly depends on the meritof the circumstances of belief acquisition and possession. Merely possessinga true belief is not something about which we can take legitimate pride unlesswe find something meritorious in the circumstances under which we come toacquire, or hold to, the belief in question. The courage with which a personfaces the truth may be praiseworthy, as may the skill and determination ex-hibited in its discovery. But the mere holding of a true belief is neither praise-worthy nor blameworthy. This train of thought is expressed in the remaining

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premises of the argument. Genuine consolation is absent when our posses-sion of the truth is unmerited and our possession of the truth is often unmer-ited. If we granted these premises, we must conclude that true belief, evenhighly significant true belief, is not of intrinsic value.

5. Integrity, Honesty, and a Sense of Wonder

The argument from consolation shows that believing truly is not intrinsicallybetter than believing falsely. However, this does not show that a respect forthe truth plays no role in our lives. We are left with the task of understandingwhat kind of role this might be. Truth is not intrinsically valuable, as friend-ship and integrity appear to be, but it is also not a mere resource to be ex-ploited as we like. Raimond Gaita expresses the point when he says:

The fact that we cannot give an account of the value of truth for its ownsake independently of the place a concern for truth may have in our livesmisleads some people into believing that we delude ourselves when we thinkthat truth has intrinsic value. They would be right if the placing were of akind that revealed truth to be a means to something whose value we couldcharacterize independently. But it is not so.3

The point Gaita makes calls for a refinement to the concept of instrumentalvalue. Using a key example of Gaita’s, we may say that self-knowledge isvaluable, not because such knowledge is intrinsically valuable, but becauseself-knowledge is an ineliminable feature of a kind of integrity which we valuedeeply. It might be a little misleading to describe this situation as one in whichwe pursue self-knowledge for the instrumental purpose of attaining the kindof integrity at issue. As Gaita would have it, the pursuit of self-knowledge isnot a means to an independently conceived end, for the pursuit of self-know-ledge is partly constitutive of integrity. It is, perhaps, not entirely clear whatit means to say that the pursuit of self-knowledge partly constitutes integrity.Nonetheless, the pursuit of self-knowledge is necessary for integrity. We donot, for example, have any idea of what it would be to be a person of integritywithout also being a person concerned to avoid self-deception, at least in someof the central areas of our lives.

Unlike true belief, integrity appears to be intrinsically valuable. People mayfind genuine consolation in the fact that they have maintained their integrityat all costs. Integrity consoles, as may intellectual courage, but the consola-tion of integrity involves a respect for the truth in a way that the consolationoffered by reflection on courage need not. Since integrity is intrinsically valu-able, and a pursuit of self-knowledge is essential for integrity, the truth aboutourselves comes to be seen as centrally important to us. It is not intrinsically

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valuable, but it is more than a mere instrumentally useful resource. At issuehere is the distinction between instrumental value and contributory value. Athing has contributory value if it is valued for the sake of a greater good it isessential to. A thing has merely instrumental value if it is valued for the sakeof a good it is inessential to. For instance, I may exhibit the following atti-tudes towards my physical well-being. I may regard good health as necessaryfor my living a good life, and thus regard it as extremely valuable. Outsidethe context of my leading a generally good and worthwhile life, however, thepursuit of health makes no sense. If at the end of a miserable and unrewardedlife I seek to console myself with the thought that at least I have my health, Iam deluding myself. Nonetheless, health is essential to a good life. We haveno conception of what it would be to live a very good life without also lead-ing a healthy one. This describes the attribution of contributory value to health.

Contrast this picture with the following set of attitudes. Suppose I regardhealth as valuable because it facilitates the pursuit of the kinds of activitiesthat are constitutive of a good life. Health is not itself one of the activities. Apursuit of a healthy life is no end-in-itself and is pursued as such only underthe burden of a confusion. Thus health is not of intrinsic value. But not onlyis health no end-in-itself, it is not even essential to a good life. It may be hardto imagine a very unhealthy person answering the demands of a good life,but this is not impossible. In some circumstances, an unhealthy life is betterthan a healthy one. Good health tends to contribute to our leading a good life,but is not essential to it. In this way of looking at the matter, health is merelyof instrumental value.

On the basis of this distinction, someone might respond to the argumentfrom consolation as follows. We inflate the significance of conclusion of theargument if we assume a false dichotomy between intrinsic and instrumentalvalue. Perhaps truth has no intrinsic value, but this comes to less than may atfirst appear. It does not show that truth is merely a resource, and ought to berespected as no more than that. Truth is of value because knowledge of cer-tain kinds necessarily attends many of our most valued characteristics andgoals.

There is something important and right about this response. Certain kindsof truths have contributory, as opposed to merely instrumental, value. How-ever, the significance of this observation is itself easy to inflate. Possessionof the truth about ourselves is not part of the definition of integrity and, de-spite Gaita’s observation, neither is the pursuit of truth part of a characteriza-tion of integrity. Integrity is not a matter of knowing the truth about ourselves.It is, roughly, a matter of being true to ourselves. We cannot conceive of areal person being true to herself without also having an understanding of hercore values. Self-knowledge at some level is necessary for integrity. Still, weshould not confuse the pursuit of integrity with the pursuit of truth aboutourselves.4

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It would be wrong to think that the pursuit of integrity is always advancedby the pursuit of self-knowledge. Archly reflective people often find them-selves stumbling from one commitment to another, in part because they re-flect on their commitments too much. A good relationship may dissolve inthe acid bath of diagnostic reflection; a passionate engagement may becomehalf-hearted if its aetiology is made the object of dispassionate scrutiny; andthe confidence necessary to forthrightly and consistently stand for somethingmay be undermined by a relentless questioning of motives. It is therefore muchtoo simple to say, along with Gaita, that integrity demands a respect for truthand thus establishes the intrinsic worth of truth. Integrity involves so manyaspects of life that the pursuit of self-knowledge comes to play a highly cir-cumscribed and ambivalent role in the pursuit of integrity.

The equivocal relationship between integrity and the value of truth is alsopresent in other virtues tied up with a respect for the truth. Perhaps the clear-est and most important of them are honesty and a sense of wonder. We cannotreally imagine a person living well and yet dishonestly or without any curios-ity. Nonetheless, honesty is not an intrinsically valuable character trait. Aperson is honest if he is a transparent and sincere believer and does not lie,deceive, or dissemble. The disposition to be such a transparent source of be-lief and attitude is not an intrinsically valuable character trait. Perhaps trustwor-thiness is intrinsically valuable, and a certain measure of honesty is essentialto trustworthiness. Nonetheless, being trustworthy involves a great deal morethan being a transparent source of sincere belief, and we do not pursue trust-worthiness merely by pursuing honesty. Indeed, unwarrantedly revealing thetruth is often an obstacle to trustworthiness.

By contrast, a sense of wonder which brings an active, curious, intellec-tual engagement with the world may well be an intrinsically valuable charac-ter trait. But we approach the world with a sense of wonder only because weexpect to find the world richly interesting, elegant, and rewarding. Wonderand curiosity involve essentially aesthetic attitudes that reality may simplyfail to be true to. If the world disappoints because it is banal, dully unordered,inelegant, shallow and the occasion of little genuine interest or surprise, thenour sense of wonder is betrayed by the truth. It is not, then, a dispassionatesearch for the truth that enlivens our intelligence, but a passionate search forbeauty, order, interest and surprise. If the world were to fail us in any of theserespects, we would find consolation in invention, not in the mere possessionof truth.

6. Conclusion

The distinction between intrinsic value on the one hand and instrumental andcontributory value on the other is a distinction between values that provide

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us with inextinguishable reasons for acting and values that do not. If integ-rity, for instance, demands that we act in a certain way, then we have reasonto act in this way. Plausibly, unless we find ourselves to have simply mistakenthe demands of integrity, this reason cannot be extinguished by further reflec-tion on the consequences or nature of what we do. It may be outweighed byother reasons, but it would continue to have weight come what may. Integrityis very plausibly considered intrinsically valuable.

The value of truth, by contrast, provides no similar reasons for acting. Forinstance, if we think it important to understand our real motives in advancinga friendship with another, then we have reason to pursue the truth of the mat-ter. However, this reason is contingent and vulnerable to further reflection. Ifwe come to realize that our continual efforts to unmask our motives for form-ing friendships is threatening to leave us friendless, then we find ourselveswithout any reason at all to pursue the matter further. We have no obligationto pursue the truth. Were we to die friendless and alone, we would not beconsoled by self-knowledge. Whatever reason we have to pursue the truthabout ourselves, or about anything else of genuine significance, is a reasonwe find in other things.

Notes

1. From Eine Duplik, quoted in Thomas Saine, The Problem of Being Modern (Detroit:Wayne State University Press, 1997), p. 216.

2. Ibid.3. Raimond Gaita, Our Common Humanity (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1999), pp. 218–

219.4. See Damian Cox, Marguerite La Caze, and Michael Levine “Should We Strive for In-

tegrity?,” Journal of Value Inquiry Vol. 33, No. 4, December 1999.