1488. The more I've thought about it . . .

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The more I've thought about it, the less adopting "a suitably qualified, intermediate view" of the threefold distinction between "intrinsic, "constitutive/, and "instrumental" good strikes me as the thing to do (cf. Notebooks, 22 July 2006). 

So far, at least, as metaphysics is concerned, nothing is, properly, (merely) instrumentally good. Anything whatever is at least constitutively good because it is the property of any being to be (or to become) (part-) constitutive of some or all other beings. Be it concrete or abstract, it goes to constitute, in the sense of contributing at least something to, some or all intrinsic goods. This, of course, was the point I made already in my original reflection on what I had learned from Michael Lynch (cf. Notebooks, 7 May 2006: 2, ¶2). If "instrumental good" is to be properly used at alt then, it will need to be in some other, nonmetaphysical context.

As for Genesis 1:31, "very good" still means" more than instrumentally good." For although God Godself is the intrinsic as well as the constitutive good everything that God has made—and everything other than God and what "God" necessarily implies, God has made—at least a constitutive good, and everything concrete that God has made is intrinsically good as well. On the other hand, the fact that everything God has made is "very good" in no way implies that this is true of it alone, that what God has not made is not also "very good." For all transcendentals, including God Godself qua the supreme all-unifying transcendental are constitutively, although not intrinsically, good.

19 November 2006