performs the function of fishing-knives, then it will be a matter of fact whether or not a particular fishing-knife is or is not a good fishing-knife, because it will be a matter of fact whether or not the particular fishing-knife in question efficiently meets the function for which we have fishing-knives. i On an instrumental account of value, goodness is relative to needs and needs can be specified as matters of fact. Accordingly, goodness itself becomes a matter of fact. 3 Evaluations are a

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... ub-set within the realm of facts. Evaluative facts are objective (and so may be assessed in accordance with inter-personal criteria for truth) in that the needs in questions are the needs of people in general, and not the special needs of any particular person at any particular time. (I can agree that this is a good fishing-knife although not what I need, since at the moment it is a drink which I need.) That which is good is not indifferent to the wants of people, although goodness is impersonal in depending neither on the wants of any particular person, nor on the wants of everybody at some particular time. (A good fishing-knife would still be a good fishing-knife even if no-one had a need for a fishing knife at that time, where 'that' time is any particular time. Equally, a good fishing-knife would still be a good fishing-knife even if the knife which I need at the moment is a bad fishing-knife -perhaps because I do not want to appear to be very adept in the use of fishing-knives.) What makes goodness a property of the object, rather than of its observer, is this dimension of impersonality, even if it is true that nothing would have a value had no people ever existed. Is the value of art instrumental in the way outlined? Apparently so. 'Art' seems not to identify a natural kind, but rather, a type of thing we go out of our way to introduce into the world. That is, the concept is one that we have adopted, rather than one which has been forced upon us by divisions inherent in the world's structure. 'Art' is a classificatory term which reflects not so much the world's natural divisions, but rather the imposition of our needs upon the world. The needs in question are needs for the stimulation of pleasure, rather than the demands which establish the requirements of social life in general, because, as a rule, we concern ourselves with art neither in order to survive nor out of a sense vii Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics, (New York: Harcourt and Brace and