It seems as if the concept of intrinsic value is so unclear and/or unstable that we can't even tell whether (or when) it is transitiveT:
First, there is the possibility that the relation of intrinsic betterness is not transitive (that is, the possibility that something A is intrinsically better than something else B, which is itself intrinsically better than some third thing C, and yet A is not intrinsically better than C). Despite the very natural assumption that this relation is transitive, it has been argued that it is not (Rachels 1998; Temkin 1987, 1997, 2012). Should this in fact be the case, it would seriously complicate comparisons, and hence assessments, of intrinsic value.
I tried to check the listed citations, but there seems to be a mismatch between the inline references and the references at the end of the SEP article (or I'm just lost). Anyway, earlier in the article they wring their hands a little over whether the instrumental/final-value distinction might be what a lot of us have in mind when we talk about extrinsic/intrinsic value instead; or, then, intrinsic-value-as-value-from-intrinsic-properties is suspect, for some reason.
But so from a category-theoretic angle, what about replacing the concept of final value with the concept of a terminal object in a category of values? Strangely, then, initial value seems to correspond to what the article says about the regress of derivative values:
At some point, though, you would have to put an end to the questions, not because you would have grown tired of them (though that is a distinct possibility), but because you would be forced to recognize that, if one thing derives its goodness from some other thing, which derives its goodness from yet a third thing, and so on, there must come a point at which you reach something whose goodness is not derivative in this way, something that “just is” good in its own right, something whose goodness is the source of, and thus explains, the goodness to be found in all the other things that precede it on the list.
Does that mismatch undermine the perspicuity of reformulating the instrumental/final and extrinsic/instrinsic distinctions as an initial/terminal distinction? I noticed that the article half-heartedly offers a criticism of the derivative-to-nonderivative argument pipeline, but structurally, the pipeline reminds me of the causal regress, wherefore I am unsure why the series of values must not have only extrinsically valuable members anymore than the causal regress (per Hume, say) can't have only non-initial causes. At any rate, the initial/terminal distinction seems to cross-conflate the previous ones, and I wonder about its interpretative usefulness, then.
TIt is hard for me to believe that the pure betterness relation is intransitive, although, "X has value for A," can be, i.e. it is not necessarily true that if X has value to A, and A has value to Y, then X has value to Y (this is akin to the parent-of vs. the ancestor-of relation, I suppose).