Is a kind of value associated specifically with there being reason (not shared with others) for one to desire/value and promote/secure one’s well-being (or particular elements of it)? If so, how should we characterize it?
One natural suggestion is this: X’s well-being is valuable to X. The value here would be agent-relative, as distinct from value simpliciter (or agent-neutral value).
Against this suggestion, it is pointed out that the value language we generally use here is the language of good-for. For example, there is reason (not shared by others) for X to secure that-P because that-P is good for X. And we don’t generally use the language of valuable-to or valuable-relative-to. Of course, this does not preclude the concept (and property) of agent-relative value being required for philosophical theory, for descriptive and explanatory virtue or adequacy. The point, I think, is meant to set up a kind of burden of proof.
One thing that would go a ways toward meeting this burden of proof would be showing how and why the value language of good-for is descriptively inadequate or is not well-suited to do relevant explanatory work. So: here are some things that go wrong with ‘good for’ in these ways.
First, the concept appears to be instrumental. So it cannot predicate any sort of value to well-being itself or to elements of well-being that there seems to be non-instrumental reason for one to value and promote independently of their impact on one’s general or overall well-being. For example, my pleasant bike ride is good for me only because it promotes something else – my general or overall well-being. The implicit rules of usage do not appear to allow for the application of ‘good for’ to the bike ride itself, apart from it promoting anything. And similarly: my well-being is not itself good for me.
Second, the concept is too general. Things are good for plants, fungi and neighborhoods as well as sensate, sentient beings. But, in these cases, no reason for action is generated (because they are not agents, but also probably because the functional features that constitute their welfare or something analogous are not hooked up to an affective, motivational psychology of any sort). So what is correlated with reason to promote one’s own well-being is not the good-for feature itself, but the good-for feature in beings like us (beings that have certain additional, descriptively-specifiable features). Good-for, then, cannot participate in the target pattern of explanation: there being reason for one to value and promote (things that promote) one’s well-being because (things that promote) one’s well-being is (are) good for one.
Third, we should worry that ‘good for X’ references nothing more than the promotion of one’s well-being. This would make ‘good for’ a descriptive concept, not a value concept. This makes some sense, since we also say things like “those scissors are good for cutting ceremonial ribbon.” This does not preclude ‘good for’ being, in some contexts or uses, “thickly” evaluative. This might be the case when the presumed context is the promotion of something that is valuable (and it makes sense that this context would be assumed in saying that this or that is good for this or that person).
These are some good, strong reasons to think that ‘good for X’ is both descriptively and explanatorily inadequate. I think one could, by reference to these points and perhaps some other, similar ones, generate a decent set of adequacy conditions and then show that agent-relative value does a better job at the central descriptive and explanatory tasks than does being-good-for (or being-good-for-one).
Shifting gears a bit: the so-called fitting-attitude or normative response-dependent (NRD) view of value simpliciter suggests a clear concept of agent-relative value that seems to fit our bill. You just change who the response is fitting for from any given person to the person whose well-being would be responded to. So: the value in one’s well-being that is associated with there being not-shared reason to promote one’s well-being comes to it being fitting for one to desire/value and promote/secure one’s well-being (in a way or in a respect that it is not fitting for others to desire/value and promote/secure one’s well-being). If one accepts NRD for explaining the relevant family of value features (as well as specific, more obviously response-dependent evaluative properties), one has an additional quite general and strong reason to fill in the relevant value-feature with agent-relative value.
(Some consequentialists accept agent-relative value as a posit for explaining agent-centered ethical requirement: the idea that there is more reason not to steal than there is to prevent someone else, and perhaps ten others, from stealing. What I’m suggesting here is that agent-relative value is not dependent on accepting consequentialism, more general than posited on this view, and something that fits well with and is perhaps an implicit part of relevant portions of our conceptual scheme.)
Policy of Truth 
I’ve added the letters for ease of reference.
On (a): your argument seems to be that commitment to a “good-for” conception of value can’t predicate value to well-being, because “good-for” is an instrumental concept, only instrumental relations license predications of value, and well-being is not instrumental to anything. But well-being can be conceived as instrumental to itself. Well-being is good-for–instrumental to–more well-being, the further continuation of itself. So I don’t think the objection succeeds.
On (b): I think we need a more precise account of “instrumentality” to capture the contrast between what is and isn’t instrumental. Some elements of well-being are constitutive of it. Does “being constitutive” contrast with being instrumental, or not? As long as the pursuit or promotion of a constituent is in some sense promotive of the end, there is at least a weak sense in which it’s instrumental to it. If we insist that instrumentality require wholesale distinctness of means and end, then we have a different story.
If you lean hard enough on the claim that there are elements of well-being that we have reason to promote independently of their impact on overall well-being, then your interlocutor will either say: that’s not really an objection to his view (just an implication of it), and/or he needs an example to make this concrete because he doesn’t understand what you mean. Respiration and circulation are both constitutive of metabolization and promotive of it. “Promotive” seems akin to instrumentality, but neither respiration nor circulation are instrumental in a sense such that you can specify the end of metabolism wholly independently of those processes. Even if you gave a cellular account of metabolism, you’d still be talking about metabolic processes that at the macro-level involved respiration and circulation. If there were a biological process that took place within a body but made literally no contribution (whatsoever) to the organism’s health, then it’s true that it would be good for nothing, but then it would be equally unclear why accounting for its value would be an adequacy condition on an account of value. Same thing applies to your objection above.
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Thanks. These are helpful challenges that make me think harder about this.
Regarding your response to (a). We don’t say things like ‘Sam’s well-being is really good for Sam’ because they seem to misuse the relevant term or concept in some way. A good explanation for this is that: ‘good for’ is an instrumental concept and the value in one’s well-being (apparently intrinsic or non-instrumental) that provides reason for one to value and promote one’s well-being is not itself instrumental. With regard to your positive point, it seems right that one’s well-being at a time (or through some span of time) can be instrumentally valuable (and good for one) it promotes one’s future well-being at a time (or through some span of future time). I’m not sure it makes sense to say that one’s overall well-being is valuable (or good for one) in this way. Maybe my overall well-being is instrumentally valuable (and good for me) with respect to, say, enjoyable bike rides, by promoting them? I’m not sure I’d object to this (and maybe this is an exception to there being severe linguistic oddness in saying that one’s well-being is good for one). However, if good-for is an instrumental concept, it cannot handle the predication of non-instrumental value (of the relevant sort) to well-being.
Regarding your response to (b). Partial constitution counts as a kind of promotion (as is obvious if one is building something). More to your point (I think), my enjoyable bike ride is part of my life going well and so, if this is valuable to me (or otherwise valuable in a way that supports my non-shared reason to value and promote my well-being), then my enjoyable bike ride is instrumentally valuable in this same respect. But we want to account for its non-instrumental value as well and, if good-for is an instrumental concept, it cannot do this work.
Interpreted as a point about functionality, I agree with at least something in the vicinity of your last point (to specify the local functional aim of the heart requires specifying at least the internal proper-functionality of the organism, if not its functional aim as well). If this formal structure could be mapped onto the type of (non-instrumental and instrumental) value at stake here using the language of good-for, this might allow good-for to do more of the work it needs to do. I suppose the proof would be in the pudding. I’m skeptical not just for general reasons but because, again, if good-for is an instrumental concept, it seems ill-suited to account for the apparent (relevant sort of) intrinsic or non-instrumental value in my enjoyable bike-riding (not just the contribution that my enjoyable bike-riding makes to my overall well-being).
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