If I say that a state of affairs, S, is good (good simpliciter or agent-neutrally valuable or good), I usually mean something like this: S is better than some implied comparison class of other states of affairs. And so, in this usage, ‘good’ is like ‘tall’: it is a disguised comparative feature, not a non-comparative feature. This kind of value, then, is properly analyzed in terms of better-than. It is for this kind of reason that many theorists take value simpliciter (or other sorts of value or all sorts of value) to be properly analyzed in terms of better-than. Here’s why that seems wrong to me.

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