The phrase "bestow value" is correct and can be used in written English.
It means to give or grant something with importance or worth. Example: The teacher's feedback bestowed value on the student's hard work and dedication, boosting their confidence and motivation to continue learning.
To bestow value on another is to project a kind of intrinsic value onto him.
Evaluators bestow value on objects on the basis of reasons, and thus in virtue of their rational capacity.
Singer tries to avoid this conclusion by appealing to the role of appraisal: it is only because we appraise another as having certain virtues and vices that we come to bestow value on him.
But in spelling out what he means here by "contributing to love directly," he seems to say only that in order to bestow value and so come to value the beloved's "desires and ideals" for their own sake, we must first know what these desires and ideals are; this is a matter for appraisal.
This sounds very much like the robust concern view, yet the bestowal view differs in understanding such robust concern to be the effect of the bestowal of value that is love rather than itself what constitutes love: in bestowing value on my beloved, I make him be valuable in such a way that I ought to respond with robust concern.
In contrast to Velleman, Singer (1991, 1994, 2009) understands love to be fundamentally a matter of bestowing value on the beloved.
The former view, which understands the lover as appraising the value of the beloved in loving him, is the topic of Section 4.1, whereas the latter view, which understands her as bestowing value on him, will be discussed in Section 4.2.
Other accounts, however, understand caring as in part a matter of bestowing value on your beloved: in caring about a friend, we thereby project a kind of intrinsic value onto him; this is in line with the understanding of love as agape given above.
For it to be intelligible that I have bestowed value on someone, I must therefore respond appropriately to him as valuable, and this requires having some sense of what his well-being is and of what affects that well-being positively or negatively.
As noted in the 3rd paragraph of Section 1.1, Friedman thinks my commitment to my friend cannot be grounded in appraisals of her, and so my acknowledgment of the worth of her goals, etc., is a matter of my bestowing value on these: her ends become valuable to me, and so suitable for motivating my actions, "just because they are hers".
His awareness of value bestows value.
