I think this is too extreme. Maybe blame and desert are best dispensed with, but it seems likely that we (our volitions) terminally disvalue interference with deliberate, ‘responsible’ choices, even if they’re wrong, but not interference with compulsions. Even if that’s not the case, it also seems likely that something like our idea of responsible vs. compulsive choice is a natural joint, predicting an action’s evidential value about stable, reflectively endorsed preferences, which is heuristically useful in multiple ways.
I don’t think that needs to be a terminal value. People’s deliberate choices provide information about what will actually make them happy; with compulsions, we have evidence that those things won’t really make them happy.
I agree that it’s useful to have words to distinguish what we want long-term when we think about it, and what we want short-term when tempted, and I’ve just done a post on that subject. However, I don’t see how that helps rescue the idea of blame and deserving.
I think this is too extreme. Maybe blame and desert are best dispensed with, but it seems likely that we (our volitions) terminally disvalue interference with deliberate, ‘responsible’ choices, even if they’re wrong, but not interference with compulsions. Even if that’s not the case, it also seems likely that something like our idea of responsible vs. compulsive choice is a natural joint, predicting an action’s evidential value about stable, reflectively endorsed preferences, which is heuristically useful in multiple ways.
I don’t think that needs to be a terminal value. People’s deliberate choices provide information about what will actually make them happy; with compulsions, we have evidence that those things won’t really make them happy.
I agree that it’s useful to have words to distinguish what we want long-term when we think about it, and what we want short-term when tempted, and I’ve just done a post on that subject. However, I don’t see how that helps rescue the idea of blame and deserving.
In case there was any confusion, I didn’t mean to say it does.