Let’s consider three ways you can be altruistic towards another agent:
You care about their welfare: some metric of how good their life is (as defined by you). I’ll call this care-morality—it endorses things like promoting their happiness, reducing their suffering, and hedonic utilitarian behavior (if you care about many agents).
You care about their agency: their ability to achieve their goals (as defined by them). I’ll call this cooperation-morality—it endorses things like honesty, fairness, deontological behavior towards others, and some virtues (like honor).
You care about obedience to them. I’ll call this deference-morality—it endorses things like loyalty, humility, and respect for authority.
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Care-morality mainly makes sense as an attitude towards agents who are much less capable than you, and/or can’t make decisions for themselves—for example animals, future people, and infants.
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Cooperation-morality mainly makes sense as an attitude towards agents whose capabilities are comparable to yours—for example others around us who are trying to influence the world.
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Deference-morality mainly makes sense as an attitude towards trustworthy agents who are much more capable than you—for example effective leaders, organizations, communities, and sometimes society as a whole.
Thanks for this! I think the categories of morality is a useful framework. I am very wary of the judgement that care-morality is appropriate for less capable subjects—basically because of paternalism.
I think at some level, maybe a crux is that I believe that the harder version of the problem is more useful to solve, where we cannot remove the power differential, or at best cannot remove it totally, or at least do better than society does under such power differentials.
Also, maybe I view paternalism in a more positive context, especially as it relates to parenting, especially for legal guardians, as well as raising animals, where I’d argue that the power differential shouldn’t be removed.
Relevant post by Richard Ngo: “Moral Strategies at different capability levels”. Crucial excerpt:
Thanks for this! I think the categories of morality is a useful framework. I am very wary of the judgement that care-morality is appropriate for less capable subjects—basically because of paternalism.
I think at some level, maybe a crux is that I believe that the harder version of the problem is more useful to solve, where we cannot remove the power differential, or at best cannot remove it totally, or at least do better than society does under such power differentials.
Also, maybe I view paternalism in a more positive context, especially as it relates to parenting, especially for legal guardians, as well as raising animals, where I’d argue that the power differential shouldn’t be removed.