I wonder if you can steelman the second setup to make it smell-proof, and then answer the OP’s question?
No. For any action X it is easy to dream up a hypothetical situation Y in which X is the right thing to do. In the limit, it reduces to letting Y be “Suppose X was the right thing to do?” This is not a useful exercise. The pattern is an anti-pattern.
Besides which, someone has already commented that the concept of agency used in the OP is unclear. The 5-year-old and the mother still have agency; they are being prevented from exercising it, the one by superior force, the other by concealment of knowledge.
Substituting the word “control” does not change things. The 5-year-old and the mother are still trying to exercise control, that is, they are both trying to achieve purposes; they are being prevented from achieving those purposes, the one by superior force, the other by concealment of knowledge. The protagonist is doing this because his purposes conflict with theirs.
So the question is, when your goals conflict with another’s, when is it right to use force or subterfuge to get your way? Suddenly it sounds a lot more commonplace a matter than the distant phrase, “the ethicality of denying agency”, and needs no hypothetical steelmanned scenarios. A glance at the real world provides limitless raw material, which can come from as close at hand as one’s own everyday life. The question is about the entire subject of how people can live together, the totality of ethics.
I do not believe that we use the same definition of steelmanning.
Steelmanning is making the best case possible for the idea in question.
Bad steelmanning consists of bottom-lining the idea in question and amassing as many soldiers for it as possible. One nails idea X in place and asks one’s brain, what does that world look like? What might be true to imply that X is true? The virtual outcome pump in one’s head obligingly imagines something, which you write above X as an argument to prove X. Repeat the process on those premises until you have something that looks like a coherent argument for X, but resembles one only in the way that a painting of a bridge looks like a bridge. It does not stay up because of its sound construction as a bridge, but only because of its sound construction as a painting: the paint is stuck to the canvas.
Even good steelmanning has a hint of the bottom line about it, but that is because it is a technique of anti-irrationality, not directly of rationality. To the perfect reasoner, there is no such activity as making the best case possible for an idea, only the best argument possible relating to the idea, whichever way it turns out. The imperfect reasoner’s task is to force themselves to find actual good reasons for X even while flinching away from the task. It is futile to build a straw man and give it a coat of engine paint.
As for the original scenario, the everyday world provides far better examples where, by virtue of diminished responsibility, protection of some greater good, or various other reasons, one may be justified in forcibly or covertly thwarting someone else’s wishes. The scenario of driving under the influence of alcohol with a passenger who would refuse is a really bad one, and there is no point in putting a finger on the scales to make the decision come out in favour of driving.
So the question is, when your goals conflict with another’s, when is it right to use force or subterfuge to get your way?
In the scenarios with the 5-year-old and the mother, the protagonist’s goal conflicts with what he deems to be an irrational goal. From his perspective, if they were more rational, their goals wouldn’t be conflicting in the first place. So there are two questions that arise 1) can he make that judgement call on their rationality and 2) can he remove their ability to act as agents because of his assessment?
The child does indeed have limited rationality, and is in the care of the protagonist: the protagonist is right to exercise that duty of care by limiting the child’s access to chocolate.
The mother only has limited rationality by the protagonist’s self-serving account. He thinks he can drive safely after a couple of beers; she thinks it too great a risk, did she know of it. His internal monologue—under the influence of those same two beers—triumphantly proves her irrationality by the fact that her assessment differs from his. Pah! she has even let herself be irrationally influenced by one of the family dying in a drunken crash! How irrational she is! She has non-transitive preferences, hahaha! Poor old dear, she’s not really a PC, not like us, eh? Of course I can drive her safely, are you calling me a drunk? Yes, officer, this is my car, and we’ve got a plane to catch, so if you don’t mind, no I HAVEN’T been drinking—And so on. That is the general picture I have in my mind of the person you put in that scenario who thinks he’s contemplating “the ethicality of denying her agency”.
Or dressed up in jargon, it’s my posterior on seeing the evidence of the story, given my prior knowledge of the ways of the world.
ETA: A real answer to what the of course not at all drunk driver could do would be to handle the immediate situation by paying a taxi driver whatever it takes for a two-hour journey. He might then profitably spend those two hours examining the underlying problem: why he chose to have those beers.
I didn’t make it clear, but in the scenario she doesn’t know.
The scenario doesn’t make sense. If you ever think that you find yourself in this scenario, please book a time with your doctor and explain to them that you just missed a flight because you couldn’t resist drinking in the morning before you knew that you had to drive a car.
He deliberately got himself into an awkward situation, for nothing more than the pleasure of drinking a couple of beers. No-brainers don’t get much simpler, and for him to get this wrong suggests there’s something more going on.
BTW, his mother already knows he’s been drinking.
Another BTW: I didn’t make that up arbitrarily, just reasonable conjecture from the ways of the world, and of mothers.
I didn’t make it clear, but in the scenario she doesn’t know.
You can add as many hypotheses as you like (as could I: “what if she asks point-blank?”), but as I said in my reply to shminux, it doesn’t help. This scenario does not work as an illustration of the ethical problem. To scale the example up, it’s like asking if a murderer should confess, when what he should have done is not do the murder.
Yes, the way I wrote the scenario makes it seem like he deliberately got himself into an awkward situation for little benefit in return. And I see how this weakens the scenario as an illustration of the problem. So let me try improving the scenario:
Imagine he determined that refraining from disclosing the information to his mother was ethical. A week later, he finds himself in a similar situation. He wants to drink a couple of beers, but knows that by the time he’ll finish, he’ll need to drive his mother. This time he has no qualms about drinking, making the beer-drinking pleasure worth the consequences.
These are good points. I wonder if you can steelman the second setup to make it smell-proof, and then answer the OP’s question?
No. For any action X it is easy to dream up a hypothetical situation Y in which X is the right thing to do. In the limit, it reduces to letting Y be “Suppose X was the right thing to do?” This is not a useful exercise. The pattern is an anti-pattern.
Besides which, someone has already commented that the concept of agency used in the OP is unclear. The 5-year-old and the mother still have agency; they are being prevented from exercising it, the one by superior force, the other by concealment of knowledge.
Substituting the word “control” does not change things. The 5-year-old and the mother are still trying to exercise control, that is, they are both trying to achieve purposes; they are being prevented from achieving those purposes, the one by superior force, the other by concealment of knowledge. The protagonist is doing this because his purposes conflict with theirs.
So the question is, when your goals conflict with another’s, when is it right to use force or subterfuge to get your way? Suddenly it sounds a lot more commonplace a matter than the distant phrase, “the ethicality of denying agency”, and needs no hypothetical steelmanned scenarios. A glance at the real world provides limitless raw material, which can come from as close at hand as one’s own everyday life. The question is about the entire subject of how people can live together, the totality of ethics.
I do not believe that we use the same definition of steelmanning.
Steelmanning is making the best case possible for the idea in question.
Bad steelmanning consists of bottom-lining the idea in question and amassing as many soldiers for it as possible. One nails idea X in place and asks one’s brain, what does that world look like? What might be true to imply that X is true? The virtual outcome pump in one’s head obligingly imagines something, which you write above X as an argument to prove X. Repeat the process on those premises until you have something that looks like a coherent argument for X, but resembles one only in the way that a painting of a bridge looks like a bridge. It does not stay up because of its sound construction as a bridge, but only because of its sound construction as a painting: the paint is stuck to the canvas.
Even good steelmanning has a hint of the bottom line about it, but that is because it is a technique of anti-irrationality, not directly of rationality. To the perfect reasoner, there is no such activity as making the best case possible for an idea, only the best argument possible relating to the idea, whichever way it turns out. The imperfect reasoner’s task is to force themselves to find actual good reasons for X even while flinching away from the task. It is futile to build a straw man and give it a coat of engine paint.
As for the original scenario, the everyday world provides far better examples where, by virtue of diminished responsibility, protection of some greater good, or various other reasons, one may be justified in forcibly or covertly thwarting someone else’s wishes. The scenario of driving under the influence of alcohol with a passenger who would refuse is a really bad one, and there is no point in putting a finger on the scales to make the decision come out in favour of driving.
In the scenarios with the 5-year-old and the mother, the protagonist’s goal conflicts with what he deems to be an irrational goal. From his perspective, if they were more rational, their goals wouldn’t be conflicting in the first place. So there are two questions that arise 1) can he make that judgement call on their rationality and 2) can he remove their ability to act as agents because of his assessment?
The child does indeed have limited rationality, and is in the care of the protagonist: the protagonist is right to exercise that duty of care by limiting the child’s access to chocolate.
The mother only has limited rationality by the protagonist’s self-serving account. He thinks he can drive safely after a couple of beers; she thinks it too great a risk, did she know of it. His internal monologue—under the influence of those same two beers—triumphantly proves her irrationality by the fact that her assessment differs from his. Pah! she has even let herself be irrationally influenced by one of the family dying in a drunken crash! How irrational she is! She has non-transitive preferences, hahaha! Poor old dear, she’s not really a PC, not like us, eh? Of course I can drive her safely, are you calling me a drunk? Yes, officer, this is my car, and we’ve got a plane to catch, so if you don’t mind, no I HAVEN’T been drinking—And so on. That is the general picture I have in my mind of the person you put in that scenario who thinks he’s contemplating “the ethicality of denying her agency”.
Or dressed up in jargon, it’s my posterior on seeing the evidence of the story, given my prior knowledge of the ways of the world.
ETA: A real answer to what the of course not at all drunk driver could do would be to handle the immediate situation by paying a taxi driver whatever it takes for a two-hour journey. He might then profitably spend those two hours examining the underlying problem: why he chose to have those beers.
BTW, his mother already knows he’s been drinking.
Why would this be a problem?
I didn’t make it clear, but in the scenario she doesn’t know.
The scenario doesn’t make sense. If you ever think that you find yourself in this scenario, please book a time with your doctor and explain to them that you just missed a flight because you couldn’t resist drinking in the morning before you knew that you had to drive a car.
He deliberately got himself into an awkward situation, for nothing more than the pleasure of drinking a couple of beers. No-brainers don’t get much simpler, and for him to get this wrong suggests there’s something more going on.
Another BTW: I didn’t make that up arbitrarily, just reasonable conjecture from the ways of the world, and of mothers.
You can add as many hypotheses as you like (as could I: “what if she asks point-blank?”), but as I said in my reply to shminux, it doesn’t help. This scenario does not work as an illustration of the ethical problem. To scale the example up, it’s like asking if a murderer should confess, when what he should have done is not do the murder.
Yes, the way I wrote the scenario makes it seem like he deliberately got himself into an awkward situation for little benefit in return. And I see how this weakens the scenario as an illustration of the problem. So let me try improving the scenario:
Imagine he determined that refraining from disclosing the information to his mother was ethical. A week later, he finds himself in a similar situation. He wants to drink a couple of beers, but knows that by the time he’ll finish, he’ll need to drive his mother. This time he has no qualms about drinking, making the beer-drinking pleasure worth the consequences.
Then his foot is set upon the road to ruin. Is that the implication you intended?