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.
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?