That seems related to what I was trying to get at with the placeholder-word “freedom”—I was thinking of things like “freedom to explore” and “freedom to create new things”—both of which seem highly related to “learning”.
It looks like we’re talking about two subtly different types of “terminal value”, though: for society and for one’s self. (Shall we call them “external” and “internal” TVs?)
I’m inclined to agree with your internal TV for “learning”, but that doesn’t mean that I would insist that a decision which prevented others from learning was necessarily wrong—perhaps some people have no interest in learning (though I’m not going to be inviting them to my birthday party).
If a decision prevented learnophiles from learning, though, I would count that as “harm” or “suffering”—and thus it would be against my external TVs.
Taking the thought a little further: I would be inclined to argue that unless an individual is clearly learnophobic, or it can be shown that too much learning could somehow damage them, then preventing learning in even neutral cases would also be harm—because learning is part of what makes us human. I realize, though, that this argument is on rather thinner rational ground than my main argument, and I’m mainly presenting it as a means of establishing common emotional ground. Please ignore it if this bothers you.
Take-away point: My proposed universal external TV (prevention of suffering) defines {involuntary violation of internal TVs} as harm/suffering.
Learning is a terminal value for me, which I hold irreducible to its instrumental advantages in contributing to my well-being.
That seems related to what I was trying to get at with the placeholder-word “freedom”—I was thinking of things like “freedom to explore” and “freedom to create new things”—both of which seem highly related to “learning”.
It looks like we’re talking about two subtly different types of “terminal value”, though: for society and for one’s self. (Shall we call them “external” and “internal” TVs?)
I’m inclined to agree with your internal TV for “learning”, but that doesn’t mean that I would insist that a decision which prevented others from learning was necessarily wrong—perhaps some people have no interest in learning (though I’m not going to be inviting them to my birthday party).
If a decision prevented learnophiles from learning, though, I would count that as “harm” or “suffering”—and thus it would be against my external TVs.
Taking the thought a little further: I would be inclined to argue that unless an individual is clearly learnophobic, or it can be shown that too much learning could somehow damage them, then preventing learning in even neutral cases would also be harm—because learning is part of what makes us human. I realize, though, that this argument is on rather thinner rational ground than my main argument, and I’m mainly presenting it as a means of establishing common emotional ground. Please ignore it if this bothers you.
Take-away point: My proposed universal external TV (prevention of suffering) defines {involuntary violation of internal TVs} as harm/suffering.
Hope that makes sense.