But is caring for yourself and your friends and family an instrumental value that helps you stay sane so that you can help others more efficiently, or is it a terminal value? It sure feels like a terminal value, and your “morality of self-care” sounds like a roundabout way of explaining why people care so much about it by making it instrumental.
I don’t know. I also don’t know if terminal values for utility maximizers and terminal values for fallible human beings perfectly line up, even if humans might strive to be perfectly selfless utility maximizers.
What I do know is that for a lot of people the practical utility increase they can manage goes up when they have friends and family they can care about. If you forbid people from self-care, you create a net decrease of utility in the world.
But is caring for yourself and your friends and family an instrumental value that helps you stay sane so that you can help others more efficiently, or is it a terminal value? It sure feels like a terminal value, and your “morality of self-care” sounds like a roundabout way of explaining why people care so much about it by making it instrumental.
I don’t know. I also don’t know if terminal values for utility maximizers and terminal values for fallible human beings perfectly line up, even if humans might strive to be perfectly selfless utility maximizers.
What I do know is that for a lot of people the practical utility increase they can manage goes up when they have friends and family they can care about. If you forbid people from self-care, you create a net decrease of utility in the world.