Agreed with everybody that “goals vs rewards” as you’re using it here maps pretty well to terminal and instrumental values as they’ve been discussed elsewhere.
Of course, I can intentionally adopt something as a goal even if it’s really an instrumental value. E.g., I can adopt the goal of making a comprehensive to-do list, even though the only reason I value to-do lists is because they help me achieve something else.
But a purist would claim that this is actually a “sub-goal”; if it became a goal I’d lose my purpose (e.g., start collecting to-do lists as a hobby).
For my own part, I think “terminal value” is a concept without much real-world application, useful only as an idealization. In practice, I suspect all values are instrumental, and exist in a mutually reinforcing network, and we label as “terminal values” those values we don’t want to (or don’t have sufficient awareness to) decompose further. (And, by the same token, I think all goals are “sub-goals”.)
But that’s not a mainstream position as far as I know.
Agreed with everybody that “goals vs rewards” as you’re using it here maps pretty well to terminal and instrumental values as they’ve been discussed elsewhere.
Of course, I can intentionally adopt something as a goal even if it’s really an instrumental value. E.g., I can adopt the goal of making a comprehensive to-do list, even though the only reason I value to-do lists is because they help me achieve something else.
But a purist would claim that this is actually a “sub-goal”; if it became a goal I’d lose my purpose (e.g., start collecting to-do lists as a hobby).
For my own part, I think “terminal value” is a concept without much real-world application, useful only as an idealization. In practice, I suspect all values are instrumental, and exist in a mutually reinforcing network, and we label as “terminal values” those values we don’t want to (or don’t have sufficient awareness to) decompose further. (And, by the same token, I think all goals are “sub-goals”.)
But that’s not a mainstream position as far as I know.