We start off with some early values, and then develop instrumental strategies for achieving them. Those instrumental strategies become crystallized and then give rise to other instrumental strategies for achieving them, and so on. Understood this way, we can describe an organism’s goals/strategies purely in terms of which goals “have power over” which other goals, which goals are most easily replaced, etc, without needing to appeal to some kind of essential “terminalism” that some goals have and others don’t.
I think it would help me if you explained what you think it would mean for there to be an instrumental/terminal distinction, since to my eyes you’ve just spelled out the instrumental/terminal split.
In my “goals having power over other goals” ontology, the instrumental/terminal distinction separates goals into two binary classes, such that goals in the “instrumental” class only have power insofar as they’re endorsed by a goal in the “terminal” class.
By contrast, when I talk about “instrumental strategies become crystallized”, what I mean is that goals which start off instrumental will gradually accumulate power in their own right: they’re “sticky”.
I think it would help me if you explained what you think it would mean for there to be an instrumental/terminal distinction, since to my eyes you’ve just spelled out the instrumental/terminal split.
In my “goals having power over other goals” ontology, the instrumental/terminal distinction separates goals into two binary classes, such that goals in the “instrumental” class only have power insofar as they’re endorsed by a goal in the “terminal” class.
By contrast, when I talk about “instrumental strategies become crystallized”, what I mean is that goals which start off instrumental will gradually accumulate power in their own right: they’re “sticky”.