without needing to appeal to some kind of essential “terminalism” that some goals have and others don’t.
That appeal doesn’t seem overly problematic though, as some goals are clearly terminal. For example, eating chocolate (or rather: something that tastes like it). Or not dying. Those goals are given to us by evolution. Chocolate is a case where we actually have an instrumental reason not to eat it (too much sugar for modern environments), which counteracts the terminal goal in the opposite direction. Which means they are clearly different. Are there perhaps other edge cases where the instrumental/terminal distinction is harder to apply?
(Indeed, the main reason you’d need that concept is to describe someone who has modified their goals towards having a sharper instrumental/terminal distinction—i.e. it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.)
I argue the main reason is different: First, we need to distinguish instrumental from terminal goals because instrumental goals are affected by beliefs. When those beliefs change, the instrumental goals change. For example, I may want to eat spinach because I believe it’s healthy. So that’s an instrumental goal. If my belief changed, I might abandon that goal. But if I liked spinach for its own sake (terminally), I wouldn’t need such a supporting belief. As in the case of chocolate.
Second, beliefs can be true or false, or epistemically justified or unjustified, which means instrumental goals that are based on beliefs which are mistaken in this way are then also mistaken. That doesn’t happen for terminal goals. (Terminal goals can still be mutually incoherent if they violate certain axioms of utility theory, but that only means a set of goals is mistaken, not necessarily individual goals in that set.)
That appeal doesn’t seem overly problematic though, as some goals are clearly terminal. For example, eating chocolate (or rather: something that tastes like it). Or not dying. Those goals are given to us by evolution. Chocolate is a case where we actually have an instrumental reason not to eat it (too much sugar for modern environments), which counteracts the terminal goal in the opposite direction. Which means they are clearly different. Are there perhaps other edge cases where the instrumental/terminal distinction is harder to apply?
I argue the main reason is different: First, we need to distinguish instrumental from terminal goals because instrumental goals are affected by beliefs. When those beliefs change, the instrumental goals change. For example, I may want to eat spinach because I believe it’s healthy. So that’s an instrumental goal. If my belief changed, I might abandon that goal. But if I liked spinach for its own sake (terminally), I wouldn’t need such a supporting belief. As in the case of chocolate.
Second, beliefs can be true or false, or epistemically justified or unjustified, which means instrumental goals that are based on beliefs which are mistaken in this way are then also mistaken. That doesn’t happen for terminal goals. (Terminal goals can still be mutually incoherent if they violate certain axioms of utility theory, but that only means a set of goals is mistaken, not necessarily individual goals in that set.)