Agnes:

All right. So I thought today we’d talk about aspiration.

Robin:

Aspiration? Should we aspire to talk about aspiration? Or can we just talk about it?

Agnes:

I think we should just talk about it.

Robin:

Okay.

Agnes:

But we can aspire to talk about it well. You can aspire to force me to see it in some new way. So let me start by saying what aspiration is, and then you can ask further questions. So, aspiration is the temporally extended process of value—rational value acquisition, right? So it’s the process that you’re in when you’re coming to value something new. So, you’re coming to acquire a new intrinsic value. And it’s got to be, like, a pretty substantial value, in the sense that it’s not going to count as aspiration if the only reason you want to value this thing is that it’s going to make it easier for you to value something else that you already fully know why you value.

Robin:

That’s what you mean by intrinsic.

Agnes:

That’s what I mean by intrinsic. Exactly. And what I mean by rational, in a sense you could substitute agential, or something you’re doing. And it’s not just something that happens to you. Perhaps I’m a little skeptical that this is possible, but at least some people think some of the time it’s possible to just magically come to value something because the forces act on you, and now you have this value. And that’s not what I’m talking about. That’s not the case I’m talking about. You know, presumably, at least some of the time we play some role in what we end up valuing, and it’s those cases that I’m interested in. So that’s the process.

Robin:

Okay, so just to be clear to listeners, I would usually use the word “aspire” in other contexts. And so you’re using it in an unusual context. For me, at least, that’s how I would think I might aspire to win a Nobel Prize, and I aspire to get a paper published. I might aspire to be happy, to live long… The word “aspire” would tend to connote, like, shooting for something that would be respected by yourself and others, right? You wouldn’t say you aspire to get a sore foot, or… right? Aspire would be lofty.

Agnes:

Yes, so the fact that it’s lofty fits. So I think that I’m using the word “aspire” in a slightly technical sense; it’s not fully technical, it overlaps with ordinary English usage, but maybe it’s worth pulling out two cases. So there’s something that I’m—that people might use the word “aspire” for, that I’m gonna use the word “self-cultivation” for. And that’s a case that I already described, where, for instance, maybe I want to, like, get myself to enjoy exercise, because I know that I’ll be healthier if I exercise, and I’ll exercise more if I enjoy it.
So I want to come to enjoy exercise, but I wasn’t—that’s not aspiration. You’re not trying to acquire a new intrinsic value, you’re in a way just trying to fulfill your old value of health in a better way. So that’s one thing when we might use the word, but I don’t want to use the word. And another context we might use the word, but I don’t want to use the word, is where I’m gonna use the word “ambition.” So I think, sometimes we have big plans, right? Which is to say—

Robin:

Those would be high…

Agnes:

Right, we have values that are hard to fulfill. And that they might take a long time before we can achieve them, right? But we already have the values; that is, we’re not engaged in the process of coming to appreciate those things as valuable. So, say, like a big important career, or making a lot of money, or, you know, you’d have some goal.

Robin:

So to many of us, it would just be surprising that anybody ever “aspires” in your terms, at least initially. Like we might think that we went into a career because we considered its options in terms of money and life satisfaction, etc. We know that because we chose that career, we’ve come to appreciate many details about it that we hadn’t before. And you know, we might marry someone because we think we like them, but we realize that over time, we will learn to appreciate many details; we’ll be more comfortable with them and easier to interact, right? Those will be all the ways that our values are being achieved, and even refined, in the sense of, we’re better able to achieve them. But we don’t usually pick our major life choices planning to change our values.
So, the main context in which I ever hear about value changes is what I’ve mentioned in a previous podcast of “value drift,” where people dislike the scenario and are trying to prevent it. So, in artificial intelligence risk, people worry about future machine-based descendants, values moving away from their values. And that’s something they fear, and they’re wondering if it’s ever possible to prevent that. And, however—but here you’re saying, people today want to change their values. So, like, can you give us a concrete example of what… Other than having read parts of your book, I don’t, it’s not something that ever occurred to me.

Agnes:

I think it’s more alien to you than it is to other people. So that makes you a good interlocutor for me. So, I think that most people have a sense that the world is just filled with forms of value that they cannot appreciate. That is, there’s just all kinds of different kinds of beauty and good things out there that they’re not able to access, because they don’t know…

Robin:

But you’re setting aside most of the process by which I think that might happen. So, you know, if I think something has value, but I don’t know much about its details, then exposing myself to more details, will that allow me to see more details and appreciate more details? But if you’re setting that aside, as not what you mean by aspiration…

Agnes:

I’m not setting it aside, I’m actually offering you a kind of slightly different framework for thinking about what’s happening there. So I think people are inclined to try to factor out the process of aspiration into two, sort of, bits, right? One of them is, like, you decide that there is some arena of value—there’s value over here. Say, in classical music, right? There’s some value there. Okay, it’s a little mysterious how you magically think there’s, like, all this value there. And we can sort of talk more about where you got that thing, right?

Robin:

You heard some of it! And you heard other people say they liked it!

Agnes:

Right, but, like, you know, you might, like, think they’re pretty trustworthy, right?

Robin:

And you might think about the times you heard it, and you’ve liked it, and you think, “I want to hear more of this, and find out more about this stuff, because I liked it.”

Agnes:

Right? So there’s some, like, kind of abstract sense in which you already value, or you at least believe it to be valuable.

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

Right? And then you kind of put yourself in the way of it, like, let it come flying at you or something. And then the thought is, like, well, hopefully it sort of transforms you, right? So there’s this—

Robin:

But I like it, and if I liked it I’d learn more about it. But your transforming sounds like something a bit more?

Agnes:

Well, when you say, “I hope that I like it,” my thought is, you’re not relegated to hope there only, right? So I think that if you’re trying to appreciate classical music, there’s a thing that you do call “trying to like it.” That is, there’s an activity that you engage in, where what you’re doing is you’re doing your best to attune yourself to the valuable features of it, you’re not just sort of seeing whether it fills you with like or not, and that process takes time.

Robin:

So is this like a first date? You know, you see someone on a first date and they don’t look terribly impressive. And then the way they shook your hand and the first few words they said weren’t bowling you over. But you wonder, you know, whoever is that impressive in the first few moments? See, it’s like, give them a chance, right? Maybe I’ll like them more later. Just be open. Is that what we’re talking about?

Agnes:

No. So, aspiration isn’t the same thing as openness. I think that in a way, if we want to talk about aspiration and romance, which I think is a great topic that I don’t cover in my book, it’s something quite dangerous, right?

Robin:

First time covered ever, right here! You okay with it?

Agnes:

Which is that, like, all of us have been in these sort of romantic situations where we really want to love someone, we want to be attracted to someone, and we sort of tell ourselves, right? And maybe sometimes this works out, right?

Robin:

It’s more if like you’re attracted in some ways, and you want to also be attracted in other ways.

Agnes:

So I guess I’m less inclined to factor in that way, right? So, I fully grasp their value in ways A, B, and C, but I think in the abstract, they might also have value D, E, and F. And so allow me to put myself in their way and see whether I’d get D, E, and F, right? And I think that it’s more like, you know, they’re—this person seems smart and pretty and funny, but maybe they’re smart and pretty and funny also in this deeper way, right? That I’m going to be able to access by kind of properly connecting to the smartness and prettiness and funnyness that I already appreciate.
So I’m, like, pushing in deeper. And I think sometimes you can sort of—this can become pathological. I mean, both with people and with fields, right? You’re so determined to come to see the value in something that you throw a lot of resources into that, where you’re not getting anywhere.
So it’s not mere openness. I think openness is much cheaper.

Robin:

Let me make it concrete in a way that might be easier to access. So a lot of people say they like Paris. So, you know, if I’ve never been to Paris, like, say I want to enjoy Paris like all these other people. So I go to Paris, right? And I walk down many streets and I eat at some restaurants, maybe go to a show. And now I know Paris in much more detail. I can tell you more about the things that are nice or less nice about it. Like, for example, it has, you know, this beautiful river, and all these little things next to the water. I can also tell you all the buildings are gray. I don’t like that much about Paris. I like Budapest better, all the buildings are yellow. But that’s another matter.
Okay, so have I generated a new intrinsic value here?

Agnes:

I mean, you know—

Robin:

I wanted to like Paris, because everybody likes it, and it would be a little more awkward to go home and say, “Paris? Crap! I don’t like Paris.” Maybe they’ll think I’m not romantic. You know, Paris is a romantic city. So maybe this will show my lack of romance if I don’t like Paris.

Agnes:

Right. So if the story you want to tell about you is that what you’re fundamentally interested in is other people thinking that you’re romantic? And that’s something that you already fully appreciated before the whole Paris thing came up—why that was a good thing. And you just think the liking of Paris is an important part of that story, then no, it does not count as aspiration.
But if what we want to say is, like, you know, you have a glimmer of there being something there, not just that people believe it, right? Because it may be that you’re the sort of person who, when a lot of people believe something is valuable, you think there’s a high chance that that’s just bullshit or something—if you’re that kind of person, then the fact that other people say it’s valuable, isn’t really an aspirational opening for you.
For those people who are sort of more trusting of others and think, well, when people like something, that there tends to be something there, some real value, right? Then for those people, the liking of others is a kind of aspirational opening. So the role of other people is going to depend on you.

Robin:

But I thought that the advantage of picking a city was that we could be more concrete about what exactly changed in my values.

Agnes:

Yeah.

Robin:

Like, is it that I don’t mind gray buildings? Is it that I like it when the buildings are all five stories tall? I mean, what, exactly, in my preferences over cities would change if I aspired to like Paris and succeeded in liking Paris? It just seems like a city has more detail we could latch on to.

Agnes:

Yeah, exactly. I think that the way the change would manifest is that you come back home, and you’d be able to talk about Paris in this loving way where you’d be, like, “Here’s what’s amazing about Paris.” So I think valuers tend to be articulate about what they value, right? At least as a sign. And you’d be like, you know, “Paris is beautiful in this way that I never realized a city could be beautiful until I went to Paris. And, like, let me describe it and explain it to you.” And your grasp of that would have a kind of idiosyncratic character of, like, your having grasped the value in some particular way. Because you haven’t grasped the value of Paris in every possible way. You’ve grasped it in one or a few ways, right?

Robin:

But just knowing what it is about Paris that’s specific, that I like about Paris, is that changing my intrinsic values? I mean, if, for example, I discover Paris is charming at night, for example, the street lights aren’t very noisy, cars aren’t very noisy. You can walk on the street, and it’s relatively calm. And, you know, the lights are spaced out nicely, and sort of look lovely, right? If I knew ahead of time that I liked nicely spaced-out lights and quiet streets, and I find that this is such a city, have I really changed my intrinsic values?

Agnes:

No. I think in that case, you haven’t.

Robin:

So what would be changing my intrinsic values?

Agnes:

It would be something like, “Wow, I never realized that I could like walking at night. I’ve always hated walking at night, and I’ve hated being in cities, but Paris taught me that I actually do like cities, and that I like walking at night in cities under these circumstances.” There’s a kind of magic combination of the way this…

Robin:

It sounds like just trying something and seeing— So, say I’ve never had mushrooms before. And somebody gives me a plate of mushrooms. And I go, “Mushrooms, those look icky!” And they say “Try it!” And I tried a couple of mushrooms. “Mmm! I like mushrooms!” Now I learned an intrinsic value.

Agnes:

Good. I mean, so I think that’s a good point. And I think that there’s a kind of, you know, there’s a kind of spectrum of aspiration, where at one end of the spectrum is something like “All you’ve got to do is try it.” Right? So that’s the point where you resolve it into this sort of passive thing. And then you’re transformed, in the sense that you now have the value. Right?
But even there, like, you know, you had to, for instance— I mean, you thought you didn’t like mushrooms, right? Or you thought you didn’t like walking around the city at night, right? And you suppose, like, when you started walking, let’s say—it’s harder with the mushrooms, but a little bit easier with the walking—you started walking, you might have been sort of… Let’s say you’re walking with someone, you might be grumbling about it…

Robin:

We can spread the mushrooms out over time, right? So, we could have a lasagna I like. And I say, “I wonder—really I liked that lasagna.” And you say, “There were a few mushrooms in there.” And I go, “That can’t be it. I don’t like mushrooms!” But now there’s another dish and it has a few ’shrooms. And it turns out I like this sauce. And it’s kind of a brown sauce. And I say, “Mmm, that was a pretty yummy sauce.” And you say, “Well, that’s a mushroom sauce.” And I go, “No, that can’t be right. It must be the other things in the sauce.” And now I just have a thing only of mushrooms. And I still like it. Now I can’t— I have to admit, “Okay, I like mushrooms.”

Agnes:

Right. So I think that, like, the way that you’re framing it is like, “Well, there’s a bunch of stuff that I already like, and I can just learn that I liked it all along.” Right? That is, it’s like I have all these hidden values.

Robin:

I always had the potential to like mushrooms, but if mushrooms had been put in my mouth 12 years ago, I would have liked it then. I’ve just— They weren’t in my mouth until now. And so now I find that I like mushrooms.

Agnes:

I mean, it’s trivially going to be true that anything you do you always had the potential to do it, right? That’s just the kind of logical—or let’s say, not logical, but a metaphysical…

Robin:

There are things that you don’t have the potential until a certain point in time. But yes, for most things…

Agnes:

I mean, if you can acquire the potential later, then…

Robin:

Okay, you have the potential.

Agnes:

There’s a thin metaphysical sense—that’s not what I mean. Like, and I do think that there’s a kind of inclination or aspiration to say, “Well, everything you could ever value is in some sense hidden in you,” right, and it is waiting for it to be brought out by something.

Robin:

Okay.

Agnes:

And I think that, like, what that is doing is correctly focusing on the fact that aspiration isn’t fully rational or fully agential. And that it is dependent somewhat on factors outside of our control, in the sense, for instance, that I think it’d be very hard to come to appreciate mushrooms without tasting mushrooms. Or to appreciate Paris without ever being located in Paris. And what does that mean? It means that things have to act on you, right, in order for you to have his appreciation. So the lights and sounds of Paris have to, like, impinge on you, right? You can’t just conjure everything up from your own mind. And similarly with the mushroom.
And so aspiration is in part a passive process, in that you’re going to be taking in information.

Robin:

But you have to be open— You have to take some effort to be open to it, right? If you had been lost in thought in Paris, or, you know, fuming over a phone call that you just had, you might not notice how nice it was at night. And so you might not realize that you like Paris at night.

Agnes:

Right.

Robin:

So you’d have to be paying enough attention, and perhaps being in the right, sort of, open-minded mood where you just let yourself find out.

Agnes:

Right, we might think of an analogy, right? Take some area where you might learn something, like, you know, math or something, right? Suppose there’s a kind of math you don’t know. Right?

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

And we might say, “Well, what happened is, you know, you just showed up, and you always had it in you, but you showed up in the math classroom, and some stuff went into your ears. And then in the end, you knew math.” And we want to say, like, “Well, you could talk about it that way. But the better way to talk about it is that in order to learn the math that was in the air, or whatever, you had to do this thing that we call learning.” Right?

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

Where you attend to certain things, you consider them, you throw stuff away. And I think that there’s learning like that, just like in the math classroom, there’s learning of value. For instance, there’s learning of the value of Paris. Now, learning of the value of things that are primarily sensory experiences is a very specialized case, right? But there’s also learning of ethical value, learning of intellectual value…

Robin:

Say I take a math class with matrices. And I see that you can do a lot more with matrices than I had realized. And now I’ve learned the value of matrices.

Agnes:

So, no, that what I was doing is drawing an analogy… I was just drawing an analogy between ethical learning—what you’re doing when you come to value something—and non-ethical, just mere intellectual learning. Like when you learn about matrices. Right? And, my claim here is that aspiration is a form of learning, that is, that learning isn’t relegated to the cognitive or the intellectual. That there is a kind of an affective or evaluational learning, is a thing that human beings can do.
So, you know, I want the matrices to stay on that side… No, of course, you can aspire to, like, do things with matrices, I guess. I mean, that’s too far away from my comfort zone for me to know what I would mean by that. But it doesn’t seem impossible that that could mean something.

Robin:

So clearly, you know, when you learn mushrooms, or you learn, say, how to get from A to B in Paris, or how to find Notre Dame, for example, or what it’s like inside, you know, there are many ways to frame these things as if we had learned facts, but didn’t change our values or preferences.

Agnes:

Mm-hm.

Robin:

So, the surprising thing will be to think in terms of learning changing values. So that’s the point at which I get a little stuck, and wondering whether I need to think in these terms. So I would be usually tempted to think in terms of some more basic set of intrinsic values, and then learning more facts that are more, you know, conducive to helping me achieve those values. But as you may know, in the usual decision-theory framework, you have a set of states; you have a, you know, values per state; and you have various facts per state. And what you learn is which states exist, and you never— In that framework, the values per state—facts per state never change. And… But in effect, the averages change over any particular value or any particular fact, because of which states are in your consideration, change. That’s the things that change.
So in that context, you know, can I think in those terms? Of saying, “Well, in every possible state, the value didn’t change, but I’m learning which possible states I’m in.” So, for example, I’m learning that I’m the sort of person who likes Paris. There’s some states in which I would like Paris and some states in which I don’t, and I’m finding out that I’m in the states where I like Paris, right? So that could be learning about my values, but not necessarily changing them. So, I guess a big— Changing the values is more of a challenge to the usual theoretical framework than learning about them, of learning about them in the usual framework. Again, learning is excluding possible worlds.

Agnes:

Yeah, I mean, it’s weird to me, like, that you’re inclined to say, “Well, I’m just learning that I’m the sort of person who likes Paris.” It’s a little bit like, you know, saying, like, well, like, “I’m the sort of person who, like, thinks that the double-size square for any square comes from the diagonal of the square.” Okay, that’s true, right? And as I learn, you know, some geometry, I learn that, and so you can say, “I learned that I was always the sort of person who thought that!” It’s like, well okay, you always—but I mean, you didn’t know it, and now you do. So you learned it.

Robin:

That’s right. But that’s not a possible-worlds analysis, right? Because by construction, that thing is a thing that’s true in all possible worlds.

Agnes:

But it’s not true, in all possible worlds, that I know it, right?

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

So…

Robin:

Right, but the possible worlds analysis then, like, says you’re defective if you haven’t figured it out. [Laughs] You know, in the simplest framework, you would have figured that out, because you would have seen that it was true in all possible worlds. But that’s a different aspect to learn. But basically, the fundamental thing here is just to say, you know, in an ordinary language it makes complete sense for you to learn about your values, just like you could learn about anything else.
But when you talk about changing values, that’s different from changing things. Like, I could learn about the weather, but I don’t change the weather. Right? That’s what’s important, in many of our analyses: To distinguish whether we learn about things or whether we change them. Even education. Right? So, the standard issue in education is, are we making students better? Or are we simply reviewing their better features for employers to be able to sort them.

Agnes:

Right. So I think that, I mean, what I would say is, I believe that there’s aspiration both with respect of value acquisition, and with respect of value loss. I only give one example of the second in my book, and I’m like, I wonder about it, actually. But we can talk about it if you want. But, so these are the… You know, so you can change in those two ways, right?
So the change in value is the coming to value something that you didn’t used to value, right? And if you think of it along the lines of learning, right, there’s also cognitive change that is changing what you know. Right?

Robin:

Yeah.

Agnes:

And that also happens by learning, right? So I didn’t used to know that the double square comes from the diagonal, but now I know.

Robin:

Or you could just learn about your values, but they might not have changed.

Agnes:

Right. Absolutely. Right, so it could be that like, you know, I go to therapy or something. And I learn about, like, that I might value, you know, whatever. So I think that that’s right. And in fact, you could do the same thing with math. You could have forgotten that you know some math, right? And then be like, “Oh, I actually know this!” Right? So you can, so to speak, learn about your mathematical knowledge, right? That’s something you can do.
But learning about the mathematical knowledge you already have is quite easily distinguishable from acquiring new mathematical knowledge, right? Or in any case, it is distinguishable, it seems to me. And, similarly, introspecting to find what values you have, that, I think, is a different process from the process of actually coming to value the new thing, right? In particular, the second one typically involves, for instance, doing things like going to Paris, right? So it’s gonna involve interacting with the value…

Robin:

Right, but in our usual theories of learning, you know, you learn about everything by getting some sort of data and excluding the possible worlds in order to refine your set of worlds. In which case, your new estimates are different than the old ones, because of the smaller set of possible worlds. And that’s how you learn things everywhere. So, it seems like that can also happen with values.
So, I mean, it’s also obviously possible that your values change, but it’s less clear to me that we can see the difference here. But I also have to admit, it’s less clear why it matters that much. So I mean, clearly, if you say you only ever had immutable values that you learned about in more detail, versus if you can change your values. I mean, is the universe that different? Or is our lives that different?

Agnes:

I mean, I guess…

Robin:

I mean, both seem like situations we can deal with. You know, that we would not change what we do that much, would we?

Agnes:

Yeah, I mean, would it make— Like, suppose you thought… Plato sort of thought this—that all the mathematical knowledge was already in your head, and you were only discovering it, right? He thought that you—

Robin:

Still a lot of work to find! [Laughs]

Agnes:

You saw it in a past life, and then it got erased when you were born, and then, now you’re just recollecting all the mathematical truths. And suppose we had that model of value, that, like… I guess I think that wouldn’t be— I would not find that problematic, the recollection model, so to speak, of valuing. As long as it were, sort of appropriately capacious, right?
So, you know, you might, like, with the mathematical model, I don’t think Plato would countenance a lot of diversity among people as to what their experiences were in a past life of encountering the mathematical truths, right? It’s not like, “Well, here’s my math, and here’s your math,” right? So this idea that you’re discovering what you really value is compatible with a lot of absolutism about what— Maybe we all necessarily value the same things, for instance. It’s possible, right?

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

So yeah, I think as long as we keep that open, then…

Robin:

Maybe we can make this conversation more concrete by talking about what we aspire to. And can we articulate any value changes we want to have happen? Or, as opposed to, sort of, things we can become more refined in understanding our values about?

Agnes:

Yeah. So, who should get— Should I go first? Value change?

Robin:

You get to choose who goes first.

Agnes:

Okay, I’ll go first. And then you have to have one value change you want.

Robin:

Well, I don’t know that I have any value changes I want.

Agnes:

Well, then okay, try and think while I’m talking.
So I think that— So one thing that’s going to be characteristic of an aspirant is being somewhat inarticulate, right? Because the really articulate person…

Robin:

That’s going to be hard for you, Agnes! [Laughs]

Agnes:

The really articulate person is some, you know, is what I call the paragon. That is, the person who’s done aspiring, right? And they have a really good grip, and they can talk about Paris in a really fluid way. Right? Okay. So you should expect me to be inarticulate with respect to this thing that I am an aspirant about.
But the thing I aspire to, is for, sort of, life to be more itself; more interpersonally rationally articulable. And that—it’s a sort of philosophical project, that, in principle, kind of involves everyone. Like, there’s a level on which we interact when we interact philosophically. We’re trying to sort of, like, lay bare whatever it is that we’re doing, and have it be open to view, right? In a kind of truthful way. And… But that’s a thing you can only do with some people, in some circumstances, some of the time. Even if you’re engaging with philosophers. They only want to be, like, a little bit philosophical about some topics; they don’t want to go all the way.
And I think part of that restraint actually comes from the fact that philosophy itself is relegated to, like, a little corner of human life. So, I think if we had— A step in the direction of this aspiration would be, like, more universal, conceptual literacies. Like, if it became a kind of expectation that not only some small bit of the population were conceptually literate, like, with an analogue to literacy about being able to read, right? Then there would be— It would just be possible to have conversations more generally. And that would allow more of your life to be, like, infused with intelligibility. So that’s an aspiration of mine.

Robin:

So I was struck by the fact that, like, ancient cultures often have fewer words in concept spaces we now have more words in. And some of that includes emotions. And so in some literal sense, they couldn’t feel as many emotions as we could, because we have words to describe more different emotions, and therefore, to sort of know that we’re feeling those different things and even share them with other people. And so, I think one of the great benefits of, you know, having a larger world and continuing to grow is that we will get better and better at having vocabulary to describe all sorts of things in our lives. And then we will know ourselves better, and other people better, because we can just more easily notice patterns, and speak them, and communicate them, by having more words. That seems like a great future, but that doesn’t sound to me like an intrinsic value change. It seems like, you know, a way in which we are learning better what we feel. So like, in the past, when we didn’t have as many words for love, for example, if we didn’t, then in some sense—or happiness, perhaps, we couldn’t, like, notice that we were in one version of it versus another. Because we didn’t have a word for that. And now, maybe we could.
But that seems like learning about our feelings. And there’s a sense in which the feelings are different, because we know what they are. And so there’s, you know— Having a vague feeling, and you’re not sure what it is, is a different feeling from having a more specific feeling that you know that you’re having that feeling! In that sense, you’re having a different feeling. But is that a different value?

Agnes:

So, I want to question a few of your premises there. Like, ancient languages, the ones I know have a lot of words—like, Greek has a lot of different words that we all translate them “love.” [Laughs] For instance. And English has an unusually large vocabulary, say, relative to French, or German or whatever. But I don’t think I have any reason to think that, like, English speakers understand their emotions better than the French? I mean, maybe they do. But I don’t— That’s not my experience.
So I’m a little skeptical that this vocabulary difference makes such a big difference. It could, for all I know. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Because I think often when people have a word for something, and they’ve perfectly named it—like, I’m feeling jealous—they still have no idea what jealousy is. They’ve just named it. They’ve named the obscure, right? Naming the obscurity.

Robin:

If you understood the origins of jealousy, is that a change in intrinsic values?

Agnes:

No, because I often think that understanding the origins of something, like, is, you know, you’re understanding a kind of backstory, right?

Robin:

Like where it came from?

Agnes:

Like, Nietzsche gives you this genealogy, right? But then there’s still the question of what it is, right? And so I think it’s like, you know, if you… It’s more like, we can actually talk through the thing, where if you didn’t have the sort of philosophical framework, at a certain point in the talking-through, what your interlocutor would say is, “I just don’t want to talk about this.” Like, just, “This is obvious. Let’s stop talking about it.” Or even well before you got to that point, there would be a kind of social thing, or whatever, where it’s like, this is not the sort of thing that we—we can’t make any progress here with words. And some of it is that there are things about themselves that people don’t want to confront. And I think that often, they don’t want to confront them, because they don’t feel they actually have the conceptual resources to confront them. Like, they don’t feel up to the task of thinking about their own lives.

Robin:

So it sounds to me like you’re saying that, when we understand ourselves better, we, in essence, have different values, because they can be articulated and negotiated and sort of restructured more at will, because we understand. So there’s a sense in which even the same values from some immediate-outcome point of view would be different values when they could be understood and articulated.

Agnes:

So, no, that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that living articulately— So, living in a way where you always feel up to the task of discussing whatever’s going on, is a good way to live. That’s a value.

Robin:

That’s an intrinsic value.

Agnes:

Right. And you should expect, if I’m right about this—and suppose you don’t share this value. So suppose I’m, like, a few steps ahead of you, at least on this valuational trajectory towards this goal, you should expect that it would be hard for you to even get into view what I’m talking about, right? Because I’m sort of almost speaking a different language. And in order to get you to get it into view, I kind of have to, like, pull you into that world a bit.
And so, in this kind of context, you should expect people to use, for instance, metaphors, or whatever. So here’s, like, a way that I would partly explain it. Like, when you’re in a position where you can’t rationally articulate your life, it’s like sleepwalking. So it’s like you’re going through your day, and you’re making a bunch of what you call “decisions,” or having thoughts or conversations, but you don’t actually— There’s kind of not a backing, not a cognitive backing to what you’re doing. And there’s a thing where you could wake up, and you could do all of that stuff, but be awake during it instead of asleep. And that would be really valuable intrinsically.

Robin:

I think I find this topic of our aspirations very fundamental and important. And it’s worth more of us talking to each other more explicitly about what our aspirations are and how we could jointly shape them and form them together. I’m less convinced that it’s about a fundamental change in values. But I don’t see that matters that much. I’m not convinced yet that it matters.

Agnes:

Okay.

Robin:

Whether it’s a change in fundamental values, I just think we should be asking what do we aspire to, and wondering what other people aspire to. And then when we hear, maybe, what other people aspire to, that will give us some ideas about what we could aspire to. And maybe when we say what we aspire to, just hearing ourselves say it will make us realize that’s not what we really aspire to. So it just seems like this is a valuable conversation to have, even if it’s not about some fundamental intrinsic value change.

Agnes:

Right. I mean— There was a time when human beings didn’t have language. Then presumably, there was a time when, like, some of them had language and some of them didn’t. And then there was a later time when, like, you know, there was some amount of literacy, right?

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

And then presumably, there was some time when people were pushing for literacy to be more universal, right? Because there’d been a long period when literacy was confined to, like, a very small elite. Right? And there’s people who are saying, “Look, universal literacy is this big value for us as a society.” Right?

Robin:

Okay.

Agnes:

And new things are going to be possible.

Robin:

And we can all talk!

Agnes:

Exactly.

Robin:

Or we can all read!

Agnes:

But yeah, I’m talking about specifically reading. Literacy, right? Reading and writing. And what I’m saying is, the thing that I’m proposing is a kind of universal conceptual literacy, where I’m saying where— We stand now, with respect to conceptual literacy, the way we stood when reading and writing were confined to an elite, right? And I feel like that’s a pretty radical change.

Robin:

But by conceptual literacy I think you mean, like, understanding your values well enough to talk clearly about them. And so that you can see the correspondence between your actions and these articulated values. That is, you’d like to be able to inspect your values and describe them and still see that they are your values.

Agnes:

Conceptual literacy is much broader than that. So it would include, you know, understanding basic metaphysics, right? Like, where, you know, let’s say metaphysics is divided into, you know, ontology (which things are there), and then kind of metaphysics proper (in what ways can they be), right? So there’s categories, categorization. There’s, like the basic concepts of epistemology, right? And how do we know things, and skepticism, and doubt, and all of that? So there’s basic logic, right? So conceptual literacy is, like, you know, having the foundations for, in all—what I would think of as the areas of philosophy, it’s not only ethics. But— yeah.

Robin:

But you mean, I mean— So what if I was just good at philosophy and everything else, but I didn’t know what my values were? What if I was just, they were very opaque to me, but I’m a perfectly good philosopher and analyst. It’s just, you know, I just can’t see?

Agnes:

Right. And do you imagine saying something like, “What if I can— I know how to read, like, I can perfectly well say the words, but when I read them out loud, like, they have no meaning to me, and I don’t think anything when I see them. And I can sort of read them to other people.” I’m literate, right? And I want to say, “Well, yeah, you haven’t really gotten the benefit of your— In one sense, you’re literate. But in another sense, you haven’t brought them to bear on things that they’re supposed to be brought to bear on.”

Robin:

I think there are many topics in the world that you could just, all else equal, not understand them, even if you’re very literate, and have access to all the concepts in the world, right? I mean, like, there’s a lot about the interior of Jupiter we don’t know, right? And it’s— But we have a lot more we know about Earth. It’s not because of our conceptual literacy about Jupiter that we know less about it, it’s because it’s far away. And there’s things even farther away than Jupiter that we know even less about. So, like, there’s, in addition to sort of our conceptual toolkit, there’s just how much access we have to things to be able to learn about them.
So what if our values are one of those things like the interior of Jupiter? Where it just happens it’s really hard to see!

Agnes:

Yeah, so I think that, in a way, the question of what these conceptual tools are, and what conceptual literacy is, is relative to the question of, what is it that you would need in order to be able to navigate your life by way of thought, right?

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

And conceptual literacy is whatever would be required for that. Now, it’s possible that we simply cannot navigate our lives by way of thought, because our lives— There’s an aspect of our life that is so obscure that my project is impossible. That’s on the table.

Robin:

So this is related to my book, The Elephant in the Brain. Because we sort of draw on this very common conception in cognitive science, which is this idea that our conscious thoughts are just a tiny fraction of all the stuff that’s happening in our brain. So that, you know, the idea is that, you know, most animals never need to speak what they’re doing in language, right?

Agnes:

Mm-hm.

Robin:

They just need to do things. And so most of them just aren’t very aware, very much, of what’s going on in their head. They just know the outcome. They know that they maybe jump right now, or they need to, you know, to dive, or they need to be quiet right now. Right? So most animals, you know, find out from their brain what they need to do in the next moment, and they do it.
But they don’t need that much access to all the machinery behind that to see what’s happening. Humans have this unusual ability and need to, to explain ourselves to each other. And so we do. And that means we’ve needed some degree of access to where our thoughts came from, and where our actions came from. But the claim is that it’s still a pretty shallow, you know, overview compared to all the stuff that’s happening inside the brain.
So we are only recently kind of— You know, have much conscious language ability, and it’s just this add-on that, you know, just is missing a lot. And by design, it’s missing a lot, because in most conversations, we don’t need to know most of the things that are happening deep inside this machine. So, you aspire to a situation where we basically get full access to what’s going on inside the machine…

Agnes:

No, that’s not quite right…

Robin:

…So that we can fully understand our actions and our desires.

Agnes:

Right. So a lot of what the brain is doing is regulating nutritive and vegetative functions that we don’t need access to.

Robin:

That’s not most of it.

Agnes:

Okay, I mean, I don’t know, I’m just saying that there’s some of it that is, like, my digestion.

Robin:

Sure, sure.

Agnes:

I don’t feel any…

Robin:

But I mean, when you choose an action, it’s based on this huge, complicated machinery, which includes all sorts of complicatedly encoded beliefs, and values, and preferences, and everything else. And you see your actions—you see what you’re trying to do. And because you’re a social creature, where other people might challenge you and ask you, “Why did you do that?” You have a limited ability to remember a story about what you were thinking when, related to your actions, and sufficient for the purpose of defending yourself from accusations—or perhaps making accusations about other people—about what they were doing when, and why, and whether they were following the local norms.
So our argument—you know, which is a common argument—that’s what your conscious mind was for. It’s a new thing in evolution…

Agnes:

I like that phrase, “What it was for.” It sounds like a central purpose.

Robin:

Right. But that’s sort of the main evolutionary pressure to produce this conscious mind you have. So, when I’m— In some sense, I’m talking to the Agnes who talks back, but that’s only a tiny fraction of Agnes, there’s this huge other mind inside, who is doing most of the things to tell conscious Agnes what to say next, and what to feel and when to take a sip of water. But she doesn’t get access to most of that. And that, that’s just the nature of being human at the moment.
We’ve often, like, in artificial intelligence, and other, sort of, you know, fields where we try to model minds, we usually try to sort of start out modeling minds as things that have full access to all their parts, because that seemed like a simple general thing to do. And over time, we’ve come to realize that that might be a thing that eventually, machines can do, but it’s not what humans can do. Right? They don’t have full access to all their parts, and therefore they don’t have very full access to why they do things and what they want, then.
But again, they needed to explain themselves to each other. Especially if you’re accused of a norm violation. And many norm violations are in terms of motives. For example, if I accidentally hit you, that’s okay. If I hit you on purpose, that’s not okay. So you need to know why you hit someone. And so, you need to know enough about why you hit someone, in order to explain that you didn’t hit them on purpose. You need to be able to point to particular things about what you did just before or after in the context, or to try to convince them that you weren’t trying to hit them on purpose. But that’s a limited insight into yourself.

Agnes:

Yeah, so, I mean, I already— I agree that we’re not already at the end point. So in that sense, I agree with your book.

Robin:

Which might be a long way away from this.

Agnes:

Yeah, I mean, most, like, things worth doing are hard to do.

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

Another way that I think I agree with your book is that, you know, I see, like, your book as arguing that some of the stories that we tell ourselves about why we do what we do are not consistent, right?

Robin:

Or true!

Agnes:

Right, or true. I mean, but, like, they’re not consistent, because, of course, you’re also telling a story.

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

So the point is, you know, there are these two things, and you want us to privilege yours. But still it’s inconsistent, right? So there’s this data, and that’s part of the story. And then there’s the “What do we say.” Right? So for example, we say that medicine is about health, as I said in an earlier podcast, right? But you say, “Here’s all this evidence I’m going to show you that the medicine isn’t actually, you know, optimizing for health.” We’re spending a lot of money, we’re not getting more health, and we don’t seem to mind, right? So we seem to be doing something else.
Okay. So, now, when you— Your response to this fact that the verbal system, right, the articulate system is inconsistent, is to say that, we should try to change that. But you want to change it at the institutional level, right? So, like, at, you know, broadly, like— That is, you don’t think it’s simply okay. Right? That we’re telling ourselves these… I mean, the point of your book is just to point out that we’re doing this, right? But you’re pointing it out for a reason., not just that it’s entertaining.

Robin:

I certainly think that institutional changes are just more feasible than human nature changes.

Agnes:

Right. So, I mean, I don’t know what you mean— I’m not sure exactly what you mean by human nature changes. But, I mean, you know, literacy, right? That was a big change, and learning language, that’s like a big change.

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

So these are big, big changes. So in the abstract, sort of, we agree that when there are inconsistencies in the stories that we tell about ourselves, something ought to be done. And then there’s a question, how can something be done? And, you know, in effect, like, you might say, “Well, we can’t change human nature.” I might say, “We can’t change only some— We can’t magically change some people who are gonna run the institutions and not change others.”
But the point is that the, you know, a lot of your earlier claims, like, “Well, our conscious mind was for this limited project,” and, you know, it’s consistent with thinking that there’s a kind of improvement that’s possible, right? And I think that, you know, you might think, “Well, we can get to a point where we can speak about ourselves and what we’re doing in a way that’s fully consistent,” where it’s got to also be consistent with the data that we’re taking in, right? Maybe we can get to that point.
And maybe even when we get to that point, there’s gonna be, like, a lot of stuff about ourselves that we don’t know, you know. Our digestion for one thing, but, like, other stuff, too, and I’m fine with that. Like, as long as we can articulate our lives and not feel like we have to shy away from, or shrink back in fear from thinking about certain things? That’s all I ask.
Which is a lot to ask, right? You notice that people shy away from, or shrink back in fear from confronting a lot of the, like, data or argument that you’re bringing forward, right? Which is to say, that’s a kind of situation of rational or cognitive inadequacy. Right? And I think we can live better than that. And that’s the aspiration.

Robin:

So, with all aspirations, broadly conceived, I would say we should, like, put them relative to each other in terms of how ambitious they are, and how wide a scope of cooperation will be required to achieve them, and maybe how long it will take, and how fast we could expect to get them. Right. And I’m happy to endorse grand, long-term and large aspirations, as long as you know that that’s where they sit on the spectrum.
And so, then the issue would be what, you know, are shorter-term, more feasible aspirations that could lead to achieving that longer-term aspiration, but that we might, you know, coordinate better on a path. So the path… The more modest aspiration in your direction that I would suggest is that there should be a community of people, not the whole world, who see themselves as intellectuals, in the best sense of the traditional concept of intellectual, and that these intellectuals should strive to be more honest with themselves than most people are about key aspects of ordinary human motives and behavior.
And that they should push through the discomfort that they might feel—that anyone would feel—confronting these topics, because this is their specialty. This is their role in the world. And that they might be excused for having the usual dishonesty or lack of insight into things that aren’t directly relevant for their contribution to this community. But that a community could form, and identify itself as such, where they’re going to try to be more honest about all these things, and, therefore, be able to articulate better, at least, what everybody is doing and why.
It should be obvious why that would seem more feasible. Rather than trying to get to the world where most everybody is honest about most everything they do, and is able to acknowledge and talk in terms of their actual motives, and which correspond to their actual actions, which is a pretty ambitious goal.
We might want to just see if any community can, at least with respect to each person’s contribution to that community, be honest, at least about the average of humans outside that community. That should be an easier task, but it’s not a task we have yet achieved.

Agnes:

I don’t think it’s easier. So, I think that… So, first of all, I want to say that I don’t think honesty is for me the relevant concept. I’m interested that you’re now such a proponent of honesty after our earlier discussion about honesty as mainly a heuristic, as you see it, as like a good rule of thumb or something.

Robin:

Right. And I’m using it in this context as a good rule of thumb. Yes.

Agnes:

Okay. So these intellectuals, they’re just honest, as a rule of thumb.

Robin:

They’re honest as a useful practice in this community, for this purpose.

Agnes:

Right. But even within the community, it might in a given occasion, be not so useful.

Robin:

Right. Yes, of course. But still the thing this community has committed itself to in this way, right? So my suggestion is that there be a community that commits itself in this way to this sort of thing.

Agnes:

So, I see honesty as a different goal. I think the community should commit itself to the actual goal, not to some subordinate goal. The actual goal is having your life be rationally articulate. And it may be that, like, honesty would be instrumental to that end. But, like, in effect, you could be very honest, but totally self-deceived, for example.

Robin:

Maybe the word “honest” is misleading here. I just mean, you know, you’re talking about a world where most everybody basically knows why they do things, and can articulate why they do things, in terms of their values: that they know what they are, which match their actual actions. That is, you’re talking about a world where people are seeing what they’re doing and why. Okay. And I’m saying, “Well, that’s in a sense what I mean by ‘honestly,’ they are not misreading, or misspeaking, about their actual motives for doing what they do.”

Agnes:

So, it’s mostly about—not about how they judge other people, right?

Robin:

No.

Agnes:

But it’s about how they operate in relation to their own lives?

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

And so I absolutely agree that it would be good for there to be a group of people who, with respect to their own lives, they don’t put up any barriers as to where thought can go. They don’t have this little-walled in part of themselves where they’re, like, I don’t allow thought that…

Robin:

It seems to me, like, what I’m suggesting has to be easier than what you’re suggesting, because you’re suggesting that everybody sort of be, you know, aware of, and acknowledge, at least to themselves, their motives for most everything. And I’m saying, let’s imagine a subset of people instead of everybody. Let’s have them be aware of the motives, not of themselves, but of the average of everybody else. And then have them be aware and talking about that with each other. And that’s a more limited thing to ask of these people. These people are not being asked to be fully aware of themselves.

Agnes:

Yeah. So I think, like, here’s an analogy I would give: Like, suppose you’re, like, “I would like to appreciate art.” Right?

Robin:

Yeah?

Agnes:

I would like to appreciate modern art, which is kind of hard to appreciate.

Robin:

Yeah.

Agnes:

And you’re like, “Well, that’s really hard. So instead of doing that, why don’t we do this: Sit outside the modern art museum, and, like, look at who goes out, and who comes in, and count that, and maybe do, like, a study of who comes out and who goes in and stuff.” And that’s easier than appreciating the art. And it’s like, Yeah, that might be easier. But it’s not at all the thing I was talking about. You’re not apprehending the value…

Robin:

To me, this looks a lot closer to that. That is, once you have a community of people, and they do come to some consensus on outside this community, what typical motives are for most people, for most things—now, we can go to other people and say, “You are probably wrong about your motives. But do you want to know how you could find out about your motives? Well, go listen to what these people have found out about average motive.”
Now, you might be different from average. But this will be big news to you. At least, you will see what the averages are. And even the variance. And now you will know a lot more about your own motives than you did before. But this doesn’t require you looking inside yourself, and discovering great things that might be very hard to do for yourself—that, you know, require more data than you have, or more courage than you have. All you have to do is listen to those people tell you about the average of everybody.

Agnes:

Yeah, so I think I mean…

Robin:

Are we moving toward your goal, at least in that case?

Agnes:

I think that the thing that I want just requires courage, and there’s no way around that.

Robin:

But what if you got part of what you want? Can you get anything less than all of what you want, and have it be valuable?

Agnes:

So this is, I think, actually a really helpful question, because I think it’s distinctive of aspiration, that the— One can, of course, get, like, you know, appreciate something somewhat and not completely. But insofar as there’s an aspirational target, it doesn’t quite break into modules, right? So I think what I would say is, like, “Well, you should try to live in a more rationally articulate way than you did before.” And there are ways of doing that. But it seems to me that studying other people, where you keep yourself safely at bay, and then saying, “I’m probably like them,” and thus, I don’t need to engage in this difficult first-personal thing of, like, hacking my own experiences—that seems to me to be more along the lines of avoidance.

Robin:

But what if all people aren’t that different from the average? Right?

Agnes:

Right. But that could still be true, right? It could be, in fact, that you’re just like the average…

Robin:

What if you can’t stand to see how tall you are? You think you might be a millimeter, you might be a mile, and you just have a mental block to know how tall you are.

Agnes:

Right.

Robin:

And now I tell you the distribution of other people’s heights, so: between four feet and seven feet. That’s it, right? You’re between four feet seven feet, you just—you should assume that. And, you know, that turns out to be right, doesn’t it?

Agnes:

Yeah, I mean, I think—

Robin:

Does that help? I mean, you don’t have to do all this deep, inside-looking-into-yourself at the things you refuse to see. You just, we tell you four to seven feet is about what most people are, so you’re probably in there. And now, much easier. But you do know a new thing about yourself you refused to see before.

Agnes:

Yeah, I mean, will you, you still—

Robin:

Why make it so hard? Why not do it the easy way? Does it have to be so hard?

Agnes:

So I think that, you know, that— I think it’s that really helpful question, because it brings out, like— The value that I’m after isn’t so easily translated into other things that we already value, right? Which shows that it’s genuinely distinctive, intrinsic value. So, we already value, like, knowing lots of facts, right? And you’re like, “Here’s some more facts,” right?

Robin:

Yeah.

Agnes:

And it’s sort of like, it’s sort of— An analogy I would give is, like, say I think we’re all asleep, right? And you’re like, “Yeah, you’re asleep in your dream, but I can put some facts into your dreams,” right? And I’m like— You’re like, “That’s easier! You know, I can sort of—” And I’m like, “No, no, what I want is to wake up.” Right? Now, but that’s really hard. So instead of that, do this other thing.

Robin:

If the reason you wanted to wake up is because you wanted to see reality. So you could do things, then telling you about reality inside the dream may accomplish your goal, right? If you know enough about what’s really happening while you’re in the dream, then it’s less of a dream, isn’t it?

Agnes:

Yeah. And so what you’re saying to me is, if we can take the thing that you put forward as an intrinsic value, and transform it into an instrumental way of achieving something that I have an independent grip on why it’s valuable, then we can actually cut out the middleman! We don’t need that thing. Which is true! If you only wanted to value music in order to impress people, maybe I can find you another way to impress people that’s easier than valuing music. But if what you wanted was to value music, there is no other means to that end, right? And so I want to say, I say, “Well, I have a kind of inchoate grip on this value of living articulately, which is to say, living in a way which is awake. There’s a better mode of living, and it doesn’t need to cash itself out into some other thing any more than music does.”

Robin:

So you’ve heard of lucid dreaming, right?

Agnes:

Mm-hm. Yes, my husband can do this.

Robin:

Okay. I certainly can’t. But I’ve certainly heard of people who say they can, and I believe them. So in a lucid dream, somebody can tell you, “You’re dreaming now.” And then that gives you more control over your dream, right?

Agnes:

Yeah.

Robin:

We’re better able to decide what happens in the dream and to decide that you want to wake up because you don’t like the dream. Right?

Agnes:

Mm-hm.

Robin:

Okay. Well, that seems like a more-awake dream, in the sense that lucid dreaming literally is telling you lucid dreaming is a kind of dreaming that’s more awake.

Agnes:

Yes.

Robin:

Right? And that’s in the direction of being awake. I would think if you have people who are just stuck in being asleep, getting them to lucid dream would be a big improvement.

Agnes:

Absolutely. So I think that…

Robin:

And could be on the path to awakening.

Agnes:

So, I think that— So, a good point that you’re making that’s bad about this dream analogy is that it’s, you know, very much not my model of aspiration, that we suddenly wake up. That there’s some one thing we do—

Robin:

It might be sudden—

Agnes:

It’s a temporally extended process. But what I would say, if I could put, like, “What are the steps that we can take? What are the steps an intellectual can take?” (And we should do another podcast on intellectuals and stuff, what is an intellectual.)
But I think that, you know, maybe more important than anything about being introspective is that you should engage with others inquisitively. And, kind of, in some sense model that mode of rational inquisitiveness, that is always trying to open some area for inquiry. Right? Where that’s going to include being receptive to information, including receptive to information about, like, typically hidden motives, etc.
So that, like… The step, the most important first step, I would say, would be how we treat other people. Like, not how we treat ourselves, and not how much information we collect, though that’s relevant to how we treat other people. But rationality as a mode of interacting with other people.

Robin:

Is it a step along the line to actually see clearly how you are treating people? So that you can treat them better different? If what you want is a way for people to treat each other different, you know, and presumably, one of the obstacles is they don’t notice that they’re treating people the way they are, then just having— Telling them how they are treating people could be helpful in, sort of— Telling them how the average people are treating people could be information about how they’re treating people.

Agnes:

I mean, telling people is already treating them in some way. And it doesn’t sound very inquisitive to me! [Laughs]

Robin:

You’re trying to make it hard again! [Laughs] You know, these people, they don’t know how they’re treating other people, we’re gonna point them to a source and say, “Look at this. This is showing you how people are treating each other. You’re probably like that. So this is how you’re treating people.”

Agnes:

So this is the other side of the waking-up thing, which is that any step… I think there have to be steps, right? Because otherwise you could never achieve anything if there weren’t, like, achievable steps.

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

But it’s also true that every step…

Robin:

Is an average! [Laughs]

Agnes:

…is a microcosm of the whole problem. Right? So, and you’re bringing that out. I think it’s a good point, that, like, to say, “Treat people more inquisitively”—like what does that mean? You would only really know what it meant if you had gotten to the endpoint of this process.

Robin:

So I think we’re nearing the end. So I should meet my end of the promise…

Agnes:

Yes! What’s your aspiration?

Robin:

…of describing to you what I might aspire to. So: First of all, it’s easier for me to describe things I might just want.

Agnes:

Okay.

Robin:

And things I might want in myself. And then, the question here is, do any of them make sense as a change in values? Right?

Agnes:

Right.

Robin:

So, you know, I aspire… I’ve chosen my role in life, primarily to be an intellectual. Chosen to be an intellectual who, like, rolls the dice looking for big wins. Chosen to be an intellectual who tries to, like, know many different areas and find combinations. An intellectual who looks for neglected things that especially are important, and tries to work on those. And, you know, the goal for all of these intellectual insights is that they can pile on together with all other people’s insights in this grand edifice of intellectuals working together to make progress on many topics. And I especially want to make progress on topics that would be valuable to us all, such as better forms of governance, understanding where the future is going, what the big problems might be, what we could do to avoid them, you know, better kinds of criminal law, etc.
So this is my, in general, ambitions, or aspirations in the broader sense. And you might say, “Well, yes, but are there any ways in which my values get in the way of these aspirations, these ambitions?” Right? And so, you know, one obvious way might be just, “Well, I’m not fully committed to this intellectual task,” right? I have my cat, and I watch movies, and I do other things in my life, besides this grand task. And, you know, on some level, I’m okay with that. Right?
But, you know, there must be ways in which I have particular values, even if I can’t see them, that somehow get in the way of this task, right? Maybe I’m a little too proud or something. And then maybe if I were less proud, I would be more cooperative, and other people would work with me better, and quote me better, and all that, you know, and then build on me better. And things like that, right? So I might just want to be aware of, sort of, habits or styles that sort of just get in the way of these goals, right?
And then I might realize, well, for each of those things, I have a preference about it, right? I’m doing them because I like it in some degree, but that— My liking of them isn’t, like, deep. I mean, it’s deep in the sense it’s built deeply inside me, but counterfactually— I don’t mind the counterfactual version of me who doesn’t have them. Right? Like, and so for example, maybe, you know, if I really like chocolate instead of strawberry, and that was a problem because academia didn’t like people who like chocolate (to make a silly example), right? Then I might say, “Well, I might rather that I liked strawberry.” Instead, because the version of Robin who likes strawberries is— seems to me just as admirable a person, to like his life just as much, and all those things, right? So yeah, he should prefer strawberry, right?
And so that would be a way in which I might aspire to change values. It’s just, you know, I have my main values. And then I have many other values. And then I trade them off. And some of the other values are incidental. I mean, they’re there, they’re real—I mean, if I like chocolate, I really like chocolate. But if I could somehow like chocolate less, then, okay.
So it’s related to, you know, I had a blog post a long time ago about, like, having a budget of weirdness. (I think you may have even read it or something.) Basically, many people are just tempted to be weird in a lot of different ways. And often that’s a problem, because, you know, people shy away from weirdness. And I might say, “Well, you know, pick where— your areas of weirdness, and in the other areas, like, don’t be so weird!” Like, so for example, for clothes. For me, like, I don’t look at myself much, I don’t actually care that much about what my clothes look like. If my clothes are getting in somebody else’s way, or my length of my hair, or something like that, fine! I will compromise. I will conform on aspects of myself that aren’t very important to me that are, apparently, you know, problem things that get in other people’s way. And so, you know, I am weird in many ways. But honestly, on most dimensions in life, I’m not weird. And that seems roughly right.

Agnes:

So I think that, I have to say one thing in response to that. You know, when you are… The way that an aspirational project, I think, often works, is you think there’s a little something there, a little, some value that you haven’t yet appreciated, right? You have— The value that is out there seems to sort of outstrip your current ability to appreciate, so you’re trying to get it, and you might just think there’s, like, a little.

Robin:

Yeah?

Agnes:

And then the more you go, the more you realize, like, actually, there’s a lot here, you know? It’s this huge, enormous space. Like, but in effect, you actually need to be a little more advanced in aspiration, in order just to see how big the thing is, right?

Robin:

Okay, sure.

Agnes:

So, like, when I first sort of aspired to be philosophical, like, I had this sense of, like, well, it was, like, being able to argue. Being better at debate than I was, you know? And being able to quote lots of philosophers, or whatever. And it’s like, over time, my conception of what philosophy is has, like, deepened a lot. And I’m able to see how much more there is, better, as I go further along. So similarly, with your flaws, right? The things that are inhibiting you, sort of distracting you or inhibiting you from achieving your grander aspirations, it may be that, like—

Robin:

So I’m working on it! [Laughs]

Agnes:

—At the beginning, it seems like a tiny thing, like strawberry. But it may be that there’s— You have some, like, profound fears or profound—

Robin:

Obviously, could be. Sure.

Agnes:

And so at the beginning is when it looks tiny, right? When you haven’t started yet.

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

That’s just a warning. [Laughs]

Robin:

Absolutely. So any of the ways in which any things you’re not paying attention to, and then you turn to pay attention to, quite often you find there’s a lot more to it than you were realizing when you weren’t paying much attention to it. Like, a lot of things have a lot of detail. Absolutely.

Agnes:

Okay, we should stop there.

Robin:

All right.