Amanda Askell has interesting thoughts suggestive of using “care” to have a counterfactual meaning. She suggests we think of care as what you would have cared about if you were in a context such that this was a thing you could potentially change.
In a way, the distinction is between people who think about “care” in terms of rank “oh, that isn’t the thing I most care about” and those who care in terms of absolutes “oh, I think the moral value of this is positive.” further complicated by the fact some people are thinking in expected value of action and others are thinking absolute value of the object the action affects.
Semantically, if we think it is a good idea to “expand our circle of care” we should probably adopt “care” to mean the counterfactual meaning, as that broadens the scope of things we can truthfully claim to care about.
Amanda Askell has interesting thoughts suggestive of using “care” to have a counterfactual meaning. She suggests we think of care as what you would have cared about if you were in a context such that this was a thing you could potentially change. In a way, the distinction is between people who think about “care” in terms of rank “oh, that isn’t the thing I most care about” and those who care in terms of absolutes “oh, I think the moral value of this is positive.” further complicated by the fact some people are thinking in expected value of action and others are thinking absolute value of the object the action affects.
Semantically, if we think it is a good idea to “expand our circle of care” we should probably adopt “care” to mean the counterfactual meaning, as that broadens the scope of things we can truthfully claim to care about.