I’m not entirely clear as to whether you are applying the INT/neglectedness, solvability and scale framework to dignity as a fundamental value or to dignity-promotion as a cause area for EA (according to EA values, however we determine them).
The INT framework is usually applied as a heuristic for broad cause area selection and I don’t think it works well as a heuristic for determining fundamental values. Things which are valuable are fundamentally valuable even if they are not neglected and estimating their Importance/Scale seems crucially to depend on whether and how far they are fundamentally valuable, even if they affect lots of people. Maybe it would be helpful to think more about which potential values are neglected or likely to be more or less tractable to satisfy, in order to determine whether we should dedicate more resources to trying to satisfy them, but I don’t think just quickly running through the INT heuristic will be that informative.[^1]
If it’s applied to the idea of dignity-promotion as a cause area (according to EA values), then it seems like we should judge it based on all our values (which for many EAs will largely determined by how well it promotes welfare, with small amounts of weight given to other values, such as dignity itself). It’s not so clear that promoting-dignity performs well in those terms.
[^1] For example, I think that many minority/peripheral values that we could think up would be highly neglected, affect a lot of people, and be tractable, but this doesn’t tell us much about their moral importance.
This is a fair point. I’ve treated dignity as equivalent to a cause area here, but that’s not really what it is. I think in part I’m borrowing INT because I’m not sure how philosophers make arguments over fundamental values—the empiricist in me wants to root it in some sort of popularity/preferences survey. There’s definitely an unresolved tension in my thinking between regarding dignity as an end, and regarding it as a promising strategy for promoting welfare.
It’s something I’ll do some reading on, but if anyone has recommendations for reading on how philosophers arrive at understandings of fundamental values, I’d love to read them.
I’m not entirely clear as to whether you are applying the INT/neglectedness, solvability and scale framework to dignity as a fundamental value or to dignity-promotion as a cause area for EA (according to EA values, however we determine them).
The INT framework is usually applied as a heuristic for broad cause area selection and I don’t think it works well as a heuristic for determining fundamental values. Things which are valuable are fundamentally valuable even if they are not neglected and estimating their Importance/Scale seems crucially to depend on whether and how far they are fundamentally valuable, even if they affect lots of people. Maybe it would be helpful to think more about which potential values are neglected or likely to be more or less tractable to satisfy, in order to determine whether we should dedicate more resources to trying to satisfy them, but I don’t think just quickly running through the INT heuristic will be that informative.[^1]
If it’s applied to the idea of dignity-promotion as a cause area (according to EA values), then it seems like we should judge it based on all our values (which for many EAs will largely determined by how well it promotes welfare, with small amounts of weight given to other values, such as dignity itself). It’s not so clear that promoting-dignity performs well in those terms.
[^1] For example, I think that many minority/peripheral values that we could think up would be highly neglected, affect a lot of people, and be tractable, but this doesn’t tell us much about their moral importance.
This is a fair point. I’ve treated dignity as equivalent to a cause area here, but that’s not really what it is. I think in part I’m borrowing INT because I’m not sure how philosophers make arguments over fundamental values—the empiricist in me wants to root it in some sort of popularity/preferences survey. There’s definitely an unresolved tension in my thinking between regarding dignity as an end, and regarding it as a promising strategy for promoting welfare.
It’s something I’ll do some reading on, but if anyone has recommendations for reading on how philosophers arrive at understandings of fundamental values, I’d love to read them.