A Response to Self Worth as Instrumental Value.

In a response to an article on here titled “Can my self worth compare to my instrumental value?”, an interesting response that is deserving publication was immediately initiated towards it, read as follows.

This definitely resonates with me, and is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, as I wrestle with my feelings around recreational activities and free time. I’m not sure if what follows is exactly an answer to your question, but here’s where I’m at in thinking about this problem.

I think one thing it’s very important to keep in mind is that, in utilitarianism (or any kind of welfarist consequentialism) your subjective wellbeing is of fundamental intrinsic value. Your happiness is deeply good, and your suffering is deeply bad, regardless of whatever other consequences your actions have in the world. That means that however much good you do in the world, it is better if you are happy as you do it.

Now, the problem, as your post makes clear, is that everyone else’s subjective wellbeing is also profoundly valuable, in a way that is commensurate with your wellbeing and can be traded off against it. And, since your actions can affect the wellbeing of many other people, that indirect value can outweigh the direct value of your own wellbeing. This is the fundamental demandingness of consequentialist morality that so many people struggle with. Still, I find it helpful to remember that the same reasoning that makes other people so valuable also makes me valuable, in a deep and fundamental and moral way.

Turning, to instrumental value, I have two things to say. The first is about instrumental value in general, and the second is about the specific instrumental value of self-kindness.

The first thing I want to say is that almost everything I value I value instrumentally, and that fact does not make the value of those things less real, or less important. I care a great deal about freedom and civil liberties and democracy, and would pay high costs to protect those things, even though I only value them instrumentally, as ways to create more happiness and less suffering. I hate racism and speciesism and sickness and ageing, not because they are intrinsically bad in themselves, but because they are the source of so much suffering and foregone happiness. For some reason, we tend to view other things’ instrumental value as deeply important, and our own instrumental value as a kind of half-real consolation prize. I think this is a tragic error.

Secondly, with regard to our own instrumental value, most people tend to significantly underestimate just how instrumentally valuable their mental health is. In my experience, when people think and talk about the instrumental value of their own wellbeing, they seem to have in mind about some kind of relaxation reserve that it’s important to keep full in order to avoid burnout. I think something like this is probably true, but I also think that there’s much deeper and broader instrumental value in being kind to yourself.

My ideas here aren’t fully developed, but I think there’s something toxic about too much self-abnegation, that whittles away at one’s self-esteem and courage and enthusiasm and instinctive kindness toward others. At least for me, self-denial and guilt push me towards a timid and satisficing mindset, where I do what is required to not feel bad about myself and don’t envision or reach out for higher achievements. It also makes me less instinctively kind to others, which has a lot of compounding bad effects on my impact, and also makes it harder for me to see and embrace new and different opportunities for doing good.

I’m still thinking through this shift in how I think about the instrumental value of my own wellbeing, but I think it has some pretty important consequences. Compared to the reserve-of-wellbeing model, it seems to militate in favour of being more generous to myself with my free time, less focused on self-optimisation insofar as that feels burdensome, and more focused on self-motivation through rewards rather than threats of self-punishment. How exactly this kind of thinking cashes out into lifestyle choices probably varies a lot from person to person; my main goal here is to illustrate how one’s conception of one’s instrumental value should be broader and deeper than just “if I don’t relax sometimes I’ll burn out”.

In summary:

The same thing that makes it important to work for the wellbeing of others also makes you deeply and intrinsically valuable – to me, to others here, and hopefully also to yourself.
The instrumental value of your wellbeing is also deeply important, not merely some kind of second prize. Think about how you think about other things that you value a lot instrumentally, and compare how you think about your own instrumental value: are they the same?
The variety and scale of the effects of your wellbeing on your impact are probably greater than you think: your wellbeing isn’t just instrumentally valuable, it’s very very instrumentally valuable, in all kinds of hard-to-quantify ways.
Even if, at some point in the future, your wellbeing no longer has much instrumental value, you will still be just as intrinsically valuable as you are now: which is to say, very. The thing that makes you value the other sentient beings whose wellbeing you strive for will still apply to you: as long as you exist, you are important.

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