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TheOtherDave comments on If epistemic and instrumental rationality strongly conflict - Less Wrong
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It seems to follow from this line of reasoning that after evolving in a complex environment, I should expect to be constructed in such a way as to care about different things at different times in different contexts, and to consider what I care about at any given moment to be the thing I "really" care about, even if I can remember behaving in ways that are inconsistent with caring about it.
Which certainly seems consistent with my observations of myself.
It also seems to imply that statements like "I actually care about truth" are at best approximate averages, similar to "Americans like hamburgers."
Other possibilities:
Can you clarify how one might tell the difference between caring about different things at different times in different contexts, and caring about lots of different things that change in salience as per my situation? I agree with you that the latter is just as likely, but I also can't imagine a way of telling the two apart, and I'm not entirely convinced that they aren't just two labels for the same thing.
Similar things are true about having akrasia based on context vs. having how much I care about things change based on context.
I think that the fact that people exhibit prudence is evidence for caring about many things that change in salience. For instance, if I'm driving home from work and I think "I need groceries, but I'm really tired and don't want to go to the grocery story," there's a good chance I''ll make myself go anyway. That's because I know that even if my tiredness is far more salient now, I know that having food in my pantry will be salient in the future.
I suppose you could model prudence as caring about different things in different contexts, but you'd need to add that you nearly always care about ensuring a high future preference satisfaction state on top of whatever you're caring about at the moment.
I'm not exactly sure I follow you here, but I certainly agree that we can care about more than one thing at a time (e.g., expectation of future food and expectation of future sleep) and weigh those competing preferences against one another.