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Dagon comments on Ethicality of Denying Agency - Less Wrong Discussion

9 Post author: pwno 07 July 2014 05:40AM

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Comment author: Dagon 07 July 2014 07:57:50AM 3 points [-]

I find the word "agency" in this to be a bit confusing. In none of these cases are you preventing someone from expressing desires or from making decisions. You are failing to provide (and in some cases thwarting) those desires, but it doesn't seem to be denying that they're thinking/feeling beings.

I'm pretty sure my confusion comes from a lack of understanding of the interaction model behind the idea of "agency" as something external. IMO, making decisions and experiencing the consequences is not a right that's given, but just the state of the universe as experienced by agents. Lack of cooperation or outright opposition doesn't deny one the ability and necessity to decide how to act.

tl;dr: failure to support someone's preferences is not denying their agency.

Comment author: MugaSofer 07 July 2014 06:02:44PM 1 point [-]

Would replacing "agency" with "control" make sense to you? That's roughly how I interpreted it.