(a) Generally agree that merely comparative harms shouldn't bother us. (b) However, on the specific matter of creation of lives - apologies for beating the same drum again, but I really depends on meta-ethics. I made the same point in the article on Don't Valorize the Void, but basically: If welfare is good because (and only because) we …
(a) Generally agree that merely comparative harms shouldn't bother us.
(b) However, on the specific matter of creation of lives - apologies for beating the same drum again, but I really depends on meta-ethics. I made the same point in the article on Don't Valorize the Void, but basically: If welfare is good because (and only because) we as individuals care about our welfare (Premise C) then things being good requires actual people (whether past/present/future) to exist in the first place - otherwise there is no source of value, and no basis on which to judge what is good and what is not.
The main arguments for Premise C I've made before, so won't rehash them so much as append them as an annex below for anyone who wants to consider them. One other interesting consideration however, is what you can call the Harry Potter Argument.
(Premise 1: Totalist View) The interests of merely contingent people (specifically, people whose existence is contingent on us choosing to create them, vs them existing anyway) matter.
(Premise 2: Non-Experiential Interests/Preferences) People have non-experiential welfare interests/preference. For example, an author might reasonably want his book to have success even after his death; or someone might want their partner to remain faithful even if the infidelity is something they will never know about (or in more extreme cases, have a preference that they/their partner not remarry after one partner's death, on the basis that this is more romantic & better honours the concept of love). I don't believe any of this is too controversial, for those of us who reject hedonism - there's no reason why what we care about has to overlap only with the class of things that affect what we experience.
(Conclusion: Implausible Result) But if the interests of merely contingent people matter, and these people have non-experiential interests, then the non-experiential interests of merely contingent people matter, and we would have reason to advance them, even in the sub-set of cases where *these merely contingent people end up not existing at all*. For example, if a merely contingent person (call him Harry Potter) would - if he existed - would end up marrying a non-contingent real person (call her Ginny Weasley). Harry has a selfish and strong preference that Ginny not marry anyone else after he is dead - and this also extends to having a preference that she not marry anyone else even if he never existed at all. If we took the whole argument seriously, we would have to say that real person Ginny would have at least *some* pro tanto reason not to marry, based on the wishes of a merely hypothetical person - and this, I advance, is implausible.
----- Annex: Main Arguments for Premise C -----
In any case, the main arguments for Premise C are two-fold:
(1) At a positive level, we do obviously care about our own lives/freedom/happiness/etc, and as a result these things are good (possess ought-to-be-ness, have reason for existence, whatever). And if you take a step back, and asked what would happen if you didn't care about these things, there *doesn't seem to be any reason for the universe to care* - there doesn't appear to be any reason separate from your caring for these things to matter.
(2) It would be an extremely implausibly metaphysical coincidence that our welfare just happens to be good from the point of view of the universe, separately from us caring about it. For the sake of argument, consider that there metaphysically could be a planet of anti-humans - with the residents here telically desiring the anti-welfare of humans (i.e. that we die, are made slaves, are unhappy etc), and have the same pro-attitudes towards the inverse of the things we have pro-attitudes to. And it's just hard to justify why we would be cosmically right and them cosmically wrong - why it just happens that the stuff we value (and not the stuff the anti-humans value) is what the universe also values in the Mackie/Platonic sense. In other words, debunking arguments are compelling, unless you have Premise C and some sort a meta-ethical view that links valuation to objective value in a way that (a) avoids the coincidence, and (b) still gets you a sufficiently strong sense of mind-independence as to defeat the radical moral sceptic who keeps asking why we should care about others
You previously raised the issue of the problem of temporary depressives, but (i) most people will have the most plausible desire-based theories of welfare be global/life-cycle (i.e. what does X person, as a chain-of-continuous-consciousness, intrinsically want?). That is to say, from the perspective of who we are over time, XYZ things matter, and normal human blips from depression/fatigue/etc, don't change what these XYZ things are. Moreover, this gets around logical issues like there being infinitely many people at t1, t1.5, 1.25 etc, wanting the same thing Y, such that Y has infinite value.
(ii) I'm not even certain that it makes sense to say that a depressed person doesn't want to be happy. They may not see the meaning of life, because life isn't happy - that doesn't mean they don't see the value of happiness. If you asked any depressed person if they would press a button that would make them magically happy, they would! The upshot is that this wouldn't be a fair/useful intuition pump
The Harry Potter argument is confused. People only have well-being levels when they exist. Fulfiling the hypothetical desires of a hypothetical person doesn't actually do anyone any good: no person newly has positive well-being as a result. By contrast, bringing a happy person into existence *does* do some good (the created person now has positive well-being that they otherwise would not have had). These are not the same.
(a) Generally agree that merely comparative harms shouldn't bother us.
(b) However, on the specific matter of creation of lives - apologies for beating the same drum again, but I really depends on meta-ethics. I made the same point in the article on Don't Valorize the Void, but basically: If welfare is good because (and only because) we as individuals care about our welfare (Premise C) then things being good requires actual people (whether past/present/future) to exist in the first place - otherwise there is no source of value, and no basis on which to judge what is good and what is not.
The main arguments for Premise C I've made before, so won't rehash them so much as append them as an annex below for anyone who wants to consider them. One other interesting consideration however, is what you can call the Harry Potter Argument.
(Premise 1: Totalist View) The interests of merely contingent people (specifically, people whose existence is contingent on us choosing to create them, vs them existing anyway) matter.
(Premise 2: Non-Experiential Interests/Preferences) People have non-experiential welfare interests/preference. For example, an author might reasonably want his book to have success even after his death; or someone might want their partner to remain faithful even if the infidelity is something they will never know about (or in more extreme cases, have a preference that they/their partner not remarry after one partner's death, on the basis that this is more romantic & better honours the concept of love). I don't believe any of this is too controversial, for those of us who reject hedonism - there's no reason why what we care about has to overlap only with the class of things that affect what we experience.
(Conclusion: Implausible Result) But if the interests of merely contingent people matter, and these people have non-experiential interests, then the non-experiential interests of merely contingent people matter, and we would have reason to advance them, even in the sub-set of cases where *these merely contingent people end up not existing at all*. For example, if a merely contingent person (call him Harry Potter) would - if he existed - would end up marrying a non-contingent real person (call her Ginny Weasley). Harry has a selfish and strong preference that Ginny not marry anyone else after he is dead - and this also extends to having a preference that she not marry anyone else even if he never existed at all. If we took the whole argument seriously, we would have to say that real person Ginny would have at least *some* pro tanto reason not to marry, based on the wishes of a merely hypothetical person - and this, I advance, is implausible.
----- Annex: Main Arguments for Premise C -----
In any case, the main arguments for Premise C are two-fold:
(1) At a positive level, we do obviously care about our own lives/freedom/happiness/etc, and as a result these things are good (possess ought-to-be-ness, have reason for existence, whatever). And if you take a step back, and asked what would happen if you didn't care about these things, there *doesn't seem to be any reason for the universe to care* - there doesn't appear to be any reason separate from your caring for these things to matter.
(2) It would be an extremely implausibly metaphysical coincidence that our welfare just happens to be good from the point of view of the universe, separately from us caring about it. For the sake of argument, consider that there metaphysically could be a planet of anti-humans - with the residents here telically desiring the anti-welfare of humans (i.e. that we die, are made slaves, are unhappy etc), and have the same pro-attitudes towards the inverse of the things we have pro-attitudes to. And it's just hard to justify why we would be cosmically right and them cosmically wrong - why it just happens that the stuff we value (and not the stuff the anti-humans value) is what the universe also values in the Mackie/Platonic sense. In other words, debunking arguments are compelling, unless you have Premise C and some sort a meta-ethical view that links valuation to objective value in a way that (a) avoids the coincidence, and (b) still gets you a sufficiently strong sense of mind-independence as to defeat the radical moral sceptic who keeps asking why we should care about others
You previously raised the issue of the problem of temporary depressives, but (i) most people will have the most plausible desire-based theories of welfare be global/life-cycle (i.e. what does X person, as a chain-of-continuous-consciousness, intrinsically want?). That is to say, from the perspective of who we are over time, XYZ things matter, and normal human blips from depression/fatigue/etc, don't change what these XYZ things are. Moreover, this gets around logical issues like there being infinitely many people at t1, t1.5, 1.25 etc, wanting the same thing Y, such that Y has infinite value.
(ii) I'm not even certain that it makes sense to say that a depressed person doesn't want to be happy. They may not see the meaning of life, because life isn't happy - that doesn't mean they don't see the value of happiness. If you asked any depressed person if they would press a button that would make them magically happy, they would! The upshot is that this wouldn't be a fair/useful intuition pump
The Harry Potter argument is confused. People only have well-being levels when they exist. Fulfiling the hypothetical desires of a hypothetical person doesn't actually do anyone any good: no person newly has positive well-being as a result. By contrast, bringing a happy person into existence *does* do some good (the created person now has positive well-being that they otherwise would not have had). These are not the same.