I think even your last point will depend on the particular view. I think most "wide" views, as I understand that term, would endorse the 2X awesome lives, because you get X times the difference between the average awesome life and the average mediocre life, which counts a lot, and the extra X awesome lives don't count against, assuming t…
I think even your last point will depend on the particular view. I think most "wide" views, as I understand that term, would endorse the 2X awesome lives, because you get X times the difference between the average awesome life and the average mediocre life, which counts a lot, and the extra X awesome lives don't count against, assuming they're not worse than nothing (or if the awesome lives are bad, assuming they don't count much against, e.g. if the difference between an awesome life and a mediocre one is larger than the overall badness of an awesome life relative to nonexistence). I think Meacham's "Person-affecting views and saturating counterpart relations", Thomas, 2022's wide asymmetric views (both soft and hard), Frick's views and appropriately modified wide versions of actualism would endorse the 2X for these reasons, at least in a pairwise comparison. Even negative utilitarian views could endorse the 2X, assuming the 2X awesome lives have less bads in them than the X mediocre lives, but in principle awesome lives could have more bads than mediocre ones, even significantly more, as long as there are enough offsetting or outweighing goods.
I was assuming that the extra X lives would generate a lot of additional "incomparability" (as in Johan Gustafsson's discussions of "undistinguishedness"); but fair point that it may depend on the details of the view.
Gustafsson, J. (2020). Population axiology and the possibility of a fourth category of absolute value. Economics & Philosophy, 36: 81–110. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266267119000087
I think even your last point will depend on the particular view. I think most "wide" views, as I understand that term, would endorse the 2X awesome lives, because you get X times the difference between the average awesome life and the average mediocre life, which counts a lot, and the extra X awesome lives don't count against, assuming they're not worse than nothing (or if the awesome lives are bad, assuming they don't count much against, e.g. if the difference between an awesome life and a mediocre one is larger than the overall badness of an awesome life relative to nonexistence). I think Meacham's "Person-affecting views and saturating counterpart relations", Thomas, 2022's wide asymmetric views (both soft and hard), Frick's views and appropriately modified wide versions of actualism would endorse the 2X for these reasons, at least in a pairwise comparison. Even negative utilitarian views could endorse the 2X, assuming the 2X awesome lives have less bads in them than the X mediocre lives, but in principle awesome lives could have more bads than mediocre ones, even significantly more, as long as there are enough offsetting or outweighing goods.
Thomas, T. (2022). The Asymmetry, Uncertainty, and the Long Term. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/phpr.12927
I was assuming that the extra X lives would generate a lot of additional "incomparability" (as in Johan Gustafsson's discussions of "undistinguishedness"); but fair point that it may depend on the details of the view.
Gustafsson, J. (2020). Population axiology and the possibility of a fourth category of absolute value. Economics & Philosophy, 36: 81–110. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266267119000087