>> If welfare is good because (and only because) we as individuals care about our welfare (call this 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.
>> It would be an ex…
>> If welfare is good because (and only because) we as individuals care about our welfare (call this 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.
>> 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.
Yeah, this is the basic intuition that seems so compelling to me; I am not a moral realist, and TBH, I don't find your version of "intrinsically valuable" for non-moral-realists very compelling; but I think your example above points out that consistency might require me to assign value to the void in a certain way to be in accordance with what human beings actually currently value.
And while I think there's room to get around this, most of the avenues for doing so open the door to other things we disvalue based on our current value system being re-ranked as well.
My intuition is something like, in a world without humans, there would be no humans to be unhappy about that, so who cares? But this is basically the same as, in a world with anti-humans, anti-humans would be the measure of goodness, so who cares? And while I think that is very plausible, I still feel *we shouldn't create a world full of anti-humans*--because it conflicts with my values *now*. I don't have that feeling for *we shouldn't create a world devoid of people*, but I think on a first glance, at least, it's not clear why I should treat these cases differently.
>> If welfare is good because (and only because) we as individuals care about our welfare (call this 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.
>> 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.
Yeah, this is the basic intuition that seems so compelling to me; I am not a moral realist, and TBH, I don't find your version of "intrinsically valuable" for non-moral-realists very compelling; but I think your example above points out that consistency might require me to assign value to the void in a certain way to be in accordance with what human beings actually currently value.
And while I think there's room to get around this, most of the avenues for doing so open the door to other things we disvalue based on our current value system being re-ranked as well.
My intuition is something like, in a world without humans, there would be no humans to be unhappy about that, so who cares? But this is basically the same as, in a world with anti-humans, anti-humans would be the measure of goodness, so who cares? And while I think that is very plausible, I still feel *we shouldn't create a world full of anti-humans*--because it conflicts with my values *now*. I don't have that feeling for *we shouldn't create a world devoid of people*, but I think on a first glance, at least, it's not clear why I should treat these cases differently.