Hmm, well I'm trying to get at the deeper issue that it sure seems like we should want what's best for Adam, rather than having weird conditional desires (only wanting Adam to have a good life conditional on him -- or perhaps someone else in the imagined scenario -- *already* wanting this). So it's getting at the deep question of what's…
Hmm, well I'm trying to get at the deeper issue that it sure seems like we should want what's best for Adam, rather than having weird conditional desires (only wanting Adam to have a good life conditional on him -- or perhaps someone else in the imagined scenario -- *already* wanting this). So it's getting at the deep question of what's worth caring about, rather than any superficial intuition about what act-types just "seem wrong" or whatever.
To help confirm this, we can cut the agent's act of suicide (which some might find distracting) out of the picture. Suppose Adam dies from natural causes -- he's struck by lightning. This didn't thwart any of Adam's actual desires. But if he hadn't died right then, he would've quickly gotten over his depression and had a very happy future. Is it bad that Adam died? Should you regret this? I say "yes, obviously!" But C denies this. So we should reject C as incompatible with decent values.
I'm still not sure I see it; you can regret this without giving up C as long as you think the reason to regret it is that it will make his family sad or whatever. It's also not clear to me if "temporary" is meant to be understood in the sense that he was previously not depressed, and then became depressed--if so, then I think there is also probably some complicated thing about how to evaluate an individual's intertemporal preferences that makes C more complicated, but is the sort of thing all utilitarians have to deal with to some extent.
You can still probably clean it up to sharpen the point: Adam has no friends or family, has been miserable and unhappy his whole life, and is suddenly killed painlessly--but in all possible worlds where he doesn't die at this point, his life becomes happy and joyful immediately after (perhaps the near-death experience makes him realize that life is precious?)
I think a version like this is more convincing, although one might argue that we are implicitly imputing to Adam some sort of meta-preference (he wishes he *could* be happy enough to value his welfare?) that might be affecting our judgement, and the violation of those meta-preferences triggers C.
If you stipulate that even an "It's a Wonderful Life"-style vision of his happy future wouldn't change his mind, then, though I agree that I would probably still regret his death, it would be harder for me to argue that this isn't just due to my preferences, rather than a considered judgement about values.
Right, flesh out the details as needed. If it's just an arbitrary personal preference on your part to have Adam go on to have a happy life, then you'd seem committed to not judging anyone who happens to have a different preference about the case. But it doesn't seem (to me at least) *optional* to regard Adam's death here as a bad thing. Indifference towards his death (a death which makes him *worse off than he otherwise would have been*) seems objectionably callous, and a failure to appropriately value him as a person.
To bring this out more clearly, suppose that Adam's parents come to fully believe C, and so do not care *specifically for Adam's sake* that he died and missed out on a wonderful future. (Maybe they care for other reasons, but bracket that.) That would seem messed up. They aren't valuing Adam in the right kind of way -- and neither does anyone else who accepts C.
I general, I think it's a kind of philosophical error to let metaphysical qualms dictate your values. I don't think anyone would find C plausible except for feeling like they somehow *have* to affirm something like this in order to qualify as a naturalist in good standing (or some such). But really there's a kind of is/ought error happening here, and you don't need to rely on a "point of view of the universe" in order to non-instrumentally and unconditionally value others' well-being. Confused talk about the "sources of value" unfortunately has the effect of muddying this basic point, and misleading people into thinking that they have no choice but to constrain their values to accord with some form of normative subjectivism. But it's not true: you really can value whatever you want (or whatever most plausibly matters)! If you're not a realist, there's no outside force to tell you you're wrong. And if you are a realist, you should think the substantively plausible values are more likely to be correct. In neither case should you feel compelled by normative subjectivism. It's a philosophical trap.
> If it's just an arbitrary personal preference on your part to have Adam go on to have a happy life, then you'd seem committed to not judging anyone who happens to have a different preference about the case. But it doesn't seem (to me at least) *optional* to regard Adam's death here as a bad thing.
I don't think it's *arbitrary*; it's formed from the observation that in the vast majority of cases it will in fact be wrong for people to die suddenly, and blah blah blah. And I don't feel committed to judging those who feel differently; in particular, if *Adam himself* feels differently, then I don't see what grounds I have to disagree with him.
>> They aren't valuing Adam in the right kind of way -- and neither does anyone else who accepts C.
I'm not sure why they aren't: it seems to me that part of valuing other people is deferring to their judgement on what it is that would count as a valuable life for them; if their judgement is that no such life would count, then we should take them at their word.
I think part of the issue is that it's very hard to imagine that Adam's judgement is sound; maybe his depression is clouding him from imagining what a happy life might look like--and I think that's a very reasonable concern!
What's more, I think it's very difficult to conceive of how Adam could be instantaneously 100% cured of his depression and go on to live a life of joy if the capacity for that joy weren't somehow latent in him already; the very formulation of the scenario seems to be pushing on us the implicit meta-preference I mentioned before: if, within an instant, he is capable of being completely turned around, there must already be some part of him that *wants* to be turned around, and so we can't take at face value the idea that the depressive part of him is speaking on behalf of "all of him".
I even think it's very plausible that it is just a fact of human psychology, evolutionarily driven into us, that *all* human beings will always have *some* part of us that wants to keep living, and so on...in which case, no actual human being could ever be in an Adam-like position without triggering C.
Hmm, well I'm trying to get at the deeper issue that it sure seems like we should want what's best for Adam, rather than having weird conditional desires (only wanting Adam to have a good life conditional on him -- or perhaps someone else in the imagined scenario -- *already* wanting this). So it's getting at the deep question of what's worth caring about, rather than any superficial intuition about what act-types just "seem wrong" or whatever.
To help confirm this, we can cut the agent's act of suicide (which some might find distracting) out of the picture. Suppose Adam dies from natural causes -- he's struck by lightning. This didn't thwart any of Adam's actual desires. But if he hadn't died right then, he would've quickly gotten over his depression and had a very happy future. Is it bad that Adam died? Should you regret this? I say "yes, obviously!" But C denies this. So we should reject C as incompatible with decent values.
I'm still not sure I see it; you can regret this without giving up C as long as you think the reason to regret it is that it will make his family sad or whatever. It's also not clear to me if "temporary" is meant to be understood in the sense that he was previously not depressed, and then became depressed--if so, then I think there is also probably some complicated thing about how to evaluate an individual's intertemporal preferences that makes C more complicated, but is the sort of thing all utilitarians have to deal with to some extent.
You can still probably clean it up to sharpen the point: Adam has no friends or family, has been miserable and unhappy his whole life, and is suddenly killed painlessly--but in all possible worlds where he doesn't die at this point, his life becomes happy and joyful immediately after (perhaps the near-death experience makes him realize that life is precious?)
I think a version like this is more convincing, although one might argue that we are implicitly imputing to Adam some sort of meta-preference (he wishes he *could* be happy enough to value his welfare?) that might be affecting our judgement, and the violation of those meta-preferences triggers C.
If you stipulate that even an "It's a Wonderful Life"-style vision of his happy future wouldn't change his mind, then, though I agree that I would probably still regret his death, it would be harder for me to argue that this isn't just due to my preferences, rather than a considered judgement about values.
Right, flesh out the details as needed. If it's just an arbitrary personal preference on your part to have Adam go on to have a happy life, then you'd seem committed to not judging anyone who happens to have a different preference about the case. But it doesn't seem (to me at least) *optional* to regard Adam's death here as a bad thing. Indifference towards his death (a death which makes him *worse off than he otherwise would have been*) seems objectionably callous, and a failure to appropriately value him as a person.
To bring this out more clearly, suppose that Adam's parents come to fully believe C, and so do not care *specifically for Adam's sake* that he died and missed out on a wonderful future. (Maybe they care for other reasons, but bracket that.) That would seem messed up. They aren't valuing Adam in the right kind of way -- and neither does anyone else who accepts C.
I general, I think it's a kind of philosophical error to let metaphysical qualms dictate your values. I don't think anyone would find C plausible except for feeling like they somehow *have* to affirm something like this in order to qualify as a naturalist in good standing (or some such). But really there's a kind of is/ought error happening here, and you don't need to rely on a "point of view of the universe" in order to non-instrumentally and unconditionally value others' well-being. Confused talk about the "sources of value" unfortunately has the effect of muddying this basic point, and misleading people into thinking that they have no choice but to constrain their values to accord with some form of normative subjectivism. But it's not true: you really can value whatever you want (or whatever most plausibly matters)! If you're not a realist, there's no outside force to tell you you're wrong. And if you are a realist, you should think the substantively plausible values are more likely to be correct. In neither case should you feel compelled by normative subjectivism. It's a philosophical trap.
> If it's just an arbitrary personal preference on your part to have Adam go on to have a happy life, then you'd seem committed to not judging anyone who happens to have a different preference about the case. But it doesn't seem (to me at least) *optional* to regard Adam's death here as a bad thing.
I don't think it's *arbitrary*; it's formed from the observation that in the vast majority of cases it will in fact be wrong for people to die suddenly, and blah blah blah. And I don't feel committed to judging those who feel differently; in particular, if *Adam himself* feels differently, then I don't see what grounds I have to disagree with him.
>> They aren't valuing Adam in the right kind of way -- and neither does anyone else who accepts C.
I'm not sure why they aren't: it seems to me that part of valuing other people is deferring to their judgement on what it is that would count as a valuable life for them; if their judgement is that no such life would count, then we should take them at their word.
I think part of the issue is that it's very hard to imagine that Adam's judgement is sound; maybe his depression is clouding him from imagining what a happy life might look like--and I think that's a very reasonable concern!
What's more, I think it's very difficult to conceive of how Adam could be instantaneously 100% cured of his depression and go on to live a life of joy if the capacity for that joy weren't somehow latent in him already; the very formulation of the scenario seems to be pushing on us the implicit meta-preference I mentioned before: if, within an instant, he is capable of being completely turned around, there must already be some part of him that *wants* to be turned around, and so we can't take at face value the idea that the depressive part of him is speaking on behalf of "all of him".
I even think it's very plausible that it is just a fact of human psychology, evolutionarily driven into us, that *all* human beings will always have *some* part of us that wants to keep living, and so on...in which case, no actual human being could ever be in an Adam-like position without triggering C.