I'm not sure if I would be especially convinced by this thought experiment. Three points:
(1) Even if this worked as an intuition pump, it doesn't solve the deeper meta-ethical problems of how we ground objective value (if not in what we desire). And from the POV of the sceptic, this thought experiment is…
I'm not sure if I would be especially convinced by this thought experiment. Three points:
(1) Even if this worked as an intuition pump, it doesn't solve the deeper meta-ethical problems of how we ground objective value (if not in what we desire). And from the POV of the sceptic, this thought experiment is no better than a deontologist relying on Transplant thought experiments to defeat utilitarianism even though they can't point to appropriate grounding for side-constraints.
(2) I think the most plausible view of desire-based theories of welfare will 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.
(3) 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! I guess the upshot of this is just that I don't believe this is a fair intuition pump with respect to what we're getting at - of course we agree that taking then happy pills (rather than suicide) is reasonable; it's just that the intuition motivating this conclusion (i.e. actually, from the POV of the depressed person, happiness still matters), doesn't prove that happiness has some of non-desire grounding for its value.
Hi Richard, thanks for the reply!
I'm not sure if I would be especially convinced by this thought experiment. Three points:
(1) Even if this worked as an intuition pump, it doesn't solve the deeper meta-ethical problems of how we ground objective value (if not in what we desire). And from the POV of the sceptic, this thought experiment is no better than a deontologist relying on Transplant thought experiments to defeat utilitarianism even though they can't point to appropriate grounding for side-constraints.
(2) I think the most plausible view of desire-based theories of welfare will 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.
(3) 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! I guess the upshot of this is just that I don't believe this is a fair intuition pump with respect to what we're getting at - of course we agree that taking then happy pills (rather than suicide) is reasonable; it's just that the intuition motivating this conclusion (i.e. actually, from the POV of the depressed person, happiness still matters), doesn't prove that happiness has some of non-desire grounding for its value.