OK, but then how do you avoid the problem of Average Utilitarianism demanding the deaths of miserable homeless people who have no social connections, have negative expected utility over the remainder of their lives, and will be missed by no one after death?
OK, but then how do you avoid the problem of Average Utilitarianism demanding the deaths of miserable homeless people who have no social connections, have negative expected utility over the remainder of their lives, and will be missed by no one after death?
Are you sure? Your source says that "The value of a world is a function (namely, the average) of the welfare values of each individual's whole life." and then "The 'killing to promote average utility' objection only makes sense against the type-1, momentary view. On the second view, where we take a timeless perspective, killing someone does not reduce the (eternal) population. It merely makes one of the lives shorter than it otherwise would be. "
This exchanges one problem for another, because such utilitarianism encourages us to kill even happy people whose lives are now expected to be clearly less happy than they were in the past. Doing so raises the average lifetime utility of the person who has been killed.
Lifetime well-being isn't given by the average of one's momentary utilities. That'd be a terrible view, for just the reason you point out.
For the record, I do think that average utilitarianism is a bad view in population ethics, for the (first and third) reasons explained here - https://www.utilitarianism.net/population-ethics#the-average-view - but I don't think it has the particular implication you attributed to it, since average utilitarians can care about the average lifetime (not momentary) well-being of the eternal population.
But my original post wasn't arguing for average utilitarianism (it defends a variant of the Total view), so I'm a bit puzzled about why you brought this up at all?
Forgive me; I'm trying to understand your position. It looked like you were criticizing total utilitarianism in favor of a hybrid view that shifted more towards average utilitarianism. Looking again, I do see that this isn't what your essay is trying to do, but, now I don't understand why you say "Lifetime well-being isn't given by the average of one's momentary utilities" when your source has "The value of a world is a function (namely, the average) of the welfare values of each individual's whole life." That source uses "welfare" rather than "utility." Would you be willing to clarify what you really believe?
That's talking about the average across the population of whole lives, not the average of times within a life. That is, according to the average view in population ethics, the value of a world is given by the average of x1, x2, x3 .... where each xn is the lifetime well-being of a different individual who ever lives in that world. And each xn value is NOT itself an average.
OK, I think I follow you. So roughly speaking, what do you propose for f(x_n) that differs significantly from just f(x_n) being their lifetime average utility?
OK, but then how do you avoid the problem of Average Utilitarianism demanding the deaths of miserable homeless people who have no social connections, have negative expected utility over the remainder of their lives, and will be missed by no one after death?
https://www.philosophyetc.net/2010/07/killing-and-average-utility.html
Are you sure? Your source says that "The value of a world is a function (namely, the average) of the welfare values of each individual's whole life." and then "The 'killing to promote average utility' objection only makes sense against the type-1, momentary view. On the second view, where we take a timeless perspective, killing someone does not reduce the (eternal) population. It merely makes one of the lives shorter than it otherwise would be. "
This exchanges one problem for another, because such utilitarianism encourages us to kill even happy people whose lives are now expected to be clearly less happy than they were in the past. Doing so raises the average lifetime utility of the person who has been killed.
Lifetime well-being isn't given by the average of one's momentary utilities. That'd be a terrible view, for just the reason you point out.
For the record, I do think that average utilitarianism is a bad view in population ethics, for the (first and third) reasons explained here - https://www.utilitarianism.net/population-ethics#the-average-view - but I don't think it has the particular implication you attributed to it, since average utilitarians can care about the average lifetime (not momentary) well-being of the eternal population.
But my original post wasn't arguing for average utilitarianism (it defends a variant of the Total view), so I'm a bit puzzled about why you brought this up at all?
Forgive me; I'm trying to understand your position. It looked like you were criticizing total utilitarianism in favor of a hybrid view that shifted more towards average utilitarianism. Looking again, I do see that this isn't what your essay is trying to do, but, now I don't understand why you say "Lifetime well-being isn't given by the average of one's momentary utilities" when your source has "The value of a world is a function (namely, the average) of the welfare values of each individual's whole life." That source uses "welfare" rather than "utility." Would you be willing to clarify what you really believe?
That's talking about the average across the population of whole lives, not the average of times within a life. That is, according to the average view in population ethics, the value of a world is given by the average of x1, x2, x3 .... where each xn is the lifetime well-being of a different individual who ever lives in that world. And each xn value is NOT itself an average.
OK, I think I follow you. So roughly speaking, what do you propose for f(x_n) that differs significantly from just f(x_n) being their lifetime average utility?