My thought was just that it would seem *odd* for one's attitudes towards Joy's life to radically switch back and forth in the described way. As I reported in closing footnote, it doesn't seem to me that our attitude here should depend on where we are in time.
> "I don't see how that [near-prevention] would make a difference"
My thought was just that it would seem *odd* for one's attitudes towards Joy's life to radically switch back and forth in the described way. As I reported in closing footnote, it doesn't seem to me that our attitude here should depend on where we are in time.
> "I don't see how that [near-prevention] would make a difference"
I don't see how this relates to the dialectic. I asked a question: "Would you feel relieved that this obstacle was overcome? Or indifferent?" The point of the thought-experiment is just to make *vivid* the unconditional value of Joy's life, and the moral loss involved in replacing it with nothing. (Of course the value of her life does not change depending on whether or not it was almost prevented.)
When we reflect on how *different* people easily could have come into existence, I think we should feel a kind of ambivalence. To see this, imagine that we could vividly apprehend all the future possibilities. All else equal, we should have some desire that GoodLife1 be realized, and a roughly comparable desire that GoodLife2 instead be realized, and so on. But we should unambiguously prefer the disjunct of any good life over no life at all. (And, of course, prefer no life at all over any bad life.)
My thought was just that it would seem *odd* for one's attitudes towards Joy's life to radically switch back and forth in the described way. As I reported in closing footnote, it doesn't seem to me that our attitude here should depend on where we are in time.
> "I don't see how that [near-prevention] would make a difference"
I don't see how this relates to the dialectic. I asked a question: "Would you feel relieved that this obstacle was overcome? Or indifferent?" The point of the thought-experiment is just to make *vivid* the unconditional value of Joy's life, and the moral loss involved in replacing it with nothing. (Of course the value of her life does not change depending on whether or not it was almost prevented.)
When we reflect on how *different* people easily could have come into existence, I think we should feel a kind of ambivalence. To see this, imagine that we could vividly apprehend all the future possibilities. All else equal, we should have some desire that GoodLife1 be realized, and a roughly comparable desire that GoodLife2 instead be realized, and so on. But we should unambiguously prefer the disjunct of any good life over no life at all. (And, of course, prefer no life at all over any bad life.)