I agree there are many non-obvious cases! I'm not claiming that replacement is always preferable. To push back against the *absolutist* view, it suffices to note that there are *some* cases where replacement would be OK, or even for the best.
And yes, to make it a genuine "replacement" case, we build in that Sally would not have been crea…
I agree there are many non-obvious cases! I'm not claiming that replacement is always preferable. To push back against the *absolutist* view, it suffices to note that there are *some* cases where replacement would be OK, or even for the best.
And yes, to make it a genuine "replacement" case, we build in that Sally would not have been created if Bob had not died when he did. (Not a very realistic sort of case, but still interesting to think about.)
I think it's very important whether Bob is 'thought experiment fantasy' style replaced with Sally, so Bob is deleted and instead Sally is inserted fully grown with life history and social connections --- then I think the OP argument stands, that while deleting Bob is regrettable (because Bob is uniquely Bob), the harm is potentially made up for by creating fully developed Sally. But if a Real Bob (RB) actually dies, rather than just disappears from the timeline, and is replaced by Sally's mere birth, then the harm of RB's dying is only partially in his demise. It's also in how RB's death affects countless smaller and bigger things in the world, and especially other people. RB doesn't just die *for himself*. He dies for all the people who will be to any extent affected by his death. In some, largely figurative (tho you could make a "neurological representation" argument claiming it can be material too) sense, all those people's Bobs in their heads die too. The whole world changes. No man is an island etc.
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Idk if it makes me a hopeless consequentialist but all that reminded me of a novel (I forgot the title/author now) in which someone had a chance of changing the past into one in which the Holocaust genocide didn't happen BUT Jewish people as an ethnicity (iirc correctly, genetically/culturally but not 100% sure) was effectively ended by making it infertile. This was seen in said novel as an absolutely disastrous result to which the genocidal horror was regrettably preferable. I could never, ever got my head round this notion in which horrific suffering of the millions was seen as overall preferable to gradually extinguishing a particular genotype. That's notwithstanding the obvious sadness/despair of "this bloodline ends with us" -- I still think it's highly preferable to the active horror of genocide.
But then I imagined the ethic scenario extended to the species level: what if the atrocious choice was between human beings ALL dying out within a couple of generations (no obvious suffering, tho clearly we'd need to create euthanasia tools for the last old ones) vs a huge number dying horrible deaths BUT a significant proportion surviving to continue the human species. And I started to have doubts. I really don't know.
It's not really about replaceability because it adds an extra of the group existential factor on the one hand and the horrific manner of death on the other, but it feels intuitively somewhat related.
I agree there are many non-obvious cases! I'm not claiming that replacement is always preferable. To push back against the *absolutist* view, it suffices to note that there are *some* cases where replacement would be OK, or even for the best.
And yes, to make it a genuine "replacement" case, we build in that Sally would not have been created if Bob had not died when he did. (Not a very realistic sort of case, but still interesting to think about.)
I think it's very important whether Bob is 'thought experiment fantasy' style replaced with Sally, so Bob is deleted and instead Sally is inserted fully grown with life history and social connections --- then I think the OP argument stands, that while deleting Bob is regrettable (because Bob is uniquely Bob), the harm is potentially made up for by creating fully developed Sally. But if a Real Bob (RB) actually dies, rather than just disappears from the timeline, and is replaced by Sally's mere birth, then the harm of RB's dying is only partially in his demise. It's also in how RB's death affects countless smaller and bigger things in the world, and especially other people. RB doesn't just die *for himself*. He dies for all the people who will be to any extent affected by his death. In some, largely figurative (tho you could make a "neurological representation" argument claiming it can be material too) sense, all those people's Bobs in their heads die too. The whole world changes. No man is an island etc.
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Idk if it makes me a hopeless consequentialist but all that reminded me of a novel (I forgot the title/author now) in which someone had a chance of changing the past into one in which the Holocaust genocide didn't happen BUT Jewish people as an ethnicity (iirc correctly, genetically/culturally but not 100% sure) was effectively ended by making it infertile. This was seen in said novel as an absolutely disastrous result to which the genocidal horror was regrettably preferable. I could never, ever got my head round this notion in which horrific suffering of the millions was seen as overall preferable to gradually extinguishing a particular genotype. That's notwithstanding the obvious sadness/despair of "this bloodline ends with us" -- I still think it's highly preferable to the active horror of genocide.
But then I imagined the ethic scenario extended to the species level: what if the atrocious choice was between human beings ALL dying out within a couple of generations (no obvious suffering, tho clearly we'd need to create euthanasia tools for the last old ones) vs a huge number dying horrible deaths BUT a significant proportion surviving to continue the human species. And I started to have doubts. I really don't know.
It's not really about replaceability because it adds an extra of the group existential factor on the one hand and the horrific manner of death on the other, but it feels intuitively somewhat related.