I suspect that the reason why, a decade on, you still hear the worry that utilitarianism doesn't respect the separateness of persons is because your paper (if the quote above fairly represents it) isn't responsive to the actual worry. Nozick (ASU 32-33) takes the separateness of persons to be what makes trades-offs impermissible (killing…
I suspect that the reason why, a decade on, you still hear the worry that utilitarianism doesn't respect the separateness of persons is because your paper (if the quote above fairly represents it) isn't responsive to the actual worry. Nozick (ASU 32-33) takes the separateness of persons to be what makes trades-offs impermissible (killing one to save five, or whatever). That utilitarianism, upon having sanctioned such trade-offs, can nonetheless rationalise feeling regret for the one's death is, I would think, largely irrelevant to his concern: it's not a concern merely about some moral "significance" (as you put it), but instead about permissibility.
No, the quoted passage does not exhaust the content of my paper. I further explain why the fungibility interpretation is the *most pressing* interpretation of the "separateness of persons" objection, and why a purely extensional interpretation (being about "permissibility" rather than "significance", as you put it) offers no objection at all.
I suspect that the reason why, a decade on, you still hear the worry that utilitarianism doesn't respect the separateness of persons is because your paper (if the quote above fairly represents it) isn't responsive to the actual worry. Nozick (ASU 32-33) takes the separateness of persons to be what makes trades-offs impermissible (killing one to save five, or whatever). That utilitarianism, upon having sanctioned such trade-offs, can nonetheless rationalise feeling regret for the one's death is, I would think, largely irrelevant to his concern: it's not a concern merely about some moral "significance" (as you put it), but instead about permissibility.
No, the quoted passage does not exhaust the content of my paper. I further explain why the fungibility interpretation is the *most pressing* interpretation of the "separateness of persons" objection, and why a purely extensional interpretation (being about "permissibility" rather than "significance", as you put it) offers no objection at all.