Would an agent who accepted strong pessimism [i.e. the view that there are no independent goods]—which I absolutely believe we should reject—have most reason to end their own life? Not necessarily. An altruistic agent with this evaluative outlook would have strong instrumental reason to remain alive, in order to alleviate the suffering of others.
I agree that life can be worth living for our positive roles in terms of reducing overall suffering or dukkha. More than that, such a view seems (to me at least) like a perfectly valid view on what constitutes evaluative meaning and positive value.
Indeed, if I knew for a fact that my life were overall (hopelessly) increasing suffering or dukkha, then this would seem to me like a strong reason not to live it, regardless of what I get to experience. So I’m curious how the author has come to believe that we should absolutely reject this view in favor of, presumably, offsetting views.
However, such an agent would be forced to accept the infamous null-bomb implication, which says that the best thing to do would be to permanently destroy all sentient life in the universe. I join almost every other philosopher in taking the fact that an ethical theory accepts the null-bomb implication as a decisive reason to reject the theory (as not merely misguided, but horrifically so).
To properly consider such a theoretical reductio, I trust that most philosophers would agree (on reflection) that we need to account for potential confounders such as status quo bias, omission bias, self-serving bias, and whether alternative views have any less horrific theoretical implications.
Are these decisive reasons to reject offsetting views? A proponent of such views could still argue that such implications are only theoretical, that we shouldn’t let them (mis)guide us in practice, and that the practical implications of impartial consequentialism are a separate question.
Yet the quoted passage neglects to mention that the very same response applies to minimalist consequentialism (whose proponents take pains to practically highlight the importance of cooperation, the avoidance of accidental harm, and the promotion of nonviolence).
I would just generally caution against performing such theoretical reductios so hastily. After all, a more bridge-building and illuminating approach is to consider the confounding factors and intuitions behind our differing perceptions on such questions, which I hope we can all do to better understand each other’s views.
I’m concerned that this comment has received so many upvotes. I just want to flag two major concerns I have with it:
(1)
if I knew for a fact that my life were overall (hopelessly) increasing suffering or dukkha, then this would seem to me like a strong reason not to live it, regardless of what I get to experience. So I’m curious how the author has come to believe that we should absolutely reject this view
This is extremely misleading. You make it sound like the author favours causing a net increase in suffering for his own personal gain. But of course that is not remotely fair or accurate. What he absolutely rejects is the idea that there are no positive goods (i.e., positive welfare has no moral value). The alternative, “Positive Goods” view implies that it can be permissible to do things that include some additional suffering, so long as there are sufficient offsetting gains (possibly to those same individuals—the author didn’t take any stand on the further issue of interpersonal tradeoffs).
For example, suppose you had the option of bringing into existence a (causally isolated) blissful world, with the only exception being that one person will at one point stub their toes (a brief moment of suffering in their otherwise blissful life). Still, every single person on this world would be extremely happy to be alive (for objective list theorists: feel free to add in other positive goods, e.g. knowledge, accomplishment, friendship, etc.). The “No Positive Goods” view implies that it would be wrong to allow such a blissful world to exist. The author—along with pretty much every expert in moral philosophy—absolutely rejects this view.
Again, I want to emphasize how misleading I find it to characterize this as endorsing “increasing suffering”, since in ordinary use we only describe lives as “suffering” when they have overall negative welfare, and we typically use “increasing suffering” to mean increasing suffering on net, i.e. more than one increases positive well-being. To give someone a blissful life + a stubbed toe is not, as most people use the term, to “increase suffering”. I would urge you in future to be clearer about how you are using this phrase in an unusually literal way (and also please avoid making it sound like your interlocutors have selfish motivations [as in: “regardless of what I get to experience”] when there is no basis for such an incendiary charge).
(2)
More substantively, I’d dispute the suggestion that there’s any sort of parity between the Postive Goods and No Positive Goods views when it comes to “horrific implications”.
I don’t want to get into a back-and-forth about this, but I’ll just report my editorial view that there is something distinctively problematic about propounding a view that implies that destroying the world is literally the best possible outcome.
Speaking as a moral philosopher, my professional opinion is that the No Positive Goods view lacks basic justification in a way that differs markedly from Positive Goods views (even ones, like Totalism, with some troubling implications). And speaking as an editor of a public-facing website, I’m much more concerned that some crazy person might act on the No Positive Goods view in horrific ways than I am that anyone would (or could) do likewise with Positive Goods views like Totalism (for the obvious reason that it’s easier to commit mass-murder than to create the positive replacement conditions that would be required for Totalism to permit such an act).
So that’s why I whole-heartedly endorse (as both theoretically and practically warranted) our guest author’s strong rejection of No Positive Goods views. I don’t expect proponents of the view to agree, and I don’t wish to be drawn into further discussion of the matter. This explanation is more for third parties who might otherwise be confused or misled by the above comment.
I am keen to read critiques of Teo’s claims but I downvoted this comment for a couple of reasons:
1) Aggressive language—I felt that Teo’s comment was written in good faith and I was surprised that you dismissed it in such strong words: “extremely misleading”, “not remotely fair or accurate”, “an incendiary charge”.
2) Appeals to authority—It doesn’t matter to me that “pretty much every expert in moral philosophy” disagrees. I want to know why they disagree and be referred to relevant authors or papers that make these arguments.
Thanks for explaining your perspective. I hope most people will instead vote based on whether they think the comment will add to or detract from the understanding of most readers. To briefly explain why I don’t think the two factors you point to are indicative of a low-quality comment:
(1) A comment may be “written in good faith” and yet have the effect of being misleading, unfair, or otherwise harmful. If a comment does have these effects, and especially if it is being highly upvoted (suggesting that many readers are being taken in by it), then I think it is important to be clear about this. (Note that I made no claims about Teo’s motivations, nor did I cast any personal attacks. I simply criticized the content of what was written, in a clear and direct way.)
So I would instead ask readers to assess whether my objections were merited. Is it true that Teo’s comment “[made] it sound like the author favours causing a net increase in suffering for his own personal gain”? If so, that would in fact be extremely misleading, not remotely fair or accurate, etc. So I think it’s worth being clear on this.
Of course, if you think I’m being idiosyncratic and no casual reader would come away with the impression I’m worried about here, then by all means downvote my comment for simple inaccuracy.
(2) Certainly, you don’t have to defer to the opinion of moral philosophers if you don’t trust that we’re well-placed to judge the matter in question. Still, the info may be helpful for many, so (imo) sharing info about an expert consensus should not be viewed negatively.
I kindly ask third parties to be mindful of the following points concerning the above reply.
(1)
It calls a part of my comment extremely misleading based on an incomplete quote whose omitted context provides a better sense of what I am talking about. Specifically, the omitted beginning clarifies that I am discussing “strong pessimism [i.e. the view that there are no independent goods]”, and noting how I personally find it a perfectly valid view to equate my positive value with whether my life has overall positive roles under that view. And the omitted ending clarifies that I am therefore curious about the author’s reasons to “absolutely reject” impartial, minimalist consequentialism “in favor of, presumably, offsetting views” (→ such as “classical utilitarianism as well as ‘weak negative’ or ‘negative-leaning’ views”), all of which are impartial views. (My use of “this view” was ambiguous, but the reading of it felt uncharitable given the above.)
At any rate, I have no reason to question the impartiality of the author’s preferred views. I hope it is clear that what my comment is questioning is the relative plausibility of the assumptions and implications of impartial offsetting views (over those of impartial minimalist views).
It claims that my use of the phrase of “increasing suffering” is misleading on the grounds that my use differs from the (allegedly common) assumption that to bring about an outcome with “outweighed” suffering does not entail increasing suffering. Yet I would think that the literal use (i.e. counting suffering only) makes more common sense than does the alternative use that is based on the offsetting assumption. After all, such an assumption would imply that (e.g.) the offsetting choice of “Intense Bliss with Hellish Cessation” (see the diagram) does not entail increasing suffering, even though it brings about arbitrarily large amounts of torture-level suffering (as do the othertwo supposedly outweighed hells) in place of an alternative world that would contain only untroubled experiences.
(1) + (2)
It argues (from authority) that minimalist views lack basic justification, without engaging with any of the direct arguments in their favor (cf. here). In particular, it does not address the intuition that “torture-level suffering cannot be counterbalanced”. Rather, it seems to imply that the outweighability of torture follows from the supposedly obvious outweighability of mild suffering (such as a stubbed toe).
Indeed, proponents of offsetting views do not seem to find, by direct introspection, that a moment of happiness would seem to be outweighing a certain fraction of a torture-moment; instead, they appear to infer this from other assumptions (such as from the additive aggregation of experiences that are represented with positive and negative real numbers). To quote another commenter:
“A lot of disagreements about axiology and population ethics have this same dynamic. You infer from your intuition that [mild suffering] to please the blissful is acceptable that we can scale this up to torture to (more intensely) please many more blissful people. I infer from the intuitive absurdity of the latter that maybe we shouldn’t think it’s so obvious that [mild suffering] to please the blissful is good.”
It also claims that the theoretical implications of minimalist consequentialism are absolutely rejected by “pretty much every expert in moral philosophy”. Yet it does not account for the extent to which these rejections may be highly confounded by 1) our practicalintuitions, by 2) the status quo bias and/or omission bias, and 3) by the fact that we ourselves are currently living in this world whose hypothetically instant and painless cessation (i.e. non-creation, cf. the diagram) we are supposed to be impartially evaluating in this thought experiment.
It also hints that the torture-for-greater-joy implications of offsetting views fare much better in terms of acceptance, yet does not provide support for whether this is the case.
To be clear, it does present a thought experiment about the creation of a causally isolated world, which is a step in the right direction to account for these confounders. Yet even there, the discussion is eventually framed in terms of whether we would “allow such a blissful world to exist”, which potentially brings in the confounders by making it sound like the option of non-creation entails interfering with a status quo where some blissful beings already exist, whereas the minimalist intuition is precisely that the non-creation of (causally isolated) beings with even perfectly fulfilled needs is, other things being equal, morally unproblematic (“no need, no problem”).
(To the extent that one feels like denying the equivalence, perhaps one’s intuitions are not captured by purely experientialist consequentialism.)
(2)
By italicizing “destroying the world”, the reply again forcefully brings in the aforementioned confounders, and omits to mention the theoretical equivalence with non-creation. Theoretically, offsetting versions of utilitarianism likewise imply that an ideal outcome is to unleash a utilitronium shockwave (“converting all matter and energy into pure utilitronium”), which is presumably no less “destructive” according to most people’s practical intuitions.
Some minimalist/”strong pessimist” views would also not consider cessation an ideal option, though these were beyond the scope of my post on the topic (cf. footnote 1).
It shares a worry (which I also have) that a naive reading of these views might lead someone to act in horrific ways. Yet it provides little justification for why this would make the rejection of minimalist views more “practically warranted” relative to the rejection of offsetting views. After all, the latter could also lead to violence based on naive ideas about how happiness may be increased, such as by targeting those who are perceived to have bad values (e.g. people with certain political or religious views). (Relatedly, Karl Popper argued that offsetting views were likely to lead to atrocities if they were accepted at an institutional level.) In any case, it seems to me that all consequentialist views imply a large gap between theory and practice, and my response to potentially naive minimalists (and other consequentialists) would be to always mind the gap.
I agree that life can be worth living for our positive roles in terms of reducing overall suffering or dukkha. More than that, such a view seems (to me at least) like a perfectly valid view on what constitutes evaluative meaning and positive value.
Indeed, if I knew for a fact that my life were overall (hopelessly) increasing suffering or dukkha, then this would seem to me like a strong reason not to live it, regardless of what I get to experience. So I’m curious how the author has come to believe that we should absolutely reject this view in favor of, presumably, offsetting views.
To properly consider such a theoretical reductio, I trust that most philosophers would agree (on reflection) that we need to account for potential confounders such as status quo bias, omission bias, self-serving bias, and whether alternative views have any less horrific theoretical implications.
In particular, offsetting views theoretically imply things like the “Very Repugnant Conclusion”, “Creating Hell to Please the Blissful”, and “Intense Bliss with Hellish Cessation”, none of which seems to me any less horrific than does the non-creation of an imperfect world (cf. the consequentialist equivalence of cessation and non-creation).
Are these decisive reasons to reject offsetting views? A proponent of such views could still argue that such implications are only theoretical, that we shouldn’t let them (mis)guide us in practice, and that the practical implications of impartial consequentialism are a separate question.
Yet the quoted passage neglects to mention that the very same response applies to minimalist consequentialism (whose proponents take pains to practically highlight the importance of cooperation, the avoidance of accidental harm, and the promotion of nonviolence).
I would just generally caution against performing such theoretical reductios so hastily. After all, a more bridge-building and illuminating approach is to consider the confounding factors and intuitions behind our differing perceptions on such questions, which I hope we can all do to better understand each other’s views.
I’m concerned that this comment has received so many upvotes. I just want to flag two major concerns I have with it:
(1)
This is extremely misleading. You make it sound like the author favours causing a net increase in suffering for his own personal gain. But of course that is not remotely fair or accurate. What he absolutely rejects is the idea that there are no positive goods (i.e., positive welfare has no moral value). The alternative, “Positive Goods” view implies that it can be permissible to do things that include some additional suffering, so long as there are sufficient offsetting gains (possibly to those same individuals—the author didn’t take any stand on the further issue of interpersonal tradeoffs).
For example, suppose you had the option of bringing into existence a (causally isolated) blissful world, with the only exception being that one person will at one point stub their toes (a brief moment of suffering in their otherwise blissful life). Still, every single person on this world would be extremely happy to be alive (for objective list theorists: feel free to add in other positive goods, e.g. knowledge, accomplishment, friendship, etc.). The “No Positive Goods” view implies that it would be wrong to allow such a blissful world to exist. The author—along with pretty much every expert in moral philosophy—absolutely rejects this view.
Again, I want to emphasize how misleading I find it to characterize this as endorsing “increasing suffering”, since in ordinary use we only describe lives as “suffering” when they have overall negative welfare, and we typically use “increasing suffering” to mean increasing suffering on net, i.e. more than one increases positive well-being. To give someone a blissful life + a stubbed toe is not, as most people use the term, to “increase suffering”. I would urge you in future to be clearer about how you are using this phrase in an unusually literal way (and also please avoid making it sound like your interlocutors have selfish motivations [as in: “regardless of what I get to experience”] when there is no basis for such an incendiary charge).
(2)
More substantively, I’d dispute the suggestion that there’s any sort of parity between the Postive Goods and No Positive Goods views when it comes to “horrific implications”.
I don’t want to get into a back-and-forth about this, but I’ll just report my editorial view that there is something distinctively problematic about propounding a view that implies that destroying the world is literally the best possible outcome.
Speaking as a moral philosopher, my professional opinion is that the No Positive Goods view lacks basic justification in a way that differs markedly from Positive Goods views (even ones, like Totalism, with some troubling implications). And speaking as an editor of a public-facing website, I’m much more concerned that some crazy person might act on the No Positive Goods view in horrific ways than I am that anyone would (or could) do likewise with Positive Goods views like Totalism (for the obvious reason that it’s easier to commit mass-murder than to create the positive replacement conditions that would be required for Totalism to permit such an act).
So that’s why I whole-heartedly endorse (as both theoretically and practically warranted) our guest author’s strong rejection of No Positive Goods views. I don’t expect proponents of the view to agree, and I don’t wish to be drawn into further discussion of the matter. This explanation is more for third parties who might otherwise be confused or misled by the above comment.
I am keen to read critiques of Teo’s claims but I downvoted this comment for a couple of reasons:
1) Aggressive language—I felt that Teo’s comment was written in good faith and I was surprised that you dismissed it in such strong words: “extremely misleading”, “not remotely fair or accurate”, “an incendiary charge”.
2) Appeals to authority—It doesn’t matter to me that “pretty much every expert in moral philosophy” disagrees. I want to know why they disagree and be referred to relevant authors or papers that make these arguments.
Thanks for explaining your perspective. I hope most people will instead vote based on whether they think the comment will add to or detract from the understanding of most readers. To briefly explain why I don’t think the two factors you point to are indicative of a low-quality comment:
(1) A comment may be “written in good faith” and yet have the effect of being misleading, unfair, or otherwise harmful. If a comment does have these effects, and especially if it is being highly upvoted (suggesting that many readers are being taken in by it), then I think it is important to be clear about this. (Note that I made no claims about Teo’s motivations, nor did I cast any personal attacks. I simply criticized the content of what was written, in a clear and direct way.)
So I would instead ask readers to assess whether my objections were merited. Is it true that Teo’s comment “[made] it sound like the author favours causing a net increase in suffering for his own personal gain”? If so, that would in fact be extremely misleading, not remotely fair or accurate, etc. So I think it’s worth being clear on this.
Of course, if you think I’m being idiosyncratic and no casual reader would come away with the impression I’m worried about here, then by all means downvote my comment for simple inaccuracy.
(2) Certainly, you don’t have to defer to the opinion of moral philosophers if you don’t trust that we’re well-placed to judge the matter in question. Still, the info may be helpful for many, so (imo) sharing info about an expert consensus should not be viewed negatively.
I kindly ask third parties to be mindful of the following points concerning the above reply.
(1)
It calls a part of my comment extremely misleading based on an incomplete quote whose omitted context provides a better sense of what I am talking about. Specifically, the omitted beginning clarifies that I am discussing “strong pessimism [i.e. the view that there are no independent goods]”, and noting how I personally find it a perfectly valid view to equate my positive value with whether my life has overall positive roles under that view. And the omitted ending clarifies that I am therefore curious about the author’s reasons to “absolutely reject” impartial, minimalist consequentialism “in favor of, presumably, offsetting views” (→ such as “classical utilitarianism as well as ‘weak negative’ or ‘negative-leaning’ views”), all of which are impartial views. (My use of “this view” was ambiguous, but the reading of it felt uncharitable given the above.)
At any rate, I have no reason to question the impartiality of the author’s preferred views. I hope it is clear that what my comment is questioning is the relative plausibility of the assumptions and implications of impartial offsetting views (over those of impartial minimalist views).
It claims that my use of the phrase of “increasing suffering” is misleading on the grounds that my use differs from the (allegedly common) assumption that to bring about an outcome with “outweighed” suffering does not entail increasing suffering. Yet I would think that the literal use (i.e. counting suffering only) makes more common sense than does the alternative use that is based on the offsetting assumption. After all, such an assumption would imply that (e.g.) the offsetting choice of “Intense Bliss with Hellish Cessation” (see the diagram) does not entail increasing suffering, even though it brings about arbitrarily large amounts of torture-level suffering (as do the other two supposedly outweighed hells) in place of an alternative world that would contain only untroubled experiences.
(1) + (2)
It argues (from authority) that minimalist views lack basic justification, without engaging with any of the direct arguments in their favor (cf. here). In particular, it does not address the intuition that “torture-level suffering cannot be counterbalanced”. Rather, it seems to imply that the outweighability of torture follows from the supposedly obvious outweighability of mild suffering (such as a stubbed toe).
Indeed, proponents of offsetting views do not seem to find, by direct introspection, that a moment of happiness would seem to be outweighing a certain fraction of a torture-moment; instead, they appear to infer this from other assumptions (such as from the additive aggregation of experiences that are represented with positive and negative real numbers). To quote another commenter:
“A lot of disagreements about axiology and population ethics have this same dynamic. You infer from your intuition that [mild suffering] to please the blissful is acceptable that we can scale this up to torture to (more intensely) please many more blissful people. I infer from the intuitive absurdity of the latter that maybe we shouldn’t think it’s so obvious that [mild suffering] to please the blissful is good.”
It also claims that the theoretical implications of minimalist consequentialism are absolutely rejected by “pretty much every expert in moral philosophy”. Yet it does not account for the extent to which these rejections may be highly confounded by 1) our practical intuitions, by 2) the status quo bias and/or omission bias, and 3) by the fact that we ourselves are currently living in this world whose hypothetically instant and painless cessation (i.e. non-creation, cf. the diagram) we are supposed to be impartially evaluating in this thought experiment.
It also hints that the torture-for-greater-joy implications of offsetting views fare much better in terms of acceptance, yet does not provide support for whether this is the case.
To be clear, it does present a thought experiment about the creation of a causally isolated world, which is a step in the right direction to account for these confounders. Yet even there, the discussion is eventually framed in terms of whether we would “allow such a blissful world to exist”, which potentially brings in the confounders by making it sound like the option of non-creation entails interfering with a status quo where some blissful beings already exist, whereas the minimalist intuition is precisely that the non-creation of (causally isolated) beings with even perfectly fulfilled needs is, other things being equal, morally unproblematic (“no need, no problem”).
The latter view (i.e. “the Asymmetry”) has many defenders (some of whom are cited here). And if we acknowledge the consequentialist equivalence of cessation and non-creation, then this view also implies a theoretical endorsement of the (un-confounded) hypothetical cessation implication in the case of purely experientialist and consequentialist minimalism.
(To the extent that one feels like denying the equivalence, perhaps one’s intuitions are not captured by purely experientialist consequentialism.)
(2)
By italicizing “destroying the world”, the reply again forcefully brings in the aforementioned confounders, and omits to mention the theoretical equivalence with non-creation. Theoretically, offsetting versions of utilitarianism likewise imply that an ideal outcome is to unleash a utilitronium shockwave (“converting all matter and energy into pure utilitronium”), which is presumably no less “destructive” according to most people’s practical intuitions.
Some minimalist/”strong pessimist” views would also not consider cessation an ideal option, though these were beyond the scope of my post on the topic (cf. footnote 1).
It shares a worry (which I also have) that a naive reading of these views might lead someone to act in horrific ways. Yet it provides little justification for why this would make the rejection of minimalist views more “practically warranted” relative to the rejection of offsetting views. After all, the latter could also lead to violence based on naive ideas about how happiness may be increased, such as by targeting those who are perceived to have bad values (e.g. people with certain political or religious views). (Relatedly, Karl Popper argued that offsetting views were likely to lead to atrocities if they were accepted at an institutional level.) In any case, it seems to me that all consequentialist views imply a large gap between theory and practice, and my response to potentially naive minimalists (and other consequentialists) would be to always mind the gap.