I find this really interesting! I’m not sure I completely understand what your view is, though, so let me ask you about a different case, not involving nihilism.
Suppose you assign some credence to the view that all worlds are equally good (“indifference-ism”) . And suppose the angel offers you a gamble that does nothing if that view is false, but will kill your family if that view is true. You use statewise indifference reasoning to conclude that accepting the gamble is just as good as rejecting it, so you accept it.
Here are some possible things to say about this:
Bite the bullet: It’s perfectly OK to accept this gamble.
Problem with your credences: You should’ve been certain that indifference-ism is false.
Reject statewise indifference: Gambles that are equally good on every theory to which you assign nonzero credence are not equally good.
Divorce choice from value: You should’ve rejected the gamble even though accepting it was just as good as rejecting it—say, because you care about your family.
Am I right that, from what you write here, you’d lean towards option 4? In that case, what would you say if you don’t care about your family? Or what if you’re not sure what you care about? (Replace “indifference-ism” with the view that you are in fact indifferent between all possible outcomes, for example.) And are you thinking more generally that what you should do depends on what your preferences are, rather than what’s best? Sorry if I’m confused!
Thanks for this comment. I discuss this sort of case in footnote 33 here—I think it’s a good place to push back on the argument. Quoting what I say there:
there is, perhaps, some temptation to say “even if I should be indifferent to these people burned alive, I’m not! Screw indifference-ism world! Sounds like a shitty objective normative order anyway – let’s rebel against it.” That is, it feels like indifference-ism worlds have told me what the normative facts are, but they haven’t told me about my loyalty to the normative facts, and the shittyness of these normative facts puts that loyalty even more in question.
And perhaps, as well, there’s some temptation to think that “Well, indifference-ism world is morally required to be indifferent to my overall decision-procedure as well – so I’ll use a decision-procedure that isn’t indifferent to what happens in indifference-ism world. Indifference-ism world isn’t allowed to care!”
These responses might seem dicey, though. If they (or others) don’t end up working, ultimately I think that biting the bullet and taking this sort of deal is in fact less bad than doing so in the nihilism-focused version or the original. So it’s an option if necessary – and one I’d substantially prefer to biting the bullet in all of them.
That is, I’m interested in some combination of:
Not taking the deal because you’re uncertain of your loyalty to the normative facts (e.g., something about internalism/externalism etc)
Not taking the deal because indifference-ism world is indifferent to your decision procedure (or to your actions more generally), so whatever, let’s save my family in those worlds.
Biting the bullet and taking the deal if it comes to that, but not taking it in the other cases discussed in the post.
Adding a few more thoughts, I think part of what I’m interested in here is the question of what you would be “trying” to do (from some kind of “I endorse this” perspective, even if the endorsement doesn’t have any external backing from the normative facts) conditional on a given world. If, in indifference-ism world, you wouldn’t be trying, in this sense, to protect your family, such that your representative from indifference-ism world would indeed be like “yeah, go ahead, burn my family alive,” then taking the deal looks more OK to me. But if, conditional on indifference-ism, you would be trying to protect your family anyway (maybe because: the normative facts are indifferent, so might as well), such that your representative from indifference-ism world would be like “I’m against this deal,” then taking the deal looks worse to me. And the second thing seems more like where I’d expect to end up.
Hi Joe,
I find this really interesting! I’m not sure I completely understand what your view is, though, so let me ask you about a different case, not involving nihilism.
Suppose you assign some credence to the view that all worlds are equally good (“indifference-ism”) . And suppose the angel offers you a gamble that does nothing if that view is false, but will kill your family if that view is true. You use statewise indifference reasoning to conclude that accepting the gamble is just as good as rejecting it, so you accept it.
Here are some possible things to say about this:
Bite the bullet: It’s perfectly OK to accept this gamble.
Problem with your credences: You should’ve been certain that indifference-ism is false.
Reject statewise indifference: Gambles that are equally good on every theory to which you assign nonzero credence are not equally good.
Divorce choice from value: You should’ve rejected the gamble even though accepting it was just as good as rejecting it—say, because you care about your family.
Am I right that, from what you write here, you’d lean towards option 4? In that case, what would you say if you don’t care about your family? Or what if you’re not sure what you care about? (Replace “indifference-ism” with the view that you are in fact indifferent between all possible outcomes, for example.) And are you thinking more generally that what you should do depends on what your preferences are, rather than what’s best? Sorry if I’m confused!
Hi Jake,
Thanks for this comment. I discuss this sort of case in footnote 33 here—I think it’s a good place to push back on the argument. Quoting what I say there:
That is, I’m interested in some combination of:
Not taking the deal because you’re uncertain of your loyalty to the normative facts (e.g., something about internalism/externalism etc)
Not taking the deal because indifference-ism world is indifferent to your decision procedure (or to your actions more generally), so whatever, let’s save my family in those worlds.
Biting the bullet and taking the deal if it comes to that, but not taking it in the other cases discussed in the post.
Adding a few more thoughts, I think part of what I’m interested in here is the question of what you would be “trying” to do (from some kind of “I endorse this” perspective, even if the endorsement doesn’t have any external backing from the normative facts) conditional on a given world. If, in indifference-ism world, you wouldn’t be trying, in this sense, to protect your family, such that your representative from indifference-ism world would indeed be like “yeah, go ahead, burn my family alive,” then taking the deal looks more OK to me. But if, conditional on indifference-ism, you would be trying to protect your family anyway (maybe because: the normative facts are indifferent, so might as well), such that your representative from indifference-ism world would be like “I’m against this deal,” then taking the deal looks worse to me. And the second thing seems more like where I’d expect to end up.