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 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.