Neutrality about future desires helps in some cases, as you note, but is utterly disastrous in others (e.g. potentially implying that a temporarily depressed child or teenager, who momentarily loses all his desires/preferences, might as well just die, even if he’d have a happy, flourishing future).
I think if we’re already counting implicit preferences, so that, for example, people still have desires/preferences while in deep dreamless sleep and those still count, it’s very hard to imagine someone losing all of their desires/preferences without dying or otherwise having their brains severely damaged, in which case their moral status seems pretty questionable. There’s also a question of whether this has broken (psychological) continuity enough that we shouldn’t consider this the same person at all: this case could be more like someone dying and either being replaced by a new person with a happy, flourishing future or just dying and not being replaced at all. Either way, the child has already died.
If they’d have the same desires/preferences in the future as they had before temporarily losing them, then we can ask if this is due to a causal connection from the child before the temporary loss. If not, then this again undermines the persistence of their identity and the child may have already died either way, since causal connection seems necessary. If there is such a causal connection, then our answer here should probably match how we think about destructive mind uploading and destructive teleportation.
Of course, it may be the case that a temporarily depressed child just prefers overall to die (or otherwise that that’s best according to the preference-affecting view), even if they’d have a happy, flourishing future. The above responses wouldn’t work for this case. But keeping them alive involuntarily also seems problematic. Furthermore, if we think it’s better for them to stay alive even if they’re indifferent overall, then this still seems paternalistic in a sense, but less objectionably so, and if we’re making continuous tradeoffs, too, then there would be cases where we would keep them alive involuntary for their sake and against their wishes.
There’s also the possibility that a preference still continues to count terminally even after it’s no longer held, so even after a person dies or their preferences change, but I lean towards rejecting that view.
The connection to personal identity is interesting, thanks for flagging that! I’d emphasize two main points in reply:
(i) While preference continuity is a component of person identity, it isn’t clear that it’s essential. Memory continuity is classically a major component, and I think it makes sense to include other personality characteristics too. We might even be able to include values in the sense of moral beliefs that could persist even while the agent goes through a period of being unable to care in the usual way about their values; they might still acknowledge, at least in an intellectual sense, that this is what they think they ought to care about. If someone maintained all of those other connections, and just temporary stopped caring about anything, I think they would still qualify as the same person. Their past self has not thereby “already died”.
(ii) re: “paternalism”, it’s worth distinguishing between acting against another’s considered preferences vs merely believing that their considered preferences don’t in fact coincide with their best interests. I don’t think the latter is “paternalistic” in any objectionable sense. I think it’s just obviously true that someone who is depressed or otherwise mentally ill may have considered preferences that fail to correspond to their best interests. (People aren’t infallible in normative matters, even concerning themselves. To claim otherwise would be an extremely strong and implausible view!)
fwiw, I also think that paternalistic actions are sometimes justifiable, most obviously in the case of literal children, or others (like the temporarily depressed!) for whom we have a strong basis to judge that the standard Millian reasons for deference do not apply.
But that isn’t really the issue here. We’re just assessing the axiological question of whether it would, as a matter of principle, be bad for the temporary depressive to die—whether we should, as mere bystanders, hope that they endure through this rough period, or that they instead find and take the means to end it all, despite the bright future that would otherwise be ahead of them.
I think if we’re already counting implicit preferences, so that, for example, people still have desires/preferences while in deep dreamless sleep and those still count, it’s very hard to imagine someone losing all of their desires/preferences without dying or otherwise having their brains severely damaged, in which case their moral status seems pretty questionable. There’s also a question of whether this has broken (psychological) continuity enough that we shouldn’t consider this the same person at all: this case could be more like someone dying and either being replaced by a new person with a happy, flourishing future or just dying and not being replaced at all. Either way, the child has already died.
If they’d have the same desires/preferences in the future as they had before temporarily losing them, then we can ask if this is due to a causal connection from the child before the temporary loss. If not, then this again undermines the persistence of their identity and the child may have already died either way, since causal connection seems necessary. If there is such a causal connection, then our answer here should probably match how we think about destructive mind uploading and destructive teleportation.
Of course, it may be the case that a temporarily depressed child just prefers overall to die (or otherwise that that’s best according to the preference-affecting view), even if they’d have a happy, flourishing future. The above responses wouldn’t work for this case. But keeping them alive involuntarily also seems problematic. Furthermore, if we think it’s better for them to stay alive even if they’re indifferent overall, then this still seems paternalistic in a sense, but less objectionably so, and if we’re making continuous tradeoffs, too, then there would be cases where we would keep them alive involuntary for their sake and against their wishes.
There’s also the possibility that a preference still continues to count terminally even after it’s no longer held, so even after a person dies or their preferences change, but I lean towards rejecting that view.
The connection to personal identity is interesting, thanks for flagging that! I’d emphasize two main points in reply:
(i) While preference continuity is a component of person identity, it isn’t clear that it’s essential. Memory continuity is classically a major component, and I think it makes sense to include other personality characteristics too. We might even be able to include values in the sense of moral beliefs that could persist even while the agent goes through a period of being unable to care in the usual way about their values; they might still acknowledge, at least in an intellectual sense, that this is what they think they ought to care about. If someone maintained all of those other connections, and just temporary stopped caring about anything, I think they would still qualify as the same person. Their past self has not thereby “already died”.
(ii) re: “paternalism”, it’s worth distinguishing between acting against another’s considered preferences vs merely believing that their considered preferences don’t in fact coincide with their best interests. I don’t think the latter is “paternalistic” in any objectionable sense. I think it’s just obviously true that someone who is depressed or otherwise mentally ill may have considered preferences that fail to correspond to their best interests. (People aren’t infallible in normative matters, even concerning themselves. To claim otherwise would be an extremely strong and implausible view!)
fwiw, I also think that paternalistic actions are sometimes justifiable, most obviously in the case of literal children, or others (like the temporarily depressed!) for whom we have a strong basis to judge that the standard Millian reasons for deference do not apply.
But that isn’t really the issue here. We’re just assessing the axiological question of whether it would, as a matter of principle, be bad for the temporary depressive to die—whether we should, as mere bystanders, hope that they endure through this rough period, or that they instead find and take the means to end it all, despite the bright future that would otherwise be ahead of them.