I don’t think the discussion of the 3 cases was unnecessary, because it served the important preliminary goal of establishing what makes one state of affairs morally worse than another.
But you are trying to argue about what makes one state of affairs morally worse than another. That is what you are trying to do in the first place. So it’s not, and cannot be, preliminary. And if you started from the ground up then it would have contained something that carried force to utilitarians for instance.
If you disagree, try to sketch out a view (that isn’t blatantly logically inconsistent) where someone would have agreed with you on Amy/Susan/Bob but disagreed on the headaches.
Ok, interesting. And, just out of curiosity, you don’t consider this as biting a bullet?
How is it biting a bullet to prefer to save one person being tortured AND one person with a headache, compared to simply saving one person being tortured?
I struggle to see how anyone might find that position counterintuitive. Rather, accepting the converse choice seems like biting the bullet.
I mean there are people who have given up on the veil-of-ignorance approach specifically because they think it is morally unacceptable to not give the single person ANY chance of being saved from torture just because it comes with the additional, and relatively trivial, benefit of relieving a minor headache.
Making the other choice also gives someone no chance of being saved from torture, and it also gives someone no chance of being saved from a headache, so I don’t see what could possibly lead one to prefer it.
And merely having a “chance” of being saved is morally irrelevant. Chances are not things that exist in physical or experiential terms the way that torture and suffering do. No one gives a shit about merely having a chance of being saved; someone who had a chance of being saved and yet is not saved is no better off than someone who had no chance of being saved from the beginning. The reason that we value a chance of being saved is that it may lead to us actually being saved. We don’t sit on the mere fact of the chance and covet it as though it were something to value on its own.
1) “But you are trying to argue about what makes one state of affairs morally worse than another. That is what you are trying to do in the first place. So it’s not, and cannot be, preliminary. And if you started from the ground up then it would have contained something that carried force to utilitarians for instance.
If you disagree, try to sketch out a view (that isn’t blatantly logically inconsistent) where someone would have agreed with you on Amy/Susan/Bob but disagreed on the headaches.”
Arguing for what factors are morally relevant in determining whether one case is morally worse than another is preliminary to arguing that some specific case (i.e. Amy and Susie suffering) is morally just as bad as another specific case (i.e. Bob suffering). My 3 cases were only meant to do the former. From the 3 cases, I concluded:
That the amount of pain is a morally relevant factor in determining whether one case is morally worse than another.
That the number of instances of pain is a morally relevant factor only to the extent that they affect the amount of pain at issue. (i.e. the number of instances of pain is not morally relevant in itself).
I take that to be preliminary work. Where I really dropped the ball was in my lackluster argument for P1 (and, likewise, for my assumption in case 3). No utilitarian would have found it convincing, and thus I would not have succeeded in convincing them that the outcome in which Amy and Susie both suffer is morally just as bad as the outcome in which only Bob suffers, even if they agreed with 1. and 2., which they do.
Anyways, to the extent that you think my argument for P1 sucked to the point where it was like I was begging the question against the utilitarian, I’m happy to concede this. I have since reworked my response to Objection 1 as a result, thanks to you.
2) “How is it biting a bullet to prefer to save one person being tortured AND one person with a headache, compared to simply saving one person being tortured?
I struggle to see how anyone might find that position counterintuitive. Rather, accepting the converse choice seems like biting the bullet.”
Because you effectively deny the one person ANY CHANCE of being helped from torture SIMPLY BECAUSE you can prevent an additional minor headache—a very very very minor one—by helping the two. Anyways, a lot of people think that is pretty extreme. If you don’t think so, that’s perhaps mainly because you don’t believe WHO SUFFERS MATTERS. If that’s the case, then I would encourage you to reread my response to Objection 2, where I make the case that who suffers is of moral significance.
3) “Making the other choice also gives someone no chance of being saved from torture, and it also gives someone no chance of being saved from a headache, so I don’t see what could possibly lead one to prefer it.”
You do give each party a 50% chance of being saved by choosing to flip a coin, instead of choosing to just help one party over the other. I prefer giving a 50% chance to each party because
A) I don’t think the case in which the two would suffer involves more pain than the case in which the one would (given our discussion under Michael_S’s post),
B) I believe who suffers matters (given my response to Objection 2)
Even if you disagree with me on A), I think if you agreed with me on B), you would at least give the one person a 49% of being helped, and the other two a 51% of being helped.
It is true that once the coin has been flipped, one party still ends up suffering at the end of the day. But that does not mean that they didn’t at one point actually have a 50% of being helped.
4) “And merely having a “chance” of being saved is morally irrelevant. Chances are not things that exist in physical or experiential terms the way that torture and suffering do. No one gives a shit about merely having a chance of being saved; someone who had a chance of being saved and yet is not saved is no better off than someone who had no chance of being saved from the beginning. The reason that we value a chance of being saved is that it may lead to us actually being saved. We don’t sit on the mere fact of the chance and covet it as though it were something to value on its own.”
I agree that the only reason that we value a chance of being saved is that it may lead to us actually being saved, and in that sense, we don’t value it in itself. But I don’t get why that entails that giving each party a 50% of being saved is not what we should do.
Btw, sorry I haven’t replied to your response below brian’s discussion yet. I haven’t found the time to read that article you linked. I do plan to reply sometime soon.
Also, can you tell me how to quote someone’s text in the way that you do in your responses to me? It is much cleaner than my number listing and quotations. Thanks.
Because you effectively deny the one person ANY CHANCE of being helped from torture
Your scenario didn’t say that probabilistic strategies were a possible response, but suppose that they are. Then it’s true that, if I choose a 100% strategy, the other person has 0% chance of being saved, whereas if I choose a 99% strategy, the other person has a 1% chance of being saved. But you’ve given no reason to think that this would be any better. It is bad that one person has a 1% greater chance of torture, but it’s good that the other person has 1% less chance of torture. As long as agents simply have a preference to avoid torture, and are following the axioms of utility theory (completeness, transitivity, substitutability, decomposability, monotonicity, and continuity) then going from 0% to 1% is exactly as good as going from 99% to 100%.
SIMPLY BECAUSE you can prevent an additional minor headache—a very very very minor one—by helping the two.
That’s not true. I deny the first person any chance of being helped from torture because it denies the second person any chance of being tortured and it saves the 3rd person from an additional minor pain.
Anyways, a lot of people think that is pretty extreme.
I really don’t see it as extreme. I’m not sure that many people would.
A) I don’t think the case in which the two would suffer involves more pain than the case in which the one would (given our discussion under Michael_S’s post),
B) I believe who suffers matters (given my response to Objection 2)
First, I don’t see how either of these claims imply that the right answer is 50%. Second, for B), you seem to be simply claiming that interpersonal aggregation of utility is meaningless, rather than making any claims about particular individuals’ suffering being more or less important. The problem is that no one is claiming that anyone’s suffering will disappear or stop carrying moral force, rather we are claiming that each person’s suffering counts for a reason while two reasons pointing in favor of a course of action are stronger than one reason.
Even if you disagree with me on A), I think if you agreed with me on B), you would at least give the one person a 49% of being helped, and the other two a 51% of being helped.
Again I cannot tell where you got these numbers from.
It is true that once the coin has been flipped, one party still ends up suffering at the end of the day. But that does not mean that they didn’t at one point actually have a 50% of being helped.
But it does mean that they don’t care.
But I don’t get why that entails that giving each party a 50% of being saved is not what we should do.
If agents don’t have special preferences over the chances of the experiences that they have then they just have preferences over the experiences. Then, unless they violate the von Neumann-Morgenstern utility theorem, their expected utility is linear with the probability of getting this or that experience, as opposed to being suddenly higher merely because they had a ‘chance.’
Also, can you tell me how to quote someone’s text in the way that you do in your responses to me?
But you are trying to argue about what makes one state of affairs morally worse than another. That is what you are trying to do in the first place. So it’s not, and cannot be, preliminary. And if you started from the ground up then it would have contained something that carried force to utilitarians for instance.
If you disagree, try to sketch out a view (that isn’t blatantly logically inconsistent) where someone would have agreed with you on Amy/Susan/Bob but disagreed on the headaches.
How is it biting a bullet to prefer to save one person being tortured AND one person with a headache, compared to simply saving one person being tortured?
I struggle to see how anyone might find that position counterintuitive. Rather, accepting the converse choice seems like biting the bullet.
Making the other choice also gives someone no chance of being saved from torture, and it also gives someone no chance of being saved from a headache, so I don’t see what could possibly lead one to prefer it.
And merely having a “chance” of being saved is morally irrelevant. Chances are not things that exist in physical or experiential terms the way that torture and suffering do. No one gives a shit about merely having a chance of being saved; someone who had a chance of being saved and yet is not saved is no better off than someone who had no chance of being saved from the beginning. The reason that we value a chance of being saved is that it may lead to us actually being saved. We don’t sit on the mere fact of the chance and covet it as though it were something to value on its own.
1) “But you are trying to argue about what makes one state of affairs morally worse than another. That is what you are trying to do in the first place. So it’s not, and cannot be, preliminary. And if you started from the ground up then it would have contained something that carried force to utilitarians for instance.
If you disagree, try to sketch out a view (that isn’t blatantly logically inconsistent) where someone would have agreed with you on Amy/Susan/Bob but disagreed on the headaches.”
Arguing for what factors are morally relevant in determining whether one case is morally worse than another is preliminary to arguing that some specific case (i.e. Amy and Susie suffering) is morally just as bad as another specific case (i.e. Bob suffering). My 3 cases were only meant to do the former. From the 3 cases, I concluded:
That the amount of pain is a morally relevant factor in determining whether one case is morally worse than another.
That the number of instances of pain is a morally relevant factor only to the extent that they affect the amount of pain at issue. (i.e. the number of instances of pain is not morally relevant in itself).
I take that to be preliminary work. Where I really dropped the ball was in my lackluster argument for P1 (and, likewise, for my assumption in case 3). No utilitarian would have found it convincing, and thus I would not have succeeded in convincing them that the outcome in which Amy and Susie both suffer is morally just as bad as the outcome in which only Bob suffers, even if they agreed with 1. and 2., which they do.
Anyways, to the extent that you think my argument for P1 sucked to the point where it was like I was begging the question against the utilitarian, I’m happy to concede this. I have since reworked my response to Objection 1 as a result, thanks to you.
2) “How is it biting a bullet to prefer to save one person being tortured AND one person with a headache, compared to simply saving one person being tortured?
I struggle to see how anyone might find that position counterintuitive. Rather, accepting the converse choice seems like biting the bullet.”
Because you effectively deny the one person ANY CHANCE of being helped from torture SIMPLY BECAUSE you can prevent an additional minor headache—a very very very minor one—by helping the two. Anyways, a lot of people think that is pretty extreme. If you don’t think so, that’s perhaps mainly because you don’t believe WHO SUFFERS MATTERS. If that’s the case, then I would encourage you to reread my response to Objection 2, where I make the case that who suffers is of moral significance.
3) “Making the other choice also gives someone no chance of being saved from torture, and it also gives someone no chance of being saved from a headache, so I don’t see what could possibly lead one to prefer it.”
You do give each party a 50% chance of being saved by choosing to flip a coin, instead of choosing to just help one party over the other. I prefer giving a 50% chance to each party because
A) I don’t think the case in which the two would suffer involves more pain than the case in which the one would (given our discussion under Michael_S’s post),
B) I believe who suffers matters (given my response to Objection 2)
Even if you disagree with me on A), I think if you agreed with me on B), you would at least give the one person a 49% of being helped, and the other two a 51% of being helped.
It is true that once the coin has been flipped, one party still ends up suffering at the end of the day. But that does not mean that they didn’t at one point actually have a 50% of being helped.
4) “And merely having a “chance” of being saved is morally irrelevant. Chances are not things that exist in physical or experiential terms the way that torture and suffering do. No one gives a shit about merely having a chance of being saved; someone who had a chance of being saved and yet is not saved is no better off than someone who had no chance of being saved from the beginning. The reason that we value a chance of being saved is that it may lead to us actually being saved. We don’t sit on the mere fact of the chance and covet it as though it were something to value on its own.”
I agree that the only reason that we value a chance of being saved is that it may lead to us actually being saved, and in that sense, we don’t value it in itself. But I don’t get why that entails that giving each party a 50% of being saved is not what we should do.
Btw, sorry I haven’t replied to your response below brian’s discussion yet. I haven’t found the time to read that article you linked. I do plan to reply sometime soon.
Also, can you tell me how to quote someone’s text in the way that you do in your responses to me? It is much cleaner than my number listing and quotations. Thanks.
Your scenario didn’t say that probabilistic strategies were a possible response, but suppose that they are. Then it’s true that, if I choose a 100% strategy, the other person has 0% chance of being saved, whereas if I choose a 99% strategy, the other person has a 1% chance of being saved. But you’ve given no reason to think that this would be any better. It is bad that one person has a 1% greater chance of torture, but it’s good that the other person has 1% less chance of torture. As long as agents simply have a preference to avoid torture, and are following the axioms of utility theory (completeness, transitivity, substitutability, decomposability, monotonicity, and continuity) then going from 0% to 1% is exactly as good as going from 99% to 100%.
That’s not true. I deny the first person any chance of being helped from torture because it denies the second person any chance of being tortured and it saves the 3rd person from an additional minor pain.
I really don’t see it as extreme. I’m not sure that many people would.
First, I don’t see how either of these claims imply that the right answer is 50%. Second, for B), you seem to be simply claiming that interpersonal aggregation of utility is meaningless, rather than making any claims about particular individuals’ suffering being more or less important. The problem is that no one is claiming that anyone’s suffering will disappear or stop carrying moral force, rather we are claiming that each person’s suffering counts for a reason while two reasons pointing in favor of a course of action are stronger than one reason.
Again I cannot tell where you got these numbers from.
But it does mean that they don’t care.
If agents don’t have special preferences over the chances of the experiences that they have then they just have preferences over the experiences. Then, unless they violate the von Neumann-Morgenstern utility theorem, their expected utility is linear with the probability of getting this or that experience, as opposed to being suddenly higher merely because they had a ‘chance.’
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