If I understand them correctly, wide person-affecting views are not always indifferent to creating happy people, so they’re outside the scope of what the original post was discussing.
I’m not sure the author intended them to be outside the scope of the post. When people say they’re indifferent to creating happy people, they could just mean relative to not creating them at all, not relative to creating people who would be less happy. This is what I usually have in mind.
Fair about preferring simpler views wrt Relation R. I don’t think you’re rationally required to give much weight to simplicity, though, but you can do so.
On the example, a transitive view violating IIA could rank B<A, B<C and A~C when all three options are available. When only B and C are available, a symmetric person-affecting view (or an asymmetric person-affecting view, but with Bob’s life not net negative in B) would rank B~C (or B and C are incomparable), but that doesn’t lead to intransitivity within any option set, since {A, B, C} and {B, C} are different option sets, with different transitive orders on them.
Another possibility I forgot to mention in my first reply is incomparability. Rather than being indifferent in questions of creation, you might just take the options to be incomparable, and any option from a set of mutually incomparable options could be permissible.
Thank you both. Yes, what Michael wrote here below is what I meant (I thought it was obvious but maybe it’s not):
”When people say they’re indifferent to creating happy people, they could just mean relative to not creating them at all, not relative to creating people who would be less happy. This is what I usually have in mind.”
Good points, and thanks for the example! That all seems right. I’ve been assuming that it didn’t matter whether the option sets were all available at once, but now I see that amounts to assuming IIA.
I’m not sure the author intended them to be outside the scope of the post. When people say they’re indifferent to creating happy people, they could just mean relative to not creating them at all, not relative to creating people who would be less happy. This is what I usually have in mind.
Fair about preferring simpler views wrt Relation R. I don’t think you’re rationally required to give much weight to simplicity, though, but you can do so.
On the example, a transitive view violating IIA could rank B<A, B<C and A~C when all three options are available. When only B and C are available, a symmetric person-affecting view (or an asymmetric person-affecting view, but with Bob’s life not net negative in B) would rank B~C (or B and C are incomparable), but that doesn’t lead to intransitivity within any option set, since {A, B, C} and {B, C} are different option sets, with different transitive orders on them.
Another possibility I forgot to mention in my first reply is incomparability. Rather than being indifferent in questions of creation, you might just take the options to be incomparable, and any option from a set of mutually incomparable options could be permissible.
Thank you both. Yes, what Michael wrote here below is what I meant (I thought it was obvious but maybe it’s not):
”When people say they’re indifferent to creating happy people, they could just mean relative to not creating them at all, not relative to creating people who would be less happy. This is what I usually have in mind.”
Good points, and thanks for the example! That all seems right. I’ve been assuming that it didn’t matter whether the option sets were all available at once, but now I see that amounts to assuming IIA.