Adding another answer, although I think it’s basically pretty similar to my first.
I can imagine myself behind a veil of ignorance, comparing the two populations, even on a small scale, e.g. 2 vs 3 people. In the smaller population with higher average welfare, compared to the larger one with lower average welfare, I imagine myself either
as having higher welfare and finding that better, or
never existing at all and not caring about that fact, because I wouldn’t be around to ever care.
So, overall, the smaller population seems better.
I can make it more concrete, too: optimal family size. A small-scale RC could imply that the optimal family size is larger than the parents and older siblings would prefer (ignoring indirect concerns), and so the parents should have another child even if it means they and their existing children would be worse off and would regret it. That seems wrong to me, because if those extra children are not born, they won’t be wronged/worse off, but others will be worse off than otherwise.
In the long run, everyone would become contingent people, too, but then you can apply the same kind of veil of ignorance intuition pump. People can still think a world where family sizes are smaller would have been better, even if they know they wouldn’t have personally existed, since they imagine themselves either
as someone else (a “counterpart”) in that other world, and being better off, or
not existing at all (as an “extra” person) in their own world, which doesn’t bother them, since they wouldn’t have ever been around in the other world to be bothered.
Naively, at least, this seems to have illiberal implications for contraceptives, abortion, etc..
There’s also an average utilitarian veil of ignorance intuition pump: imagine yourself as a random person in each of the possible worlds, and notice that your welfare would be higher in expectation in the world with fewer people, and that seems better. (I personally distrust this intuition pump, since average utilitarianism has other implications that seem very wrong to me.)
Thanks. We of course run here into the standard total-vs-person-affecting dispute, namely that I would prefer to exist with positive welfare than not exist, and all this “not around to care” stuff feels like a very odd way to compare scenarios to me.
Adding another answer, although I think it’s basically pretty similar to my first.
I can imagine myself behind a veil of ignorance, comparing the two populations, even on a small scale, e.g. 2 vs 3 people. In the smaller population with higher average welfare, compared to the larger one with lower average welfare, I imagine myself either
as having higher welfare and finding that better, or
never existing at all and not caring about that fact, because I wouldn’t be around to ever care.
So, overall, the smaller population seems better.
I can make it more concrete, too: optimal family size. A small-scale RC could imply that the optimal family size is larger than the parents and older siblings would prefer (ignoring indirect concerns), and so the parents should have another child even if it means they and their existing children would be worse off and would regret it. That seems wrong to me, because if those extra children are not born, they won’t be wronged/worse off, but others will be worse off than otherwise.
In the long run, everyone would become contingent people, too, but then you can apply the same kind of veil of ignorance intuition pump. People can still think a world where family sizes are smaller would have been better, even if they know they wouldn’t have personally existed, since they imagine themselves either
as someone else (a “counterpart”) in that other world, and being better off, or
not existing at all (as an “extra” person) in their own world, which doesn’t bother them, since they wouldn’t have ever been around in the other world to be bothered.
Naively, at least, this seems to have illiberal implications for contraceptives, abortion, etc..
There’s also an average utilitarian veil of ignorance intuition pump: imagine yourself as a random person in each of the possible worlds, and notice that your welfare would be higher in expectation in the world with fewer people, and that seems better. (I personally distrust this intuition pump, since average utilitarianism has other implications that seem very wrong to me.)
Thanks. We of course run here into the standard total-vs-person-affecting dispute, namely that I would prefer to exist with positive welfare than not exist, and all this “not around to care” stuff feels like a very odd way to compare scenarios to me.