It depends on the formulation. I donât find Parfitâs version of the RC, where the people with muzak-and-potatoes lives ânever suffer,â repugnant. But according to total (symmetric) utilitarianism, that RC is morally equivalent to another version, which I find highly repugnant. Imagine (A) as large and blissful a utopia as you like. Now imagine (Z) a world where many more people than in this utopia each have the following life: for a million years, they endure constant, unbearable torture. After that, they eat potatoes and listen to muzak peacefully for a sufficiently large number of years.
I just donât see how the latter experiences, no matter how many of them, could be considered morally significant in a way that outweighs the torture. You can chalk this up to scope neglect if you want, but (1) my intuitions are definitely not scope-neglectful when comparing suffering to suffering, and (2) I have the same intuition about milder cases where the amount of happiness a classical utilitarian would (probably) accept as outweighing is practically imaginable. e.g. Each person is born experiencing 1 day of depression, then eats potatoes for a normal human lifespan (~30,000 days).
It depends on the formulation. I donât find Parfitâs version of the RC, where the people with muzak-and-potatoes lives ânever suffer,â repugnant. But according to total (symmetric) utilitarianism, that RC is morally equivalent to another version, which I find highly repugnant. Imagine (A) as large and blissful a utopia as you like. Now imagine (Z) a world where many more people than in this utopia each have the following life: for a million years, they endure constant, unbearable torture. After that, they eat potatoes and listen to muzak peacefully for a sufficiently large number of years.
I just donât see how the latter experiences, no matter how many of them, could be considered morally significant in a way that outweighs the torture. You can chalk this up to scope neglect if you want, but (1) my intuitions are definitely not scope-neglectful when comparing suffering to suffering, and (2) I have the same intuition about milder cases where the amount of happiness a classical utilitarian would (probably) accept as outweighing is practically imaginable. e.g. Each person is born experiencing 1 day of depression, then eats potatoes for a normal human lifespan (~30,000 days).