The person who would have been born if my parents had had sex five seconds later than they did when they conceived me—call him “Justin”—is not an actual person. He is a merely possible person. He does not actually exist any more than Sherlock Holmes actually exists. Of course, if my parents had had sex five seconds later, then he would be an actual person, and I would be the merely possible person. But they did not, so he is not an actual person. And accordingly my parents did not negatively affect any actual person by failing to conceive Justin, because Justin is not actual.
Similarly, if a nuclear war kills everyone, then there are no actual future people. They are merely possible people—just like all of the infinitely many possible people who would have existed in all the possible futures that wouldn’t have occurred anyway would have been merely possible people regardless of whether the war happened. None of them actually exist, just like Sherlock Holmes doesn’t exist. Of course, if the nuclear war had not occurred, then they would be born and would be actual people. But it did happen, so they are not actual people. And accordingly the nuclear war does not negatively affect any actual future person, because the future people (given that, actually, there are no future people) are not actual.
I think what you want to say is that you can negatively affect people who, actually, are merely possible by preventing them from coming into existence, and for that reason you think “person-affecting view” is an inaccurate term. That’s a view you can take. But the crux is not whether future people are actual people (everyone agrees they are, if they actually exist at some point) and anyway this is not really the way to figure out what Parfit thought about longtermism.
This is utter nonsense. Of course your parents choice to have sex when they did rather than at some other time benefited you and hurt the other child they could have had. Of course a nuclear war that prevents a future person from existing harms that future person. This is obvious. And this is a central premise of longtermism. If you are right that Parfit coined the term, and he was not an advocate of person-affecting views, then the only conclusion I can draw is that he had an incredibly poor ability to think about the rhetorical implications of his language choices. That is actually pretty plausible for a philosopher now that I think about it. But even if this is the case, it is a pretty strong mark against counting Parfit as a godfather of longtermism. And it is a linguistic choice that we, ad advocates of longtermism need to correct every time we encounter it. So-called person-affecting views are not the views that consider effects on persons generally, they are the misnamed views that consider effects on an arbitrary subset of people, and we need to make that point every time this language of person-affecting views is brought up.
I think your stridency outpaces your understanding of the issue in such a way that continuing the conversation is not likely to be useful. So I will stop after this.
Your original claim was that Parfit “thinks future people are somehow not actual people.” That is wrong. What he thinks is that people who are not actual (=do not, at any point, exist in the actual world) are not actually people. (Justin is not a human being. Human beings, among other things, have DNA, and Justin does not (actually) have any DNA. Justin only possibly has DNA and is only possibly a human being. So, too, Justin is not a person—he is only possibly a person. Anyway, that is the dominant way of thinking about this in analytic philosophy.) So, on this way of thinking, person-affecting views do not restrict themselves to an arbitrary subset of people, because merely possible people are not people. You take issue with this, which some people do, though you do not seem aware of the metaphysical issues your view raises, and anyway it doesn’t seem true to me that your view is obvious. Parfit’s takeaway from all this, very roughly, is that sometimes you have an obligation to make the world better even though failing to do so would not harm any particular person, whereas you want to say that in those cases the obligation is because failing to do so would harm merely possible people. I think these views will wind up being equivalent in their practical recommendations.
You also want to say that calling them “person-affecting views” is “a pretty strong mark against counting Parfit as a godfather of longtermism.” To me, the way to determine whether he is a godfather of longtermism is to ask whether he was a primary originator and defender of the ideas underpinning longtermism, not to look at what he named a different view.
And this, again, is just plane false, at least in the morally relevant senses of these words.
I will admit that my initial statement was imprecise, because I was not attempting to be philosophically rigorous. You seem to be focusing in on the word “actual”, which was a clumsy word choice on my part, because “actual” is not in the phrase “person affecting views”. Perhaps what I should have said is that Parfit seems to think that possible people are somehow not people with moral interests.
But at the end of the day, I’m not concerned with what academic philosophers think. I’m interested in morality and persuasion, not philosophy. It may be that his practical recommendations are similar to mine, but if his rhetorical choices undermine those recommendations, as I believe they do, that does not make him a friend, much less a godfather of longermism. If he wasn’t capable of thinking about the rhetorical implications of his linguistic choices, then he should not have started commenting on morality at all.
You seem to be making an implicit assumption that longtermism originated in philosophical literature, and that therefor whoever first put an idea in the philosophical literature is the originator of that idea. I call bullshit on that. These are not complicated ideas that first arose amongst philosophers. These are relatively simple ideas that I’m sure many people had thought before anyone thought to write them down. One of the things I hate most about philosophers is their tendency to claim dominion over ideas just because they wrote long and pointless tomes about them.
The person who would have been born if my parents had had sex five seconds later than they did when they conceived me—call him “Justin”—is not an actual person. He is a merely possible person. He does not actually exist any more than Sherlock Holmes actually exists. Of course, if my parents had had sex five seconds later, then he would be an actual person, and I would be the merely possible person. But they did not, so he is not an actual person. And accordingly my parents did not negatively affect any actual person by failing to conceive Justin, because Justin is not actual.
Similarly, if a nuclear war kills everyone, then there are no actual future people. They are merely possible people—just like all of the infinitely many possible people who would have existed in all the possible futures that wouldn’t have occurred anyway would have been merely possible people regardless of whether the war happened. None of them actually exist, just like Sherlock Holmes doesn’t exist. Of course, if the nuclear war had not occurred, then they would be born and would be actual people. But it did happen, so they are not actual people. And accordingly the nuclear war does not negatively affect any actual future person, because the future people (given that, actually, there are no future people) are not actual.
I think what you want to say is that you can negatively affect people who, actually, are merely possible by preventing them from coming into existence, and for that reason you think “person-affecting view” is an inaccurate term. That’s a view you can take. But the crux is not whether future people are actual people (everyone agrees they are, if they actually exist at some point) and anyway this is not really the way to figure out what Parfit thought about longtermism.
This is utter nonsense. Of course your parents choice to have sex when they did rather than at some other time benefited you and hurt the other child they could have had. Of course a nuclear war that prevents a future person from existing harms that future person. This is obvious. And this is a central premise of longtermism. If you are right that Parfit coined the term, and he was not an advocate of person-affecting views, then the only conclusion I can draw is that he had an incredibly poor ability to think about the rhetorical implications of his language choices. That is actually pretty plausible for a philosopher now that I think about it. But even if this is the case, it is a pretty strong mark against counting Parfit as a godfather of longtermism. And it is a linguistic choice that we, ad advocates of longtermism need to correct every time we encounter it. So-called person-affecting views are not the views that consider effects on persons generally, they are the misnamed views that consider effects on an arbitrary subset of people, and we need to make that point every time this language of person-affecting views is brought up.
I think your stridency outpaces your understanding of the issue in such a way that continuing the conversation is not likely to be useful. So I will stop after this.
Your original claim was that Parfit “thinks future people are somehow not actual people.” That is wrong. What he thinks is that people who are not actual (=do not, at any point, exist in the actual world) are not actually people. (Justin is not a human being. Human beings, among other things, have DNA, and Justin does not (actually) have any DNA. Justin only possibly has DNA and is only possibly a human being. So, too, Justin is not a person—he is only possibly a person. Anyway, that is the dominant way of thinking about this in analytic philosophy.) So, on this way of thinking, person-affecting views do not restrict themselves to an arbitrary subset of people, because merely possible people are not people. You take issue with this, which some people do, though you do not seem aware of the metaphysical issues your view raises, and anyway it doesn’t seem true to me that your view is obvious. Parfit’s takeaway from all this, very roughly, is that sometimes you have an obligation to make the world better even though failing to do so would not harm any particular person, whereas you want to say that in those cases the obligation is because failing to do so would harm merely possible people. I think these views will wind up being equivalent in their practical recommendations.
You also want to say that calling them “person-affecting views” is “a pretty strong mark against counting Parfit as a godfather of longtermism.” To me, the way to determine whether he is a godfather of longtermism is to ask whether he was a primary originator and defender of the ideas underpinning longtermism, not to look at what he named a different view.
And this, again, is just plane false, at least in the morally relevant senses of these words.
I will admit that my initial statement was imprecise, because I was not attempting to be philosophically rigorous. You seem to be focusing in on the word “actual”, which was a clumsy word choice on my part, because “actual” is not in the phrase “person affecting views”. Perhaps what I should have said is that Parfit seems to think that possible people are somehow not people with moral interests.
But at the end of the day, I’m not concerned with what academic philosophers think. I’m interested in morality and persuasion, not philosophy. It may be that his practical recommendations are similar to mine, but if his rhetorical choices undermine those recommendations, as I believe they do, that does not make him a friend, much less a godfather of longermism. If he wasn’t capable of thinking about the rhetorical implications of his linguistic choices, then he should not have started commenting on morality at all.
You seem to be making an implicit assumption that longtermism originated in philosophical literature, and that therefor whoever first put an idea in the philosophical literature is the originator of that idea. I call bullshit on that. These are not complicated ideas that first arose amongst philosophers. These are relatively simple ideas that I’m sure many people had thought before anyone thought to write them down. One of the things I hate most about philosophers is their tendency to claim dominion over ideas just because they wrote long and pointless tomes about them.