However, if they anticipate trade 2 being offered after Alice is born, then I think they shouldnât make trade 1, since they know theyâll make trade 2 and end up in World 3 minus some money, which is worse than World 1 for presently existing people and necessary people before Alice is born.
I think itâs pretty unreasonable for an ethical system to:
change its mind about whether something is good or bad, based only on time elapsing, without having learned anything new (say, youâre offered trade 2, and you know that Aliceâs mother has just gone into labour, and now you want to call the hospital to find out if sheâs given birth yet? or you made trade 2 ten years ago, and it was a mistake if Alice is 8 years old now, but not if sheâs 12?)
as a consequence, act to deliberately frustrate its own future choices, so that it will be later unable to pick some option that would have seemed the best to it
I havenât come up with much of an argument beyond incredulity, but I nevertheless find myself incredulous.
(Iâm mindful that this comment is coming 2 years later and some things have happened in between. I came here by looking at the person-affecting forum wiki tag after feeling that not all of my reasons for rejecting such views were common knowledge.)
Only presentists have the problem in the first bullet with your specific example.
Thereâs a similar problem that necessitarians have if the identity of the extra person isnât decided yet, i.e. before conception. However, they do get to learn something new, i.e. the identity. If a necessitarian knew the identity ahead of time, there would be no similar problem. (And you can modify the view to be insensitive to the identity of the child by matching counterparts across possible worlds.)
The problem in the second bullet, basically against burning bridges or âresolute choiceâ, doesnât seem that big of a deal to me. You run into similar problems with Parfitâs hitchhiker and unbounded utility functions.
Maybe I can motivate this better? Say you want to have a child, but being a good parent (and ensuring high welfare for your child) seems like too much trouble and seems worse to you than not having kids, even though, conditional on having a child, it would be best.
Your options are:
No child.
Have a child, but be a meh parent. Youâre better off than in 1, and the child has a net positive but just okay life.
Have a child, but work much harder to be a good parent. Youâre worse off than in 2, but the child is much better off than in 2, and this outcome is better than 2 in a pairwise comparison.
In binary choices:
1 < 2, because 2 is better for you and no worse for your child (person-affecting).
2 < 3, impartially by assumption.
3 < 1, because 1 is better for you and no worse for your child (person-affecting).
With all three options available, Iâd opt for 1, because 2 wouldnât be impartially permissible if 3 is available, and I prefer 1 to 3. 2 is not really an option if 3 is available.
It seems okay for me to frustrate my own preference for 2 over 1 in order to avoid 3, which is even worse for me than 1. No one else is worse off for this (in a person-affecting way); the child doesnât exist to be worse off, so has no grounds for complaint. So it seems to me to be entirely my own business.
I think itâs pretty unreasonable for an ethical system to:
change its mind about whether something is good or bad, based only on time elapsing, without having learned anything new (say, youâre offered trade 2, and you know that Aliceâs mother has just gone into labour, and now you want to call the hospital to find out if sheâs given birth yet? or you made trade 2 ten years ago, and it was a mistake if Alice is 8 years old now, but not if sheâs 12?)
as a consequence, act to deliberately frustrate its own future choices, so that it will be later unable to pick some option that would have seemed the best to it
I havenât come up with much of an argument beyond incredulity, but I nevertheless find myself incredulous.
(Iâm mindful that this comment is coming 2 years later and some things have happened in between. I came here by looking at the person-affecting forum wiki tag after feeling that not all of my reasons for rejecting such views were common knowledge.)
Only presentists have the problem in the first bullet with your specific example.
Thereâs a similar problem that necessitarians have if the identity of the extra person isnât decided yet, i.e. before conception. However, they do get to learn something new, i.e. the identity. If a necessitarian knew the identity ahead of time, there would be no similar problem. (And you can modify the view to be insensitive to the identity of the child by matching counterparts across possible worlds.)
The problem in the second bullet, basically against burning bridges or âresolute choiceâ, doesnât seem that big of a deal to me. You run into similar problems with Parfitâs hitchhiker and unbounded utility functions.
Maybe I can motivate this better? Say you want to have a child, but being a good parent (and ensuring high welfare for your child) seems like too much trouble and seems worse to you than not having kids, even though, conditional on having a child, it would be best.
Your options are:
No child.
Have a child, but be a meh parent. Youâre better off than in 1, and the child has a net positive but just okay life.
Have a child, but work much harder to be a good parent. Youâre worse off than in 2, but the child is much better off than in 2, and this outcome is better than 2 in a pairwise comparison.
In binary choices:
1 < 2, because 2 is better for you and no worse for your child (person-affecting).
2 < 3, impartially by assumption.
3 < 1, because 1 is better for you and no worse for your child (person-affecting).
With all three options available, Iâd opt for 1, because 2 wouldnât be impartially permissible if 3 is available, and I prefer 1 to 3. 2 is not really an option if 3 is available.
It seems okay for me to frustrate my own preference for 2 over 1 in order to avoid 3, which is even worse for me than 1. No one else is worse off for this (in a person-affecting way); the child doesnât exist to be worse off, so has no grounds for complaint. So it seems to me to be entirely my own business.