As someone who leans deontological these days (and contractualist in particular), I really appreciated this post!
Honestly quite baffled by the original argument, and it definitely makes me less inclined towards longtermist philosophy and the thinking associated with it. To me it’s clear that identity-causing acts do not cause harm in a way that one is responsible for it, in the same way that unintentionally delaying a robbery does not cause harm in a way that one is responsible for it, so the paralysis argument feels extremely weird to me.
I think there are good arguments for doing a lot more than we currently do to prevent the foreseeable suffering of future people, but this is not one of those arguments, much less an argument for something like strong longtermism.
As someone who leans deontological these days (and contractualist in particular), I really appreciated this post!
Honestly quite baffled by the original argument, and it definitely makes me less inclined towards longtermist philosophy and the thinking associated with it. To me it’s clear that identity-causing acts do not cause harm in a way that one is responsible for it, in the same way that unintentionally delaying a robbery does not cause harm in a way that one is responsible for it, so the paralysis argument feels extremely weird to me.
I think there are good arguments for doing a lot more than we currently do to prevent the foreseeable suffering of future people, but this is not one of those arguments, much less an argument for something like strong longtermism.