MichaelStJules comments on MichaelStJules’s Quick takes

[MichaelStJules]

If you’re a consequentialist and you think

1. each individual can sometimes sacrifice some $A$ for more $B$ for themself,

2. we should be impartial, and

3. transitivity and the independence of irrelevant alternatives hold,

then it’s sometimes ethical to sacrifice $A$ from one individual for more $B$ for another. This isn’t too surprising, but let’s look at the argument, which is pretty simple, and discuss some examples.

$Proof.$ Consider the following three options, with two individuals, $x$ and $y$, and $a^{+}>a$ amounts of $A$, $b^{+}>b$ amounts of $B$:

i. $x:(a:A,b^{+}:B)$, $y:(a:A,b:B)$ , read as $x$ has amount $a$ of $A$ and amount $b^{+}$ of $B$, while $y$ has amount $a$ of $A$ and amount $b$ of $B$.

ii. $x:(a^{+}:A,b:B)$, $y:(a:A,b:B)$

iii. $x:(a:A,b:B)$, $y:(a^{+}:A,b:B)$

Here we have i > ii by 1 for some $a$, $a^{+}$, $b$ and $b^{+}$, and ii = iii by impartiality, so together i > iii by 3, and we sacrifice some $A$ from $y$ for some $B$ from for $x$. $QED$

Remark: I did choose the amounts of $A$ and $B$ pretty specifically in this argument to match in certain ways. With continuous personal tradeoffs between $A$ and $B$, and continuous tradeoffs between amounts of $A$ between different individuals at all base levels of $A$, I think this should force continuous tradeoffs between one individual’s amount of $A$ and another’s amount of $B$. We can omit the impartiality assumption in this case.

Possible examples:

• $A=$ hedonistic welfare, $B=$ some non-hedonistic values
• $A=$ experiential values, $B=$ some non-experiential values

• $A=$ absence or negative of suffering, $B=$ knowing the truth, for its own sake (not its instrumental value)

• $A=$ absence or negative of suffering, $B=$ pleasure

• $A=$ absence or negative of suffering, $B=$ anything else that could be good

• $A=$ absence or negative of intense suffering, $B=$ absence or negative of mild suffering

In particular, if you’d be willing to endure torture for some other good, you should be willing to allow others to be tortured for you to get more of that good.

I imagine people will take this either way, e.g. some will accept that it’s actually okay to let some be tortured for some other kind of benefit to different people, and others will accept that nothing can compensate them for torture. I fall into the latter camp.

Others might also reject the independence of irrelevant alternatives or transitivity, or their “spirit”, e.g. by individuating options to option sets. I’m pretty undecided about independence these days.