With respect to domination, I just mean that MEC could still give more weight to their recommendations over those of supreme soteriology, because their infinities could compete with those of supreme soteriology (I don’t mean anything like stochastic dominance or Pareto improvement). I don’t think we’re required to take for granted that salvation is better than everything else across all theories under a universal scale account. Other theories will have other plausible candidates that should compete. Some may even directly refer to salvation and make claims that other things are better.
I agree that lexical amplifications of theories that don’t have infinities do seem ad hoc, but I don’t think we should assign them 0 probability. (Similarly, we shouldn’t assign 0 probability to other lexical views.) So, it’s not obvious that we should bet on supreme soteriology, until we also check the plausibility of and weigh other infinities. Of course, I still think this “solution” is unsatisfying and I think the principled objection of fanaticism still holds, even if it turns out not to hold in practice.
I would say I don’t know if MEC will deliver sufficiently implausible verdicts to sufficiently many agents without checking more closely given other possible infinities, but I think if it does give plausible verdicts most of the time (or even almost all of the time), this is mostly by luck and too contingent on our current circumstances and beliefs. Giving the right answers for the wrong reasons is still deeply unsatisfying.
Really interesting! Do you have anything in mind for goods identified by competing ethical theories that you think would compete with, e.g., the beatific vision for the Christian or nirvana for the Buddhist? (A clear example here would be a valuable update for me.)
+1 on your comment that ‘Giving the right answers for the wrong reasons is still deeply unsatisfying.’ I think this is an under appreciated part of ethical theorizing and would even take a stronger methodological stance: getting the right explanatory answers (why we ought to do what we ought to) is just as important as getting the right extensional answers (what we ought to do). If an ethical theory gives you the wrong explanation, it’s not the right ethical theory!
You could have infinitely many (and, in principle, even more than countably many) instances of finite goods in an infinite universe/multiverse, or lexically dominating pleasures (e.g. Mill’s higher pleasures), or just set a lexical threshold for positive goods or good lives. Any of the goods in objective list theories could be claimed to be infinitely valuable. Some people think life is infinitely valuable, although often also on religious grounds.
I’d interpret supreme soteriology as claiming finite amounts of Earthly (or non-Heavenly) goods have merely finite value while salvation has infinite value, but this doesn’t extend to infinite amounts of Earthly goods, and other theories can simply reject the claim that all individual instances of Earthly goods have merely finite value.
I don’t claim that these other possible infinities have much to defend them, but I think this applies to supreme soteriology, too. The history and number of people believing supreme soteriology only very slightly adds to its plausibility, because we have good reasons to believe the believers are mistaken in their beliefs and the reasons for their beliefs aren’t much supported by evidence, but anything that’s plausibly a good at all could be about as plausible as a candidate for generating infinite good, and maybe even more plausible, depending on your views. There are many such candidates, so they could add up together to outweigh supreme soteriology if they correlate, or some of them could just be much easier to achieve.
I agree with most of this.
With respect to domination, I just mean that MEC could still give more weight to their recommendations over those of supreme soteriology, because their infinities could compete with those of supreme soteriology (I don’t mean anything like stochastic dominance or Pareto improvement). I don’t think we’re required to take for granted that salvation is better than everything else across all theories under a universal scale account. Other theories will have other plausible candidates that should compete. Some may even directly refer to salvation and make claims that other things are better.
I agree that lexical amplifications of theories that don’t have infinities do seem ad hoc, but I don’t think we should assign them 0 probability. (Similarly, we shouldn’t assign 0 probability to other lexical views.) So, it’s not obvious that we should bet on supreme soteriology, until we also check the plausibility of and weigh other infinities. Of course, I still think this “solution” is unsatisfying and I think the principled objection of fanaticism still holds, even if it turns out not to hold in practice.
I would say I don’t know if MEC will deliver sufficiently implausible verdicts to sufficiently many agents without checking more closely given other possible infinities, but I think if it does give plausible verdicts most of the time (or even almost all of the time), this is mostly by luck and too contingent on our current circumstances and beliefs. Giving the right answers for the wrong reasons is still deeply unsatisfying.
Really interesting! Do you have anything in mind for goods identified by competing ethical theories that you think would compete with, e.g., the beatific vision for the Christian or nirvana for the Buddhist? (A clear example here would be a valuable update for me.)
+1 on your comment that ‘Giving the right answers for the wrong reasons is still deeply unsatisfying.’ I think this is an under appreciated part of ethical theorizing and would even take a stronger methodological stance: getting the right explanatory answers (why we ought to do what we ought to) is just as important as getting the right extensional answers (what we ought to do). If an ethical theory gives you the wrong explanation, it’s not the right ethical theory!
You could have infinitely many (and, in principle, even more than countably many) instances of finite goods in an infinite universe/multiverse, or lexically dominating pleasures (e.g. Mill’s higher pleasures), or just set a lexical threshold for positive goods or good lives. Any of the goods in objective list theories could be claimed to be infinitely valuable. Some people think life is infinitely valuable, although often also on religious grounds.
I’d interpret supreme soteriology as claiming finite amounts of Earthly (or non-Heavenly) goods have merely finite value while salvation has infinite value, but this doesn’t extend to infinite amounts of Earthly goods, and other theories can simply reject the claim that all individual instances of Earthly goods have merely finite value.
I don’t claim that these other possible infinities have much to defend them, but I think this applies to supreme soteriology, too. The history and number of people believing supreme soteriology only very slightly adds to its plausibility, because we have good reasons to believe the believers are mistaken in their beliefs and the reasons for their beliefs aren’t much supported by evidence, but anything that’s plausibly a good at all could be about as plausible as a candidate for generating infinite good, and maybe even more plausible, depending on your views. There are many such candidates, so they could add up together to outweigh supreme soteriology if they correlate, or some of them could just be much easier to achieve.