I enjoyed the McMahan/Parfit move of saying things are ‘good for’ without being ‘better for’. I think it’s clever, but I don’t buy it. It seems like an linguistic sleight of hand and I don’t really understand how it works.
I agree we have preferences over existing, but, well, so what? The fact I do or would have a preference does not automatically reveal what the axiological facts are. It’s hard to know, even if we grant this, how it extends to not yet existing people. A present non-existing possible person doesn’t have any preference, including whether to exist. We might suppose that, if they could have preferences in their non-existent state, they would have a preference to exist, but this just seems arcane. What sort of hypothetical non-existent entity are we channeling here?
There’s much the same to be said about being glad. I think I’m glad to be alive. But, again, so what? Who said my psychological attitudes generate or reveal axiological facts? Note, we can ask “I am glad, but am I justified in being glad?” and then we have to have the debates about comparativism etc. we’ve been having.
I understand that someone might think this point about understanding the betterness relation is somehow linguistic obscurantism, but it’s not supposed to be. I think I understand how the ‘better for’ relationship works and, because of this, I don’t see how comparativism works. If you say “existence is better for me than non-existence”, I think I am entitled to ask “okay, and what do you mean by ‘better for’?”
Re your last point, I’m not sure I understand your objective: you are trying to say something is intuitive when others say it isn’t? But aren’t our intuitions, well, intuitive, and it’s just a psychological matter of fact whether we have them or not? I assume the neutrality intuition is intuitive for some and not others. It’s a further question whether, on reflection, that intuition is plausible and that’s the issue I was aiming to engage with.
Hello Joe!
I enjoyed the McMahan/Parfit move of saying things are ‘good for’ without being ‘better for’. I think it’s clever, but I don’t buy it. It seems like an linguistic sleight of hand and I don’t really understand how it works.
I agree we have preferences over existing, but, well, so what? The fact I do or would have a preference does not automatically reveal what the axiological facts are. It’s hard to know, even if we grant this, how it extends to not yet existing people. A present non-existing possible person doesn’t have any preference, including whether to exist. We might suppose that, if they could have preferences in their non-existent state, they would have a preference to exist, but this just seems arcane. What sort of hypothetical non-existent entity are we channeling here?
There’s much the same to be said about being glad. I think I’m glad to be alive. But, again, so what? Who said my psychological attitudes generate or reveal axiological facts? Note, we can ask “I am glad, but am I justified in being glad?” and then we have to have the debates about comparativism etc. we’ve been having.
I understand that someone might think this point about understanding the betterness relation is somehow linguistic obscurantism, but it’s not supposed to be. I think I understand how the ‘better for’ relationship works and, because of this, I don’t see how comparativism works. If you say “existence is better for me than non-existence”, I think I am entitled to ask “okay, and what do you mean by ‘better for’?”
Re your last point, I’m not sure I understand your objective: you are trying to say something is intuitive when others say it isn’t? But aren’t our intuitions, well, intuitive, and it’s just a psychological matter of fact whether we have them or not? I assume the neutrality intuition is intuitive for some and not others. It’s a further question whether, on reflection, that intuition is plausible and that’s the issue I was aiming to engage with.