I wonder if people differ in how they interpret the all else being equal assumption. In the linked post, I suggest that we make sure to properly respect that (radically unrealistic) assumption, and think of the population-ethics lives as being isolated Matrix-lives that never interact with each other.
Thus, the standard framework of population ethics causes me to feel very differently about the addition of isolated happy lives (that never make any difference for others) vs. relational happy lives (that can and do make a difference).
When we give insufficient respect to the all else being equal assumption, I suspect that our practical intuitions about the overall value of (new) lives may be tracking not only their subjective experience, but also their relational roles, because the roles are arguably what our practical intuitions have been primarily adapted to be tracking. (Think of the intuitively best life you know. Do you think more about its experience, or its roles for the experience of others? What I find counterintuitive is that population ethics would ask us to completely ignore the roles.)
I wonder if people differ in how they interpret the all else being equal assumption. In the linked post, I suggest that we make sure to properly respect that (radically unrealistic) assumption, and think of the population-ethics lives as being isolated Matrix-lives that never interact with each other.
Thus, the standard framework of population ethics causes me to feel very differently about the addition of isolated happy lives (that never make any difference for others) vs. relational happy lives (that can and do make a difference).
When we give insufficient respect to the all else being equal assumption, I suspect that our practical intuitions about the overall value of (new) lives may be tracking not only their subjective experience, but also their relational roles, because the roles are arguably what our practical intuitions have been primarily adapted to be tracking. (Think of the intuitively best life you know. Do you think more about its experience, or its roles for the experience of others? What I find counterintuitive is that population ethics would ask us to completely ignore the roles.)