I accept the first premise for the same reason as I’d accept the second premise—positive or negative wellbeing, is axiomatically, better or worse than no experience at all.
I don’t need to reason as to why having happy feelings is better than feeling neutral—it just is in an immediate sense.
I struggle to understand why you don’t believe that there should be symmetry for positive and negative experiences? I understand that it may be easier to achieve higher magnitude negative feelings (e.g. easier to torture someone than make them ecstatic), but given symmetric experiences why don’t they have the same relevance with respect to not-existing?
I do accept that a pleasurable experience is better than a neutral experience; I’m not a negative Utilitarian. I just don’t think that pleasurable experiences are preferable to nonexistence. For example, I would prefer a universe with a million happy people to a universe with a million neutral people. But, I’d be ambivalent about choosing between a universe with a million happy people and a universe with no people. (I would prefer a universe with no people to a universe with a million suffering people.)
I don’t have a “good” reason for treating positive and negative experiences asymmetrically when it comes to nonexistence—it’s simply my intuition.
I accept the first premise for the same reason as I’d accept the second premise—positive or negative wellbeing, is axiomatically, better or worse than no experience at all.
I don’t need to reason as to why having happy feelings is better than feeling neutral—it just is in an immediate sense.
I struggle to understand why you don’t believe that there should be symmetry for positive and negative experiences? I understand that it may be easier to achieve higher magnitude negative feelings (e.g. easier to torture someone than make them ecstatic), but given symmetric experiences why don’t they have the same relevance with respect to not-existing?
I do accept that a pleasurable experience is better than a neutral experience; I’m not a negative Utilitarian. I just don’t think that pleasurable experiences are preferable to nonexistence. For example, I would prefer a universe with a million happy people to a universe with a million neutral people. But, I’d be ambivalent about choosing between a universe with a million happy people and a universe with no people. (I would prefer a universe with no people to a universe with a million suffering people.)
I don’t have a “good” reason for treating positive and negative experiences asymmetrically when it comes to nonexistence—it’s simply my intuition.