Thanks! I think I see how these values are contingent in the sense that, say, you can’t have human relationships without humans. Are you saying they’re also contingent in the sense that (*) creating new lives with these things has no value? That’s very unintuitive to me. If “the good life” is significantly more valuable than a meh life, and a meh life is just as valuable as nonexistence, doesn’t it follow that a flourishing life is significantly more valuable than nonexistence?
(In other words, “objective list” theories of well-being (if they hold some lives to be better than neutral) + transitivity seem to imply that creating good lives is possible and valuable, which implies (*) is false. People with these theories of well-being could avoid that conclusion by (a) rejecting that some lives are better than neutral, or (b) by rejecting transitivity. Do they?)
I mostly meant to say that someone who otherwise rejects totalism would agree to (*), so as to emphasize that these diverse values are really tied to our position on the value of good lives (whether good = virtuous or pleasurable or whatever).
Similarly, I think the transitivity issue has less to do with our theory of wellbeing (what counts as a good life) and more to do with our theory of population ethics. As to how we can resolve this apparent issue, there are several things we could say. We could (as I think Larry Temkin and others have done) agree with (b), maintaining that ‘better than’ or ‘more valuable than’ is not a transitive relation. Alternatively, we could adopt a sort of “tethered good approach” (following Christine Korsgaard), where we maintain that claims like “A is better/more valuable than B” are only meaningful insofar as they are reducible to claims like “A is better/more valuable than B for person P.” In that case, we might deny that “a meh life is just as valuable as [or more/less valuable than] nonexistence ” is meaningful, since there’s no one for whom it is more valuable (assuming we reject comparativism, the view that things can be better or worse for merely possible persons). Michael St. Jules is probably aware of better ways this could be resolved. In general, I think that a lot of this stuff is tricky and our inability to find a solution right now to theoretical puzzles is not always a good reason to abandon a view.
Hm, I can’t wrap my head around rejecting transitivity.
we could adopt a sort of “tethered good approach” (following Christine Korsgaard), where we maintain that claims like “A is better/more valuable than B” are only meaningful insofar as they are reducible to claims like “A is better/more valuable than B for person P.”
Does this imply that bringing tortured lives into existence is morally neutral? I find that very implausible. (You could get out of that conclusion by claiming an asymmetry, but I haven’t seen reasons to think that people with objective list theories of welfare buy into that.) This view also seems suspiciously committed to sketchy notions of personhood.
Yeah I’m not totally sure what it implies. For consequentialists, we could say that bringing the life into existence is itself morally neutral; but once the life exists, we have reason to end it (since the life is bad for that person, although we’d have to make further sense of that claim). Deontologists could just say that there is a constraint against bringing into existence tortured lives, but this isn’t because of the life’s contribution to some “total goodness” of the world. Presumably we’d want some further explanation for why this constraint should exist. Maybe such an action involves an impermissible attitude of callous disregard for life or something like that. It seems like there are many parameters we could vary but that might seem too ad hoc.
Again, I haven’t actually read this, but this article discusses intransitivity in asymmetric person-affecting views, i.e. I think in the language you used: The value of pleasure is contingent in the sense that creating new lives with pleasure has no value. But the disvalue of pain is not contingent in this way. I think you should be able to directly apply that to other object-list theories that you discuss instead of just hedonistic (pleasure-pain) ones.
An alternative way to deal with intransitivity is to say that not existing and any life are incomparable. This gives you the unfortunate situation that you can’t straightforwardly compare different worlds with different population sizes. I don’t know enough about the literature to say how people deal with this. I think there’s some long work in the works that’s trying to make this version work and that also tries to make “creating new suffering people is bad” work at the same time.
I think some people probably do think that they are comparable but reject that some lives are better than neutral. I expect that that’s rarer though?
That’s very unintuitive to me. If “the good life” is significantly more valuable than a meh life, and a meh life is just as valuable as nonexistence, doesn’t it follow that a flourishing life is significantly more valuable than nonexistence?
Under the asymmetry, any life is at most as valuable as nonexistence, and depending on the particular view of the asymmetry, may be as good only when faced with particular sets of options.
If you can bring a good life into existence or none, it is at least permissible to choose none, and under basically any asymmetry that doesn’t lead to principled antinatalism (basically all but perfect lives are bad), it’s permissible to choose either.
If you can bring a good life into existence or none, it is at least permissible to choose none, and under a non-antinatalist asymmetry, it’s permissible to choose either.
If you can bring a good life into existence, a flourishing life into existence or none, it is at least permissible to choose none, and under a wide view of the asymmetry (basically to solve the nonidentity problem), it is not permissible to bring the merely good life into existence. Under a non-antinatalist asymmetry (which can be wide or narrow), it is permissible to bring the flourishing life into existence. Under a narrow (not wide) non-antinatalist asymmetry, all three options are permissible.
If you accept transitivity and the independence of irrelevant alternatives, instead of having the flourishing life better than none, you could have a principled antinatalism:
Thanks! I can see that for people who accept (relatively strong versions of) the asymmetry. But (I think) we’re talking about what a wide range of ethical views say—is it at all common for proponents of objective list theories of well-being to hold that the good life is worse than nonexistence? (I imagine, if they thought it was that bad, they wouldn’t call it “the good life”?)
is it at all common for proponents of objective list theories of well-being to hold that the good life is worse than nonexistence?
I think this would be pretty much only antinatalists who hold stronger forms of the asymmetry, and this kind of antinatalism (and indeed all antinatalism) is relatively rare, so I’d guess not.
Thanks! I think I see how these values are contingent in the sense that, say, you can’t have human relationships without humans. Are you saying they’re also contingent in the sense that (*) creating new lives with these things has no value? That’s very unintuitive to me. If “the good life” is significantly more valuable than a meh life, and a meh life is just as valuable as nonexistence, doesn’t it follow that a flourishing life is significantly more valuable than nonexistence?
(In other words, “objective list” theories of well-being (if they hold some lives to be better than neutral) + transitivity seem to imply that creating good lives is possible and valuable, which implies (*) is false. People with these theories of well-being could avoid that conclusion by (a) rejecting that some lives are better than neutral, or (b) by rejecting transitivity. Do they?)
I mostly meant to say that someone who otherwise rejects totalism would agree to (*), so as to emphasize that these diverse values are really tied to our position on the value of good lives (whether good = virtuous or pleasurable or whatever).
Similarly, I think the transitivity issue has less to do with our theory of wellbeing (what counts as a good life) and more to do with our theory of population ethics. As to how we can resolve this apparent issue, there are several things we could say. We could (as I think Larry Temkin and others have done) agree with (b), maintaining that ‘better than’ or ‘more valuable than’ is not a transitive relation. Alternatively, we could adopt a sort of “tethered good approach” (following Christine Korsgaard), where we maintain that claims like “A is better/more valuable than B” are only meaningful insofar as they are reducible to claims like “A is better/more valuable than B for person P.” In that case, we might deny that “a meh life is just as valuable as [or more/less valuable than] nonexistence ” is meaningful, since there’s no one for whom it is more valuable (assuming we reject comparativism, the view that things can be better or worse for merely possible persons). Michael St. Jules is probably aware of better ways this could be resolved. In general, I think that a lot of this stuff is tricky and our inability to find a solution right now to theoretical puzzles is not always a good reason to abandon a view.
Hm, I can’t wrap my head around rejecting transitivity.
Does this imply that bringing tortured lives into existence is morally neutral? I find that very implausible. (You could get out of that conclusion by claiming an asymmetry, but I haven’t seen reasons to think that people with objective list theories of welfare buy into that.) This view also seems suspiciously committed to sketchy notions of personhood.
Yeah I’m not totally sure what it implies. For consequentialists, we could say that bringing the life into existence is itself morally neutral; but once the life exists, we have reason to end it (since the life is bad for that person, although we’d have to make further sense of that claim). Deontologists could just say that there is a constraint against bringing into existence tortured lives, but this isn’t because of the life’s contribution to some “total goodness” of the world. Presumably we’d want some further explanation for why this constraint should exist. Maybe such an action involves an impermissible attitude of callous disregard for life or something like that. It seems like there are many parameters we could vary but that might seem too ad hoc.
Again, I haven’t actually read this, but this article discusses intransitivity in asymmetric person-affecting views, i.e. I think in the language you used: The value of pleasure is contingent in the sense that creating new lives with pleasure has no value. But the disvalue of pain is not contingent in this way. I think you should be able to directly apply that to other object-list theories that you discuss instead of just hedonistic (pleasure-pain) ones.
An alternative way to deal with intransitivity is to say that not existing and any life are incomparable. This gives you the unfortunate situation that you can’t straightforwardly compare different worlds with different population sizes. I don’t know enough about the literature to say how people deal with this. I think there’s some long work in the works that’s trying to make this version work and that also tries to make “creating new suffering people is bad” work at the same time.
I think some people probably do think that they are comparable but reject that some lives are better than neutral. I expect that that’s rarer though?
Under the asymmetry, any life is at most as valuable as nonexistence, and depending on the particular view of the asymmetry, may be as good only when faced with particular sets of options.
If you can bring a good life into existence or none, it is at least permissible to choose none, and under basically any asymmetry that doesn’t lead to principled antinatalism (basically all but perfect lives are bad), it’s permissible to choose either.
If you can bring a good life into existence or none, it is at least permissible to choose none, and under a non-antinatalist asymmetry, it’s permissible to choose either.
If you can bring a good life into existence, a flourishing life into existence or none, it is at least permissible to choose none, and under a wide view of the asymmetry (basically to solve the nonidentity problem), it is not permissible to bring the merely good life into existence. Under a non-antinatalist asymmetry (which can be wide or narrow), it is permissible to bring the flourishing life into existence. Under a narrow (not wide) non-antinatalist asymmetry, all three options are permissible.
If you accept transitivity and the independence of irrelevant alternatives, instead of having the flourishing life better than none, you could have a principled antinatalism:
meh life < good life < flourishing life ≤ none,
although this doesn’t follow.
Thanks! I can see that for people who accept (relatively strong versions of) the asymmetry. But (I think) we’re talking about what a wide range of ethical views say—is it at all common for proponents of objective list theories of well-being to hold that the good life is worse than nonexistence? (I imagine, if they thought it was that bad, they wouldn’t call it “the good life”?)
I think this would be pretty much only antinatalists who hold stronger forms of the asymmetry, and this kind of antinatalism (and indeed all antinatalism) is relatively rare, so I’d guess not.