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.
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.