Regarding the example about bliss before death, there’s another complication if we give weight to preference satisfaction even when a person doesn’t know whether those preferences have been satisfied. I give a bit of weight to the value of satisfying preferences even if someone doesn’t know about it, based on analogies to my case. (For example, I prefer for the world to contain less suffering even if I don’t know that it does.)
Many people would prefer for the end of their lives to be wonderful, to experience something akin to heaven, etc, and adding the bliss at the end of their lives—even unbeknownst to them until it happened—would still satisfy those preferences. People might also have preferences like “I want to have a net happy life, even though I usually feel depressed” or “I want to have lots of meaningful experiences”, and those preferences would also be satisfied by adding the end-of-life bliss.
I get why that would appeal to a positive utilitarian but I’m not sure why that would be relevant to a negative utilitarians’ view. Also, we could make it so that this only applies to babies who died before turning two, so they don’t have sophisticated preferences about a net positive QOL.
but I’m not sure why that would be relevant to a negative utilitarians’ view
People have preferences to have wonderful ends to their lives, to have net positive lives, etc. Those preferences may be frustrated by default (especially the first one; most people don’t have wonderful ends to their lives) but would become not frustrated once the bliss was added. People’s preferences regarding those things are typically much stronger than their preferences not to experience a single pinprick.
Good point about the babies. One might feel that babies and non-human animals still have implicit preferences for experiencing bliss in the future, but I agree that’s a more tenuous claim.
Regarding the example about bliss before death, there’s another complication if we give weight to preference satisfaction even when a person doesn’t know whether those preferences have been satisfied. I give a bit of weight to the value of satisfying preferences even if someone doesn’t know about it, based on analogies to my case. (For example, I prefer for the world to contain less suffering even if I don’t know that it does.)
Many people would prefer for the end of their lives to be wonderful, to experience something akin to heaven, etc, and adding the bliss at the end of their lives—even unbeknownst to them until it happened—would still satisfy those preferences. People might also have preferences like “I want to have a net happy life, even though I usually feel depressed” or “I want to have lots of meaningful experiences”, and those preferences would also be satisfied by adding the end-of-life bliss.
I get why that would appeal to a positive utilitarian but I’m not sure why that would be relevant to a negative utilitarians’ view. Also, we could make it so that this only applies to babies who died before turning two, so they don’t have sophisticated preferences about a net positive QOL.
People have preferences to have wonderful ends to their lives, to have net positive lives, etc. Those preferences may be frustrated by default (especially the first one; most people don’t have wonderful ends to their lives) but would become not frustrated once the bliss was added. People’s preferences regarding those things are typically much stronger than their preferences not to experience a single pinprick.
Good point about the babies. One might feel that babies and non-human animals still have implicit preferences for experiencing bliss in the future, but I agree that’s a more tenuous claim.