The second fact doesn’t seem counterintuitive to me, personally. When I try to visualize why other people find it counterintuitive, I end up imagining that it would be sad/shameful/disappointing if we never created a utopia. But under negative preference utilitarianism, existing preferences to create and live in a utopia are already taken into account. So, it’s not optimal to ignore these people’s wishes.
On the other hand, I find it unintuitive that we should build preferenceonium (homogeneous matter optimized to have very strong preferences that are immediately satisfied). So, this objection doesn’t move me by much.
A final implication is that for a world of Budhist monks who have rid themselves completely of desires and merely take in the joys of life without having any firm desires for future states of the world, it would be morally neutral to bring their well-being to zero.
I think if someone genuinely removed themselves of all desire then, yes, I think it would be acceptable to lower their well-being to zero (note that we should also take into account their preferences not to be exploited in such a manner). But this thought experiment seems hollow to me, because of the well-known difficulty of detaching oneself completely from material wants, or empathizing with those who have truly done so.
The force of the thought experiment seems to rest almost entirely on the intuition that the monks have not actually succeeded—as you say, they “merely take in the joys of life without having desires”. But if they really have no desires, then why are they taking joy in life? Indeed, why would they take any action whatsoever?
I view this implication as merely the consequence of two facts, (1) utilitarians generally endorse torture in the torture vs. dust specks thought experiment, (2) negative preference utilitarians don’t find value in creating new beings just to satisfy their preferences.
The first fact is shared by all non-lexical varieties of consequentialism, so it doesn’t appear to be a unique critique of negative preference utilitarianism.
The second fact doesn’t seem counterintuitive to me, personally. When I try to visualize why other people find it counterintuitive, I end up imagining that it would be sad/shameful/disappointing if we never created a utopia. But under negative preference utilitarianism, existing preferences to create and live in a utopia are already taken into account. So, it’s not optimal to ignore these people’s wishes.
On the other hand, I find it unintuitive that we should build preferenceonium (homogeneous matter optimized to have very strong preferences that are immediately satisfied). So, this objection doesn’t move me by much.
I think if someone genuinely removed themselves of all desire then, yes, I think it would be acceptable to lower their well-being to zero (note that we should also take into account their preferences not to be exploited in such a manner). But this thought experiment seems hollow to me, because of the well-known difficulty of detaching oneself completely from material wants, or empathizing with those who have truly done so.
The force of the thought experiment seems to rest almost entirely on the intuition that the monks have not actually succeeded—as you say, they “merely take in the joys of life without having desires”. But if they really have no desires, then why are they taking joy in life? Indeed, why would they take any action whatsoever?