Perfection Dominance Principle. Any world A in which no sentient beings experience disvalue, and all sentient beings experience arbitrarily great value, is no worse than any world B containing arbitrarily many sentient beings experiencing only arbitrarily great disvalue (possibly among other beings).[15]
I’m confused by the use of quantifiers here. Which of the following is what’s intended?
If A has only beings experiencing positive value and B has beings experiencing disvalue, then A is no worse than B? (I’m guessing not; that’s basically just the procreation asymmetry.)
For some level of value a>0, some level of disvalue b<0, and some positive integer N, if A has only beings experiencing value at least a, and B has at least N beings experiencing disvalue b or worse (and possibly other beings), then A is no worse than B.
Something else similar to 2? Can b and/or N depend on A?
What I mean is closest to #1, except that B has some beings who only experience disvalue and that disvalue is arbitrarily large. Their lives are pure suffering. This is in a sense weaker than the procreation asymmetry, because someone could agree with the PDP but still think it’s okay to create beings whose lives have a lot of disvalue as long as their lives also have a greater amount of value. Does that clarify? Maybe I should add rectangle diagrams. :)
I’m confused by the use of quantifiers here. Which of the following is what’s intended?
If A has only beings experiencing positive value and B has beings experiencing disvalue, then A is no worse than B? (I’m guessing not; that’s basically just the procreation asymmetry.)
For some level of value a>0, some level of disvalue b<0, and some positive integer N, if A has only beings experiencing value at least a, and B has at least N beings experiencing disvalue b or worse (and possibly other beings), then A is no worse than B.
Something else similar to 2? Can b and/or N depend on A?
Something else entirely?
What I mean is closest to #1, except that B has some beings who only experience disvalue and that disvalue is arbitrarily large. Their lives are pure suffering. This is in a sense weaker than the procreation asymmetry, because someone could agree with the PDP but still think it’s okay to create beings whose lives have a lot of disvalue as long as their lives also have a greater amount of value. Does that clarify? Maybe I should add rectangle diagrams. :)