I guess Samuel Scheffler’s last book has a little bit of them all (I haven’t read it yet). And Korsgaard makes a persuasive Kantian case about the disvalue of human extinction.
You’re welcome. Plz, write a post (even if a shortform) about it someday. Something that attracts me in this literature (particularly in Scheffler) is how they can pick different intuitions that often collide with premises / conclusions of reasons based on something like the rational agent model (i.e., VnM decision theory). I think that, even for a philosophical theorist, it could be useful to know more about how prevalent are these intuitions, and what possible (social or psychological) explanations could be offered for them. (I admit that, just like the modus ponens of one philosopher might be the modus tollens of the other, someone’s intuition might be someone else’s cognitive bias) For instance, Scheffler mentions we (at least me and him) have a “primitive” preference for humanity’s existence (I think by “humanity” he usually means rational agents similar to us—being extinct by trisolarans would be bad, but not as bad as the end of all conscious rational agents); we usually prefer that humanity exists for a long time, rather than a short period, even if both timelines have the same amount of utility—which seems to imply some sort of negative discount rate of the future,so violating usual “pure time preference” reasoning. Besides, we prefer world histories where there’s a causal connection between generations / individuals, instead of possible worlds with the same amount of utility (and the same length in time) where communities spring and get extinct without any relation between them—I admit this sounds weird, but I think it might explain my malaise towards discussions on infinite ethics.
I guess Samuel Scheffler’s last book has a little bit of them all (I haven’t read it yet). And Korsgaard makes a persuasive Kantian case about the disvalue of human extinction.
Thank you, those both look like exactly what I’m looking for
You’re welcome. Plz, write a post (even if a shortform) about it someday.
Something that attracts me in this literature (particularly in Scheffler) is how they can pick different intuitions that often collide with premises / conclusions of reasons based on something like the rational agent model (i.e., VnM decision theory). I think that, even for a philosophical theorist, it could be useful to know more about how prevalent are these intuitions, and what possible (social or psychological) explanations could be offered for them. (I admit that, just like the modus ponens of one philosopher might be the modus tollens of the other, someone’s intuition might be someone else’s cognitive bias)
For instance, Scheffler mentions we (at least me and him) have a “primitive” preference for humanity’s existence (I think by “humanity” he usually means rational agents similar to us—being extinct by trisolarans would be bad, but not as bad as the end of all conscious rational agents); we usually prefer that humanity exists for a long time, rather than a short period, even if both timelines have the same amount of utility—which seems to imply some sort of negative discount rate of the future, so violating usual “pure time preference” reasoning. Besides, we prefer world histories where there’s a causal connection between generations / individuals, instead of possible worlds with the same amount of utility (and the same length in time) where communities spring and get extinct without any relation between them—I admit this sounds weird, but I think it might explain my malaise towards discussions on infinite ethics.