Thanks for your comment, Leonard. I guess I’d want to push your case a bit further. Imagine that Sarah enters the experience machine and is maxed out with respect to hedonic goods. Would the objective list theorist want to say that her life is bad on balance? Is it actually net negative? Presumably not. Her life might be much less good than it could be, but would still be positive on balance. If that’s right, then that’s exactly what we’d expect based on the Tortured Tim case: we get symmetry with respect to the impacts of non-hedonic goods. On Tim’s side, they can’t make him net positive; on Sarah’s side, they can’t make her net negative. Either way, they play a role in total welfare that’s no greater than the role played by hedonic goods and bads.
Thanks for the reply, I think it helps me to understand the issue better. As I see it now, there are two conflicting intuitions:
1. Non-hedonic goods seem to not have much weight in flipping a life from net-negative to net-positive (Tortured Tim) or from net-positive to net-negative (The experience machine). That is, Tim seems to have a net-negative life, even though he has all attainable non-hedonic goods, and Sarah in the experience machine has a net-positive life although she lacks all positive non-hedonic goods (or even has negative non-hedonic goods).
2. In the experience machine case, it seems (to many) as if hedonic goods have a lot less weight than non-hedonic goods in determining overall wellbeing. That is, Sarah can have blissful experience (100 on a hedonic scale from −100 to 100) in the machine but would arguably have a better life if she had moderately net-positive experience (say, 10 on the same scale) combined with the non-hedonic goods contained in almost any ordinary life.
If you interpret the experience machine case as involving negative non-hedonic goods, then the first intuition suggests what you say: that non-hedonic goods “play a role in total welfare that’s no greater than the role played by hedonic goods and bads”. However, the second intuition does suggest precisely the opposite, it seems to me. If a moderate number of incompletely realized non-hedonic goods has a higher positive impact on welfare than perfectly blissful experience, then this suggests that non-hedonic goods play a more important role in welfare than hedonic goods, in some cases.
Appreciate your pushing this forward, Leonard. I guess I’m still not seeing why this is a problem for the main line of argument. I‘m thinking of goods and bads as being straightforwardly additive. So it’s true that, if an objective list theory is true, Sarah may have sufficient reason not to enter the machine even if it would max her out hedonically, but it doesn’t follow from that that hedonic goods have a lot less weight than non-hedonic goods in determining overall wellbeing. Suppose that Sarah‘s hedonic scale goes from −100 to 100, as you suggested, and her total wellbeing scale goes from −300 to 300, as I’ve suggested (3x). Then, she’s potentially leaving a lot of value on the table if she goes into the machine, as she’d get all that hedonic value (100) but none of the non-hedonic value (which represents an additional 200 possible welfare units). In such circumstances, it’s prudential rational for her to take a lower hedonic level (say, 25) to get even half the possible non-hedonic benefits (100), as that makes her better off overall (125 vs. 100).
Your way of further fleshing out the example is helpful. Suppose we think that Sarah has some, but below average non-hedonic benefits in her live (and expects this for the future) and that she should nonetheless not enter the machine. The question would then come down to: In relative terms (on a linear scale), how close is Sarah to getting all the possible non-hedonic value (i.e., does she get 50% of it, or only 10%, or even less)? The farer she is away from getting all possible non-hedonic value, the more non-hedonic value contributes to welfare ranges. However, at this point, it is hard to know what the most plausible answer to this question is.
Strong upvoted, I think this is a really excellent point.
Thanks for your comment, Leonard. I guess I’d want to push your case a bit further. Imagine that Sarah enters the experience machine and is maxed out with respect to hedonic goods. Would the objective list theorist want to say that her life is bad on balance? Is it actually net negative? Presumably not. Her life might be much less good than it could be, but would still be positive on balance. If that’s right, then that’s exactly what we’d expect based on the Tortured Tim case: we get symmetry with respect to the impacts of non-hedonic goods. On Tim’s side, they can’t make him net positive; on Sarah’s side, they can’t make her net negative. Either way, they play a role in total welfare that’s no greater than the role played by hedonic goods and bads.
Thanks for the reply, I think it helps me to understand the issue better. As I see it now, there are two conflicting intuitions:
1. Non-hedonic goods seem to not have much weight in flipping a life from net-negative to net-positive (Tortured Tim) or from net-positive to net-negative (The experience machine). That is, Tim seems to have a net-negative life, even though he has all attainable non-hedonic goods, and Sarah in the experience machine has a net-positive life although she lacks all positive non-hedonic goods (or even has negative non-hedonic goods).
2. In the experience machine case, it seems (to many) as if hedonic goods have a lot less weight than non-hedonic goods in determining overall wellbeing. That is, Sarah can have blissful experience (100 on a hedonic scale from −100 to 100) in the machine but would arguably have a better life if she had moderately net-positive experience (say, 10 on the same scale) combined with the non-hedonic goods contained in almost any ordinary life.
If you interpret the experience machine case as involving negative non-hedonic goods, then the first intuition suggests what you say: that non-hedonic goods “play a role in total welfare that’s no greater than the role played by hedonic goods and bads”. However, the second intuition does suggest precisely the opposite, it seems to me. If a moderate number of incompletely realized non-hedonic goods has a higher positive impact on welfare than perfectly blissful experience, then this suggests that non-hedonic goods play a more important role in welfare than hedonic goods, in some cases.
Appreciate your pushing this forward, Leonard. I guess I’m still not seeing why this is a problem for the main line of argument. I‘m thinking of goods and bads as being straightforwardly additive. So it’s true that, if an objective list theory is true, Sarah may have sufficient reason not to enter the machine even if it would max her out hedonically, but it doesn’t follow from that that hedonic goods have a lot less weight than non-hedonic goods in determining overall wellbeing. Suppose that Sarah‘s hedonic scale goes from −100 to 100, as you suggested, and her total wellbeing scale goes from −300 to 300, as I’ve suggested (3x). Then, she’s potentially leaving a lot of value on the table if she goes into the machine, as she’d get all that hedonic value (100) but none of the non-hedonic value (which represents an additional 200 possible welfare units). In such circumstances, it’s prudential rational for her to take a lower hedonic level (say, 25) to get even half the possible non-hedonic benefits (100), as that makes her better off overall (125 vs. 100).
Your way of further fleshing out the example is helpful. Suppose we think that Sarah has some, but below average non-hedonic benefits in her live (and expects this for the future) and that she should nonetheless not enter the machine. The question would then come down to: In relative terms (on a linear scale), how close is Sarah to getting all the possible non-hedonic value (i.e., does she get 50% of it, or only 10%, or even less)? The farer she is away from getting all possible non-hedonic value, the more non-hedonic value contributes to welfare ranges. However, at this point, it is hard to know what the most plausible answer to this question is.