Seems right, Larks. But I don’t set things up this way in the post—or didn’t mean to, anyway. I grant that he can have all the non-hedonic goods while being tortured for exactly the reason you mention. But then I still want to say: those non-hedonic goods don’t make him net positive.
FWIW, I’ve given this thought experiment to hard-core objective list theorists and they just bite the bullet, insisting that his life is well worth living even while being tortured. Clearly, then, we aren’t going to get agreement based on this thought experiment alone. However, I can’t help but think that they’re confusing meaningfulness with prudential goodness. I concede that a life could be meaningful in the face of torture—or even precisely because of it in some circumstances. But many meaningful lives are bad for the people who live them, which is partly why they’re heroic for continuing them.
Seems right, Larks. But I don’t set things up this way in the post—or didn’t mean to, anyway. I grant that he can have all the non-hedonic goods while being tortured for exactly the reason you mention. But then I still want to say: those non-hedonic goods don’t make him net positive.
FWIW, I’ve given this thought experiment to hard-core objective list theorists and they just bite the bullet, insisting that his life is well worth living even while being tortured. Clearly, then, we aren’t going to get agreement based on this thought experiment alone. However, I can’t help but think that they’re confusing meaningfulness with prudential goodness. I concede that a life could be meaningful in the face of torture—or even precisely because of it in some circumstances. But many meaningful lives are bad for the people who live them, which is partly why they’re heroic for continuing them.
Anyway, hard issues!
As one example, I think Richard Yetter Chappell, an objective list theorist, would say torture with maximal non-hedonic goods at the same time would be bad overall per moment: https://rychappell.substack.com/p/a-multiplicative-model-of-value-pluralism