I admit I know very little about average or aggregate utilitarianism, so thank you for bringing that up—I have some googling to do. In reply to your comments:
you are ultimately arguing that “life” (whether that is measured in population, QALYs, or something else) is not the only “goal of life,” correct?
Yes, I felt unease that it seemed like making “impact” seems (under this framework) to potentially be self-defeating.
Second, one of the reasons that “maximize the population” is not intuitively/necessarily moral is because that does not account for problems from overpopulation, including increased suffering on others who do exist.
Yes—that is something that is most definitely a concern! I do (try) to caveat some of my statements this way: see the last sentence. “If saving lives is the goal, then in almost every case (barring a significant drop in quality of life), we would choose the world where there are more lives.”
Hi Harrison,
Thank you for reading my post!
I admit I know very little about average or aggregate utilitarianism, so thank you for bringing that up—I have some googling to do. In reply to your comments:
Yes, I felt unease that it seemed like making “impact” seems (under this framework) to potentially be self-defeating.
Yes—that is something that is most definitely a concern! I do (try) to caveat some of my statements this way: see the last sentence. “If saving lives is the goal, then in almost every case (barring a significant drop in quality of life), we would choose the world where there are more lives.”