Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems you are ultimately arguing that “life” (whether that is measured in population, QALYs, or something else) is not the only “goal of life,” correct? If by “goal of life,” you are referring to a concept like morality/goodness/utility, then I think I would totally agree that population/QALYs are not the only relevant measure, and I imagine that a lot of other people would similarly agree.
Where people do disagree is what all else counts, and what things weigh more than others. Broadly speaking, people often refer to utility as a theoretical “all-encompassing” metric of goodness/wellbeing, oftentimes referring to the (slightly) less-theoretical concept of “happiness” (e.g., pleasure vs. pain). I must admit that I’m not deeply intellectually familiar/concerned with some of the arguments over different ways to approach/interpret utility (e.g., preferential utilitarianism vs. hedonistic utilitarianism), nor do I have a strong stance on average utilitarianism vs. aggregate utilitarianism (again due mainly to a lack of perceived importance for my decision-making to choose one over the other), but I want to highlight these as concepts/debates to further explore.
To address the specific example of “woman with a good career” vs. “having more children”: first, I was a bit confused by the part that says to compare the woman having a career to “saving three lives from death”; it seems like you just meant “causing three lives to exist when they would not have,” correct? (There’s a big difference there at least under average utilitarianism). 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. Additionally, a woman with a career might be able to save more lives by donating income to effective charities, thus increasing life by not directly having children.
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.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems you are ultimately arguing that “life” (whether that is measured in population, QALYs, or something else) is not the only “goal of life,” correct? If by “goal of life,” you are referring to a concept like morality/goodness/utility, then I think I would totally agree that population/QALYs are not the only relevant measure, and I imagine that a lot of other people would similarly agree.
Where people do disagree is what all else counts, and what things weigh more than others. Broadly speaking, people often refer to utility as a theoretical “all-encompassing” metric of goodness/wellbeing, oftentimes referring to the (slightly) less-theoretical concept of “happiness” (e.g., pleasure vs. pain). I must admit that I’m not deeply intellectually familiar/concerned with some of the arguments over different ways to approach/interpret utility (e.g., preferential utilitarianism vs. hedonistic utilitarianism), nor do I have a strong stance on average utilitarianism vs. aggregate utilitarianism (again due mainly to a lack of perceived importance for my decision-making to choose one over the other), but I want to highlight these as concepts/debates to further explore.
To address the specific example of “woman with a good career” vs. “having more children”: first, I was a bit confused by the part that says to compare the woman having a career to “saving three lives from death”; it seems like you just meant “causing three lives to exist when they would not have,” correct? (There’s a big difference there at least under average utilitarianism). 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. Additionally, a woman with a career might be able to save more lives by donating income to effective charities, thus increasing life by not directly having children.
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.”