If permissibility doesn’t depend on lever-lashing, then it’s also wrong to pull both levers when they aren’t lashed together.
Why wouldn’t permissibility depend on lever-lashing under the intermediate wide views? The possible choices, including future choices, have to be considered together ahead of time. Lever-lashing restricts them, so it’s a different choice situation. If we’re person-affecting, we’ve already accepted that how we rank two options can depend on what others are available (or we rejected transitivity).
EDIT: I fleshed out an intermediate view here that I think avoids the objections in the post.
Yes, nice point. I argue against this kind of dependence in footnote 16 of the paper. Here’s what I say there:
Here’s a possible reply, courtesy of Olle Risberg. What we’re permitted to do depends on lever-lashing, but not because lever-lashing precludes pulling the levers one after the other. Instead, it’s because lever-lashing removes the option to create both Amy and Bobby, and removes the option to create neither Amy nor Bobby. If we have the option to create both and the option to create neither, then creating just Amy is permissible. If we don’t have the option to create both or the option to create neither, then creating just Amy is wrong.
This reply might have some promise, but it won’t appeal to proponents of wide views. To see why, consider the following four-button case. By pressing button 1, we create just Amy with a barely good life. By pressing button 2, we create just Bobby with a wonderful life. By pressing button 3, we create both Amy and Bobby. By pressing button 4, we create neither Amy nor Bobby. The reply implies that it’s permissible to create just Amy. That verdict doesn’t contradict the letter of wide views (at least given my definition in this paper), but it certainly contradicts their spirit.
EDIT: Actually my best reply is that just Amy is impermissible whenever just Bobby is available, ahead of time considering all your current and future options (and using backwards induction). The same reason applies for all of the cases, whether buttons, levers, or lashed levers.
EDIT2: I think I misunderstood and was unfairly harsh below.
I do still think the rest of this comment below is correct in spirit as a general response, i.e. a view can make different things impermissible for different reasons. I also think you should have followed up to your own reply to Risberg or anticipated disjunctive impermissibility in response, since it seems so obvious to me, given its simplicity and I think it’s a pretty standard way to interpret (im)permissibility. Like I would guess Risberg would have pointed out the same (but maybe you checked?). Your response seems uncharitable/like a strawman.
Still, the reasons are actually the same in the cases here, but for a more sophisticated reason that seems easier to miss, i.e. considering all future options ahead of time.
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I agree that my/Risberg’s reply doesn’t help in this other case, but you can have different replies for different cases. In this other case, you just use the wide view’s solution to the nonidentity problem, which tells you to not pick just Amy if just Bobby is available. Just Amy is ruled out for a different reason.
And the two types of replies fit together in a single view, which is a wide view considering the sequences of options ahead of time and using backwards induction (everyone should use backwards induction in (finite) sequential choice problems, anyway). This view will give the right reply when it’s needed.
Or, you could look at it like if something is impermissible for any reason (e.g. via either reply), then it is impermissible period, so you treat impermissibility disjunctively. As another example, someone might say each of murder and lying are impermissible and for different reasons. The impermissibility of lying wouldn’t “make” murder permissible. Different replies for different situations.
My understanding of a standard interpetation of (im)permissibility is that options are by default permissible, but then reasons rule out some options as impermissible. Reasons don’t “make” options permissible; they can only count against. So, impermissibility is disjunctive, and permissibiliy is conjunctive.
Me: Some wide views make the permissibility of pulling both levers depend on whether the levers are lashed together. That seems implausible. It shouldn’t matter whether we can pull the levers one after the other.
Interlocutor: But lever-lashing doesn’t just affect whether we can pull the levers one after the other. It also affects what options are available. In particular, lever-lashing removes the option to create both Amy and Bobby, and removes the option to create neither Amy nor Bobby. So if a wide view has the permissibility of pulling both levers depend on lever-lashing, it can point to these facts to justify its change in verdicts. These views can say: it’s permissible to create just Amy when the levers aren’t lashed because the other options are on the table; it’s wrong to create just Amy when the levers are lashed because the other options are off the table.
Me: (Side note: this explanation doesn’t seem particularly satisfying. Why does the presence or absence of these other options affect the permissibility of creating just Amy?). If that’s the explanation, then the resulting wide view will say that creating just Amy is permissible in the four-button case. That’s against the spirit of wide PAVs, so wide views won’t want to appeal to this explanation to justfiy their change in verdicts given lever-lashing. So absent some other explanation of some wide views’ change in verdicts occasioned by lever-lashing, this implausible-seeming change in verdicts remains unexplained, and so counts against these views.
Ah, I should have read more closely. I misunderstood and was unnecessarily harsh. I’m sorry.
I think your response to Risberg is right.
I would still say that permissibility could depend on lever-lashing (in some sense?) because it affects what options are available, though, but in a different way. Here is the view I’d defend:
Ahead of time, any remaining option or sequence of choices that ends up like “Just Amy” will be impermissible if there’s an available option or sequence of choices that ends up like “Just Bobby” (assuming no uncertainty). Available options/sequences of choices are otherwise permissible by default.
Here are the consequences in your thought experiments:
In the four button case, the “Just Amy” button is impermissible, because there’s a “Just Bobby” button.
In the lashed levers case, it’s impermissible to pull either, because this would give “Just Amy”, and the available alternative is “Just Bobby”.
In the unlashed levers case,
Ahead of time, each lever is permissible to pull and permissible to not pull, as long as you won’t pull both (or leave both pulled, in case you can unpull). Ahead of time, pulling both levers is impermissible, because that would give “Just Amy”, and “Just Bobby” is still available. This agrees with 1 and 2.
But if you have already pulled one lever (and this is irreversible), then “Just Bobby” is no longer available (either Amy is/will be created, or Bobby won’t be created), and pulling the other is permissible, which would give “Just Amy”. “Just Amy” is therefore permissible at this point.
As we see in 3.b., “Just Bobby” gets ruled out, and then “Just Amy” becomes permissible after and because of that, but only after “Just Bobby” is ruled out, not before. Permissibility depends on what options are still available, specifically if “Just Bobby” is still available in these thought experiments. “Just Bobby” is still available in 2 and 3.a.
In your post, you wrote:
Pulling both levers should either be permissible in both cases or wrong in both cases.
This is actually true ahead of time, in 2 and 3.a, with pulling both together impermissible. But already having pulled a lever and then pulling the other is permissible, in 3.b.
Maybe this is getting pedantic and off-track, but “already having pulled a lever” is not an action available to you, it’s just a state of the world. Similarly, “pulling both levers” is not an action available to you after you pulled one; you only get to pull the other lever. “Pulling both levers” (lashed or unlashed) and “pulling the other lever, after already having pulled one lever” have different effects on the world, i.e. the first creates Amy and prevents Bobby, while the second only does one of the two. I don’t think it’s too unusual to be sensitive to these differences. Different effects → different evaluations.
Still, the end state “Just Amy” itself later becomes permissible/undominated without lever-lashing, but is impermissible/dominated ahead of time or with lever lashing.
In 5.2.3. Intermediate wide views, you write:
Why wouldn’t permissibility depend on lever-lashing under the intermediate wide views? The possible choices, including future choices, have to be considered together ahead of time. Lever-lashing restricts them, so it’s a different choice situation. If we’re person-affecting, we’ve already accepted that how we rank two options can depend on what others are available (or we rejected transitivity).
EDIT: I fleshed out an intermediate view here that I think avoids the objections in the post.
Yes, nice point. I argue against this kind of dependence in footnote 16 of the paper. Here’s what I say there:
EDIT: Actually my best reply is that just Amy is impermissible whenever just Bobby is available, ahead of time considering all your current and future options (and using backwards induction). The same reason applies for all of the cases, whether buttons, levers, or lashed levers.
EDIT2: I think I misunderstood and was unfairly harsh below.
I do still think the rest of this comment below is correct in spirit as a general response, i.e. a view can make different things impermissible for different reasons. I also think you should have followed up to your own reply to Risberg or anticipated disjunctive impermissibility in response, since it seems so obvious to me, given its simplicity and I think it’s a pretty standard way to interpret (im)permissibility. Like I would guess Risberg would have pointed out the same (but maybe you checked?). Your response seems uncharitable/like a strawman.
Still, the reasons are actually the same in the cases here, but for a more sophisticated reason that seems easier to miss, i.e. considering all future options ahead of time.
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I agree that my/Risberg’s reply doesn’t help in this other case, but you can have different replies for different cases. In this other case, you just use the wide view’s solution to the nonidentity problem, which tells you to not pick just Amy if just Bobby is available. Just Amy is ruled out for a different reason.
And the two types of replies fit together in a single view, which is a wide view considering the sequences of options ahead of time and using backwards induction (everyone should use backwards induction in (finite) sequential choice problems, anyway). This view will give the right reply when it’s needed.
Or, you could look at it like if something is impermissible for any reason (e.g. via either reply), then it is impermissible period, so you treat impermissibility disjunctively. As another example, someone might say each of murder and lying are impermissible and for different reasons. The impermissibility of lying wouldn’t “make” murder permissible. Different replies for different situations.
My understanding of a standard interpetation of (im)permissibility is that options are by default permissible, but then reasons rule out some options as impermissible. Reasons don’t “make” options permissible; they can only count against. So, impermissibility is disjunctive, and permissibiliy is conjunctive.
Here’s my understanding of the dialectic here:
Me: Some wide views make the permissibility of pulling both levers depend on whether the levers are lashed together. That seems implausible. It shouldn’t matter whether we can pull the levers one after the other.
Interlocutor: But lever-lashing doesn’t just affect whether we can pull the levers one after the other. It also affects what options are available. In particular, lever-lashing removes the option to create both Amy and Bobby, and removes the option to create neither Amy nor Bobby. So if a wide view has the permissibility of pulling both levers depend on lever-lashing, it can point to these facts to justify its change in verdicts. These views can say: it’s permissible to create just Amy when the levers aren’t lashed because the other options are on the table; it’s wrong to create just Amy when the levers are lashed because the other options are off the table.
Me: (Side note: this explanation doesn’t seem particularly satisfying. Why does the presence or absence of these other options affect the permissibility of creating just Amy?). If that’s the explanation, then the resulting wide view will say that creating just Amy is permissible in the four-button case. That’s against the spirit of wide PAVs, so wide views won’t want to appeal to this explanation to justfiy their change in verdicts given lever-lashing. So absent some other explanation of some wide views’ change in verdicts occasioned by lever-lashing, this implausible-seeming change in verdicts remains unexplained, and so counts against these views.
Ah, I should have read more closely. I misunderstood and was unnecessarily harsh. I’m sorry.
I think your response to Risberg is right.
I would still say that permissibility could depend on lever-lashing (in some sense?) because it affects what options are available, though, but in a different way. Here is the view I’d defend:
Here are the consequences in your thought experiments:
In the four button case, the “Just Amy” button is impermissible, because there’s a “Just Bobby” button.
In the lashed levers case, it’s impermissible to pull either, because this would give “Just Amy”, and the available alternative is “Just Bobby”.
In the unlashed levers case,
Ahead of time, each lever is permissible to pull and permissible to not pull, as long as you won’t pull both (or leave both pulled, in case you can unpull). Ahead of time, pulling both levers is impermissible, because that would give “Just Amy”, and “Just Bobby” is still available. This agrees with 1 and 2.
But if you have already pulled one lever (and this is irreversible), then “Just Bobby” is no longer available (either Amy is/will be created, or Bobby won’t be created), and pulling the other is permissible, which would give “Just Amy”. “Just Amy” is therefore permissible at this point.
As we see in 3.b., “Just Bobby” gets ruled out, and then “Just Amy” becomes permissible after and because of that, but only after “Just Bobby” is ruled out, not before. Permissibility depends on what options are still available, specifically if “Just Bobby” is still available in these thought experiments. “Just Bobby” is still available in 2 and 3.a.
In your post, you wrote:
This is actually true ahead of time, in 2 and 3.a, with pulling both together impermissible. But already having pulled a lever and then pulling the other is permissible, in 3.b.
Maybe this is getting pedantic and off-track, but “already having pulled a lever” is not an action available to you, it’s just a state of the world. Similarly, “pulling both levers” is not an action available to you after you pulled one; you only get to pull the other lever. “Pulling both levers” (lashed or unlashed) and “pulling the other lever, after already having pulled one lever” have different effects on the world, i.e. the first creates Amy and prevents Bobby, while the second only does one of the two. I don’t think it’s too unusual to be sensitive to these differences. Different effects → different evaluations.
Still, the end state “Just Amy” itself later becomes permissible/undominated without lever-lashing, but is impermissible/dominated ahead of time or with lever lashing.