If permissibility doesnât depend on lever-lashing, then itâs also wrong to pull both levers when they arenât lashed together.
Why wouldnât 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 itâs a different choice situation. If weâre person-affecting, weâve 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. Hereâs what I say there:
Hereâs a possible reply, courtesy of Olle Risberg. What weâre permitted to do depends on lever-lashing, but not because lever-lashing precludes pulling the levers one after the other. Instead, itâs 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 donât 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 wonât 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 itâs permissible to create just Amy. That verdict doesnât 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 itâs 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/âlike 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/âRisbergâs reply doesnât help in this other case, but you can have different replies for different cases. In this other case, you just use the wide viewâs 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 itâs 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 wouldnât âmakeâ 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 donât âmakeâ 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 shouldnât matter whether we can pull the levers one after the other.
Interlocutor: But lever-lashing doesnât 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: itâs permissible to create just Amy when the levers arenât lashed because the other options are on the table; itâs wrong to create just Amy when the levers are lashed because the other options are off the table.
Me: (Side note: this explanation doesnât seem particularly satisfying. Why does the presence or absence of these other options affect the permissibility of creating just Amy?). If thatâs the explanation, then the resulting wide view will say that creating just Amy is permissible in the four-button case. Thatâs against the spirit of wide PAVs, so wide views wonât want to appeal to this explanation to justfiy their change in verdicts given lever-lashing. So absent some other explanation of some wide viewsâ 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. Iâm 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 Iâd defend:
Ahead of time, any remaining option or sequence of choices that ends up like âJust Amyâ will be impermissible if thereâs an available option or sequence of choices that ends up like âJust Bobbyâ (assuming no uncertainty). Available options/âsequences of choices are otherwise permissible by default.
Here are the consequences in your thought experiments:
In the four button case, the âJust Amyâ button is impermissible, because thereâs a âJust Bobbyâ button.
In the lashed levers case, itâs impermissible to pull either, because this would give âJust Amyâ, and the available alternative is âJust Bobbyâ.
In the unlashed levers case,
Ahead of time, each lever is permissible to pull and permissible to not pull, as long as you wonât pull both (or leave both pulled, in case you can unpull). Ahead of time, pulling both levers is impermissible, because that would give âJust Amyâ, and âJust Bobbyâ is still available. This agrees with 1 and 2.
But if you have already pulled one lever (and this is irreversible), then âJust Bobbyâ is no longer available (either Amy is/âwill be created, or Bobby wonât be created), and pulling the other is permissible, which would give âJust Amyâ. âJust Amyâ is therefore permissible at this point.
As we see in 3.b., âJust Bobbyâ gets ruled out, and then âJust Amyâ becomes permissible after and because of that, but only after âJust Bobbyâ is ruled out, not before. Permissibility depends on what options are still available, specifically if âJust Bobbyâ is still available in these thought experiments. âJust Bobbyâ 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 âalready having pulled a leverâ is not an action available to you, itâs just a state of the world. Similarly, âpulling both leversâ is not an action available to you after you pulled one; you only get to pull the other lever. âPulling both leversâ (lashed or unlashed) and âpulling the other lever, after already having pulled one leverâ 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 donât think itâs too unusual to be sensitive to these differences. Different effects â different evaluations.
Still, the end state âJust Amyâ itself later becomes permissible/âundominated without lever-lashing, but is impermissible/âdominated ahead of time or with lever lashing.
In 5.2.3. Intermediate wide views, you write:
Why wouldnât 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 itâs a different choice situation. If weâre person-affecting, weâve 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. Hereâs 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 itâs 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/âlike 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/âRisbergâs reply doesnât help in this other case, but you can have different replies for different cases. In this other case, you just use the wide viewâs 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 itâs 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 wouldnât âmakeâ 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 donât âmakeâ options permissible; they can only count against. So, impermissibility is disjunctive, and permissibiliy is conjunctive.
Hereâs 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 shouldnât matter whether we can pull the levers one after the other.
Interlocutor: But lever-lashing doesnât 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: itâs permissible to create just Amy when the levers arenât lashed because the other options are on the table; itâs wrong to create just Amy when the levers are lashed because the other options are off the table.
Me: (Side note: this explanation doesnât seem particularly satisfying. Why does the presence or absence of these other options affect the permissibility of creating just Amy?). If thatâs the explanation, then the resulting wide view will say that creating just Amy is permissible in the four-button case. Thatâs against the spirit of wide PAVs, so wide views wonât want to appeal to this explanation to justfiy their change in verdicts given lever-lashing. So absent some other explanation of some wide viewsâ 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. Iâm 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 Iâd defend:
Here are the consequences in your thought experiments:
In the four button case, the âJust Amyâ button is impermissible, because thereâs a âJust Bobbyâ button.
In the lashed levers case, itâs impermissible to pull either, because this would give âJust Amyâ, and the available alternative is âJust Bobbyâ.
In the unlashed levers case,
Ahead of time, each lever is permissible to pull and permissible to not pull, as long as you wonât pull both (or leave both pulled, in case you can unpull). Ahead of time, pulling both levers is impermissible, because that would give âJust Amyâ, and âJust Bobbyâ is still available. This agrees with 1 and 2.
But if you have already pulled one lever (and this is irreversible), then âJust Bobbyâ is no longer available (either Amy is/âwill be created, or Bobby wonât be created), and pulling the other is permissible, which would give âJust Amyâ. âJust Amyâ is therefore permissible at this point.
As we see in 3.b., âJust Bobbyâ gets ruled out, and then âJust Amyâ becomes permissible after and because of that, but only after âJust Bobbyâ is ruled out, not before. Permissibility depends on what options are still available, specifically if âJust Bobbyâ is still available in these thought experiments. âJust Bobbyâ 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 âalready having pulled a leverâ is not an action available to you, itâs just a state of the world. Similarly, âpulling both leversâ is not an action available to you after you pulled one; you only get to pull the other lever. âPulling both leversâ (lashed or unlashed) and âpulling the other lever, after already having pulled one leverâ 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 donât think itâs too unusual to be sensitive to these differences. Different effects â different evaluations.
Still, the end state âJust Amyâ itself later becomes permissible/âundominated without lever-lashing, but is impermissible/âdominated ahead of time or with lever lashing.