(my thoughts on this are conflicted, and I’m not sure I will endorse this after significant reflection) I think whether opportunity style accounts of EA are grotesque or natural are somewhat domain-specific.
I agree that it’s somewhat grotesque to think of kids dying of diarrhea or chickens being tortured in factory farms as an exciting opportunity. But when I think of opportunity accounts, I think of something like Parfit (who himself probably had an obligation framing, not sure) talking about the future we can work towards:
Life can be wonderful as well as terrible, and we shall increasingly have the power to make life good. Since human history may be only just beginning, we can expect that future humans, or supra-humans, may achieve some great goods that we cannot now even imagine. In Nietzsche’s words, there has never been such a new dawn and clear horizon, and such an open sea.
If we are the only rational beings in the Universe, as some recent evidence suggests, it matters even more whether we shall have descendants or successors during the billions of years in which that would be possible. Some of our successors might live lives and create worlds that, though failing to justify past suffering, would give us all, including some of those who have suffered, reasons to be glad that the Universe exists.
(my thoughts on this are conflicted, and I’m not sure I will endorse this after significant reflection) I think whether opportunity style accounts of EA are grotesque or natural are somewhat domain-specific.
I agree that it’s somewhat grotesque to think of kids dying of diarrhea or chickens being tortured in factory farms as an exciting opportunity. But when I think of opportunity accounts, I think of something like Parfit (who himself probably had an obligation framing, not sure) talking about the future we can work towards: