How do you approach identity? If ~no future people are “necessary”, does this just reduce to critical-level utilitarianism (but still counting people with negative welfare, can’t remember if critical level does that)? Are you ok with that?
My theory would be like critical level utilitarianism, where necessary people, possible people with negative welfare and possible people with high positive welfare have zero critical levels, and possible people with low positive welfare have a critical level equal to their own welfare. So people can have different critical levels, and the critical level might depend on the welfare of the person.
The problem of identity could become difficult, when we consider identity as something fluid or vague. If for example copying a person (a kind of teleportation but without destroying the source person) would be possible: which of the two copies is the necessary person and which is the possible person? I guess the two copies have to fight over this for themselves. In general: once person A in state X identifies herself with a unique person B in state Y, and B identifies herself with A, only then are persons A and B considered identical. A necessary person is a person who is able to identify himself with a unique person in each other available state.
How do you approach identity? If ~no future people are “necessary”, does this just reduce to critical-level utilitarianism (but still counting people with negative welfare, can’t remember if critical level does that)? Are you ok with that?
My theory would be like critical level utilitarianism, where necessary people, possible people with negative welfare and possible people with high positive welfare have zero critical levels, and possible people with low positive welfare have a critical level equal to their own welfare. So people can have different critical levels, and the critical level might depend on the welfare of the person.
The problem of identity could become difficult, when we consider identity as something fluid or vague. If for example copying a person (a kind of teleportation but without destroying the source person) would be possible: which of the two copies is the necessary person and which is the possible person? I guess the two copies have to fight over this for themselves. In general: once person A in state X identifies herself with a unique person B in state Y, and B identifies herself with A, only then are persons A and B considered identical. A necessary person is a person who is able to identify himself with a unique person in each other available state.