Yeah, I totally agree. The scope of what I was talking about was more limited. If there were clearly net WAS, we’d have to weigh up the apparent benefits of ecosystem destruction (i.e. less animal misery) against the sort of costs you’re taking about.
My aim was to challenge the argument about their being net WAS. Unless there is net WAS (or you’re a negative utilitarian) the case for habitat destruction looks pretty thin anyway.
FWIW, I don’t think their being experienced vs remembered selves is a problematic for a hedonic framework. In fact that distinctly requires the assumption people do feel things and can rate how bad it is, and those can then be compared to their memories. That stuff is a problem for our ability to make good affective forecasts (which I admit we suck at).
Ah, you’re right about the hedonistic framework. On re-reading your intro I think I meant the idea of using pleasure as a synonym for happiness and taking pain and suffering as synonyms for unhappiness. This, combined with the idea of counting minutes of pleasure vs. pain, seems to focus on just the experiencing self.
Hello Michael,
Yeah, I totally agree. The scope of what I was talking about was more limited. If there were clearly net WAS, we’d have to weigh up the apparent benefits of ecosystem destruction (i.e. less animal misery) against the sort of costs you’re taking about.
My aim was to challenge the argument about their being net WAS. Unless there is net WAS (or you’re a negative utilitarian) the case for habitat destruction looks pretty thin anyway.
FWIW, I don’t think their being experienced vs remembered selves is a problematic for a hedonic framework. In fact that distinctly requires the assumption people do feel things and can rate how bad it is, and those can then be compared to their memories. That stuff is a problem for our ability to make good affective forecasts (which I admit we suck at).
Ah, you’re right about the hedonistic framework. On re-reading your intro I think I meant the idea of using pleasure as a synonym for happiness and taking pain and suffering as synonyms for unhappiness. This, combined with the idea of counting minutes of pleasure vs. pain, seems to focus on just the experiencing self.