“How would that make you, the ardent conservationist, feel?”
Do you mean “how would that make the dead version of you feel”? The answer is “the dead person does not feel anything.” Why should we care?
Let’s be very clear: it’s valid to think that the experiences of people in the past theoretically “matter” in the same fundamental way that the wellbeing of people in the future “matter”: a reality in which people in the past did not suffer is a better reality than one in which people in the past did suffer. But their suffering/wellbeing while they were alive is not affected by what we choose to do in the present/future once they have died. Our choice of disregarding their wishes is not causing them to roll in their grave; they went to the grave with some belief that their wishes would or wouldn’t be well regarded, and our actions now cannot affect that.
“Even if you are purely selfish, you should care about what you owe the past. [...] because your own past self also lives in the past. And your current self lives in the past of your future self.”
Now we’re more in the motte, it seems: yes, technically it’s possible that your actions now will cause you to believe that your future self will betray your current self’s wishes, which causes you suffering.
Additionally, it might be the case that in some scenarios, adopting an epistemically irrational mindset regarding temporal causality and moral obligations is instrumentally rational (utility/preference-maximizing); utilitarianism does not inherently prescribe thinking through everything with a “utilitarian mindset” or framework.
However, while I don’t exactly love being the temporal Grinch here, I think it’s probably for the best that people don’t get too carried away by this thinking. After all, we are probably deeply betraying many of our ancestors who likely would have hated things such as respect for black people and tolerance of homosexuality, and our descendants may (hopefully!) betray many current people’s desires such as by banning factory farms and perhaps even outright banning most meat consumption.
Do you mean “how would that make the dead version of you feel”? The answer is “the dead person does not feel anything.” Why should we care?
Let’s be very clear: it’s valid to think that the experiences of people in the past theoretically “matter” in the same fundamental way that the wellbeing of people in the future “matter”: a reality in which people in the past did not suffer is a better reality than one in which people in the past did suffer. But their suffering/wellbeing while they were alive is not affected by what we choose to do in the present/future once they have died. Our choice of disregarding their wishes is not causing them to roll in their grave; they went to the grave with some belief that their wishes would or wouldn’t be well regarded, and our actions now cannot affect that.
Now we’re more in the motte, it seems: yes, technically it’s possible that your actions now will cause you to believe that your future self will betray your current self’s wishes, which causes you suffering.
Additionally, it might be the case that in some scenarios, adopting an epistemically irrational mindset regarding temporal causality and moral obligations is instrumentally rational (utility/preference-maximizing); utilitarianism does not inherently prescribe thinking through everything with a “utilitarian mindset” or framework.
However, while I don’t exactly love being the temporal Grinch here, I think it’s probably for the best that people don’t get too carried away by this thinking. After all, we are probably deeply betraying many of our ancestors who likely would have hated things such as respect for black people and tolerance of homosexuality, and our descendants may (hopefully!) betray many current people’s desires such as by banning factory farms and perhaps even outright banning most meat consumption.