Or perhaps you’re thinking of utils in terms of whether preferences are actually satisfied, regardless of whether people know or experience that and whether they’re alive at that time? If so, then I think that’s a pretty unusual form of utilitarianism, it’s a form I’d give very little weight to, and that’s a point that it seems like you should’ve clarified in the main text.
Although I find this version of utilitarianism extremely implausible, it is actually a very common form of it. Discussions of preference-satisfaction theories of wellbeing presupposed by preference utilitarianism often explicitly point out that “satisfaction” is used in a logical rather than a psychological sense, to refer to the preferences that are actually satisfied rather than the subjective experience of satisfaction. For example, Shelly Kagan writes:
Second, there are desire or preference theories, which hold that being well-off is a matter of having one’s (intrinsic) desires satisfied. What is intended here, of course, is “satisfaction” in the logician’s sense: the question is simply whether or not the states of affairs that are the objects of one’s various desires obtain; it is irrelevant whether or not one realizes it, or whether one gets some psychological feeling of satisfaction.
So conditional on preference utilitarianism as it is generally understood, I think (2) is true. (But, to repeat, I don’t find this version of utilitarianism in the least plausible. I think the only reasons for respecting past people’s preferences are instrumental reasons (societies probably function more smoothly if their members have a justified expectation that others will put some effort into satisfying their preferences posthumously) and perhaps reasons based on moral uncertainty, although I’m skeptical about the latter.)
Although I find this version of utilitarianism extremely implausible, it is actually a very common form of it. Discussions of preference-satisfaction theories of wellbeing presupposed by preference utilitarianism often explicitly point out that “satisfaction” is used in a logical rather than a psychological sense, to refer to the preferences that are actually satisfied rather than the subjective experience of satisfaction. For example, Shelly Kagan writes:
So conditional on preference utilitarianism as it is generally understood, I think (2) is true. (But, to repeat, I don’t find this version of utilitarianism in the least plausible. I think the only reasons for respecting past people’s preferences are instrumental reasons (societies probably function more smoothly if their members have a justified expectation that others will put some effort into satisfying their preferences posthumously) and perhaps reasons based on moral uncertainty, although I’m skeptical about the latter.)