I’d be curious about how you think about transworld identity and personal identity and to get your take on the following proposal for counterpart relations. I expect that bottom-up bracketing would rarely be action-guiding in practice without counterpart relations, because of huge numbers of contingent moral patients pointing in each direction, and counterpart relations could make some version action-guiding in practice by allowing us to bracket out far more of them.
This is a pretty rough sketch.
One way I’m thinking of grounding counterpart relations is by looking for measures that naturally generalize our concepts of transworld and personal identity. For example, Alice in A is the same person as Alice in B and her past self because of common causes of the features important to Alice’s identity, like her memories, psychological dispositions, etc.. Maybe we’d say specifically due to the preservation or inheritance of the physical structures (her brain) responsible for her psychological features from her past selves.
All of this is a matter of degree, because Alice changes over time and could diverge between worlds A and B. Almost all of the particles in her neurons and elsewhere in her body are replaced over time, and which particles make her up will diverge across worlds. In cases of amnesia, brain damage and normal human aging and experience, people can change fairly dramatically in their psychological features. We might say that transworld and personal identity matching are themselves graded. Alice is kind of both the same person and kind of a different person, and more a different person the larger the divergence and the less is inherited.
Then, Alice and Bob, if both human, share more psychological dispositions than Alice and a chicken, and this can be traced back to more recent common causes of their psychological dispositions, i.e. more recent common ancestry between any two humans than between a human and a chicken, passed through genes. This could let us preferentially match counterparts that are more closely related/trace more of their genes that account for psychological features back to the same more recent ancestors.
Transworld identity is just a special case of this kind of causal counterpart relation where the common causes of psychological features are especially potent or of a particular kind, e.g. the “same” brain, which we can trace through spacetime. The gap between distinct persons is admittedly generally much larger than between the same person across worlds or at different points in time, but if it’s more a difference in degree than kind since both are graded, then this would give us reason to accept or reject both transworld/personal identity and causal counterpart relations together, rather than accept transworld/personal identiy and reject causal counterpart relations.
One potential supporting argument for the generalization from direct inheritance of psychological features to common causes of psychological features for counterpart relations:
While adult Alice inherits some psychological features from her infant self and infant brain, many of her cognitive capacities as an adult — which are plausibly important to her identity — were not directly inherited from her infant self or infant brain (or fetal brain), but were caused in part by general and often region-specific DNA-driven processes to restructure her brain. Furthermore, the vast majority of the particles in her neurons and brain get replaced even if most neurons are preserved, and (I’d guess) the DNA in those neurons are necessary for ensuring their function even as the particles in them turn over. So, Alice’s psychological features and identity over time and across worlds come in large part from her DNA. The same has been typically true for conscious biological beings on Earth so far.
The persistent DNA particles over time cause Alice’s psychological features over time and across worlds. Copies of them from her ancestors cause many of her relative’s similar psychological features over time and across worlds. What grounds her identity across time and worlds is common causes of her psychological features, but going back up the causal chain, we find common causes of psychological features between moral patients, too, not just within, through copies of the same DNA.[1]
If common causes, like someone’s DNA, of shared psychological features across worlds are what ground transworld identity, then we should be able to use common causes, like a common ancestor’s DNA from which copies were inherited, of shared psychological features to ground counterpart relations across worlds to generalize transworld identity, too.
We can use other common causes of shared psychological features to ground counterparts more generally. Or even common causes of individuals’ existences across worlds, e.g. if someone is deciding between dog breeders to breed a puppy for them (or buying a puppy from them and creating demand for further puppies), they are causally downstream of each of the possible resulting puppies, and this further common cause supports matching the possible resulting puppies across worlds as counterparts.
I also don’t think it would make a difference if all of Alice’s DNA got replaced by exact copies and none of her particles were preserved over time. Either causal relationships or continuity are doing the work here.
Interesting, thanks––more later, just one (meta-)comment: Maybe, if huge numbers of individuals are pointing in each direction (i.e., if we are clueful enough to be able to pick out these individuals and assign them a contrastive reason of determinate direction but vague magnitude), it would be a mistake for impartial altruists to reach a determinate overall verdict. In cases where the balance of contrastive person-attributable reasons is vague, it seems inadequate to favor either option. In other words, indeterminacy may not be a problem to “solve” in these cases (whether hypothetical or actual); instead, it would be a problem if our theory told us that the situation, in these particular cases, is determinate.
I might be able to share a couple of thoughts on identity and counterpart relations later––it’s very tricky business, of course. For now, just one more thought on your apparent intuition (?) that, in the cases we are actually/empirically facing today, we should be able to set far future individuals aside. There might be another, principled way of doing this that may align quite well with the defense of person-centered bottom-up bracketing offered in the post (which justifies its verdicts in terms of each person’s ex ante perspective on our choices). Start with the plausible, widely shared idea that no number of mild, barely noticeable headaches can outweigh unbearable, torture-level suffering, i.e., draw a distinction between “lower” and “higher” kinds of suffering (and perhaps an analogous distinction between lower and higher kinds of happiness, à la John Stuart Mill). Then argue that sufficiently tiny probabilities of higher suffering still fall into the lower prospect category, i.e., can be traded off with headaches. (In other words, come up with a way to avoid the kind of fanaticism at issue here.) Finally, argue that our empirical situation happens to be such that, with our actions today, we can only make sufficiently tiny probability-dents in the fates of individual far future people (as represented by us).
I agree with the meta point, but my reaction is that if this particular theory is practically never action-guiding, I’ll just move onto other theories that could be action-guiding, say via some kind of metanormative bracketing or wager.
I think treating tiny probabilities of severe suffering (or any large difference for an individual) as lower would probably work to often give determinate comparisons, as you suggest. We could get a range of views that set the thresholds between higher and lower in different places and have moral uncertainty over them.
It could go too far or turn on empirical facts that in my view it shouldn’t really, although this is pulling in nonidentity/counterpart intuitions, so basically question begging.
Generally any moral patients who do not yet exist / are not yet conceived could be dramatically discounted because each such pre-specified individual is extremely unlikely to exist, based on the huge number of sperm cells in the race to fertilize an egg. The view could practically be a strict person-affecting view like presentism or necessitarianism.
All of our apparently cost-effective animal welfare interventions could only help animals to the lower level, because none of them help already conceived individuals, given the delay between the decision to support an intervention and its actual implementation.
Causing millions more chickens to be factory farmed per year would only reach the lower level for each resulting chicken ex ante.
Plausibly each specific far future moral patient is far far far less likely to exist than any specific chicken in the next 10 years. Each individual’s probability of existing could roughly decrease exponentially with their generation number from the present, at least for biological moral patients. So, there could be thresholds where chickens over the next few years reach higher, but far future moral patients only reach lower. But should the view turn on these particulars?
Hi again, thanks––that’s indeed what follows for the chickens, on this approach. I don’t necessarily want to defend this implication, but on the assumption that sufficiently tiny probabilities of “higher” suffering put the respective prospects in the “lower” category, it’s less troubling than one might think. Consider another case: A trillion existing people each have the option to participate in a lottery that will cause one person higher suffering and make everybody else happy. They are all asking you to let them participate in the lottery, and would object otherwise (on personal welfare grounds). You point out that one person will certainly end up experiencing higher suffering, and that certain higher suffering cannot be outweighed by non-higher happiness. And yet, that should not dissuade them (on the assumption that a one-in-a-trillion chance of higher suffering is sufficiently small). Hence, if you want to take seriously the welfare-based verdicts of the people affected by your choice, you should arguably run the lottery.
This approach may allow us to discount the reasons supplied by far future individuals sufficiently to place them in the lower category––as you say. If we want/expect determinate “consequentialist” verdicts in favor of saving people from malaria today (or any higher harms), despite long-term cluelessness, this is a welcome result.
However, the implication for the chickens is troubling, and it’s unclear why empirical specifics about the causal origins of moral patients should be so important. What may have gone wrong, in this approach, is that the designators we use (e.g., “the chicken with DNA xyz”) are out of line with our moral concern for those we know exist or will exist. To the extent possible, our designators should arguably pick them out.This may recommend switching to an ex post view and respective designators such as “the chickens who will come into torturous existence given action A.” Or, within a formally ex ante view, it may recommend switching to person-moments as the basic objects of concern: “the person-moments who will experience higher suffering after the lottery,” in the above case. (The ex ante/ex post distinction is harder to draw than is often assumed.) This would allow us to avoid the troubling implication for the chickens, and avoid having to run the lottery in the above case. Both the person-moments who will suffer after the lottery and the chicken-moments who will come into torturous existence are in the higher category and supply decisive reasons. (As mentioned in another comment, I’m open to person-moment-centered bottom-up bracketing, which can be justified by exactly parallel arguments and is not “impersonal” or “aggregate-first.”)
What about far future individuals? Take a very simple case involving two people or person-moments: the one who will suffer at welfare level −10 if we choose A and x-risk is averted (Alice), and the one who will suffer at −10 if we choose B and x-risk is averted (Bob). Suppose we are clueless about how A and B affect the probability of x-risk being averted. On some sharpenings, the probability is sufficiently low to place Alice and Bob in the lower category. Consequently, it is not the case that they are determinately in the higher category. That may or may not provide a basis for subordinating them to the people we can save from malaria today.
The defense of person(-moment)-centered bottom-up bracketing I give in the post grants Kollin et al.‘s background views about how to deal with representors. These entail that, in the above case involving Alice and Bob, the situation is indeterminate (there are sharpenings on which Alice supplies the stronger contrastive reason, and sharpenings on which Bob does). This may “threaten” cluelessness in the cases we happen to be facing in the actual world, depending on the number of people like Alice and Bob. (If the people we can save from malaria were numerous enough relative to the Alice- and Bob-like people, the situation would determinately favor saving the people from malaria. Their combined determinate reasons would outweigh the admissible net reason supplied by the Alice- and Bob-like people under every sharpening.) Given Kollin et al.’s unanimity requirement––a single dissenting sharpening is sufficient for indeterminacy––this is exactly as it should be. Personally, I don’t necessarily expect more determinacy than that (see below). But if you do, you should question the unanimity requirement:
You might argue that since Alice’s and Bob’s reasons are of the same kind (anti-suffering), occur in equal number (1), and have mirror-symmetric magnitudes (p∈[0, 1]; 10), their reasons should balance each other out. If we added Carol at −10 alongside Bob, Carol and Bob’s reasons should be stronger than Alice’s. If, instead of adding Carol, we put Bob at −20, his reason should also be stronger than Alice’s. And if we narrowed Bob’s p to [0.5,1], his reason should again become stronger. (Suppose you are offered a choice between p1∈[0,1] of serious −10 suffering and an independently varying p2∈[0.5,1] of the same −10 suffering, what would you choose? Or suppose you must choose between p1∈[0,1] of −10 and independently varying p2∈[0,1] of −20? Intuitively, the second prospect is worse in each comparison.)
Kollin et al.’s unanimity rule denies this and entails indeterminacy in each of these cases. But some standard, independently axiomatized, and prima facie attractive choice rules entail all of the comparative verdicts just suggested: e.g., minimax regret and non-extremal Hurwicz (see Hayashi 2008, Stoye 2010 and 2011, and Pettigrew 2016). These rules can be applied after the person-centered bottom-up bracketing filter.
If you wish to avoid indeterminacy, this is arguably the way to go. Indeterminacy is not forced by person-centered bottom-up bracketing. It results from combining that architecture with a unanimity rule for sharpenings. Other rules can recover additional action guidance while preserving person-first filtering.
Personally, I’m quite sympathetic to the unanimity rule. But I have sympathies for it across the board: In section 4 of my post, I argue that it’s unclear why impartial altruists must be scope-sensitive. If you can either (1) save one person or (2) save two other people but not all three, there is no unanimity. The set of factors relevant to the choice contains three members, two of which favor (2) but one of which favors (1). Kollin et al. should, I think, take seriously the view that the situation is indeterminate. It’s unclear to me why one would strongly favor the unanimity rule for representors while rejecting it outright for sets of persons. Just like each admissible probability-sharpening has an equal “claim” to determining our belief, each person has an equal claim to determining our preference. Why “collapse the information” we have in the case of separate persons, but not in the case of separate sharpenings? And if every sharpening must agree before a verdict is epistemically determinate, why is it not the case that every person must agree before a verdict is morally determinate? Why give each separate sharpening veto power, but not each separate person? If anything, I would have thought veto power even more plausible for persons who each have their life on the line––the only one they have––and are insisting to be saved.
Finally, my post briefly discusses Anthony’s metanormative bracketing. Even if our favorite rule for representors remains the unanimity of sharpenings, metanormative considerations should perhaps warm us up to alternative rules such as minimax regret and Hurwicz (which plausibly deserve non-negligible credence). When the unanimity rule outputs indeterminacy, the other rules will have a preference. On metanormative bottom-up bracketing, the unanimity rule is bracketed out and the others will decide the case.
I’d be curious about how you think about transworld identity and personal identity and to get your take on the following proposal for counterpart relations. I expect that bottom-up bracketing would rarely be action-guiding in practice without counterpart relations, because of huge numbers of contingent moral patients pointing in each direction, and counterpart relations could make some version action-guiding in practice by allowing us to bracket out far more of them.
This is a pretty rough sketch.
One way I’m thinking of grounding counterpart relations is by looking for measures that naturally generalize our concepts of transworld and personal identity. For example, Alice in A is the same person as Alice in B and her past self because of common causes of the features important to Alice’s identity, like her memories, psychological dispositions, etc.. Maybe we’d say specifically due to the preservation or inheritance of the physical structures (her brain) responsible for her psychological features from her past selves.
All of this is a matter of degree, because Alice changes over time and could diverge between worlds A and B. Almost all of the particles in her neurons and elsewhere in her body are replaced over time, and which particles make her up will diverge across worlds. In cases of amnesia, brain damage and normal human aging and experience, people can change fairly dramatically in their psychological features. We might say that transworld and personal identity matching are themselves graded. Alice is kind of both the same person and kind of a different person, and more a different person the larger the divergence and the less is inherited.
Then, Alice and Bob, if both human, share more psychological dispositions than Alice and a chicken, and this can be traced back to more recent common causes of their psychological dispositions, i.e. more recent common ancestry between any two humans than between a human and a chicken, passed through genes. This could let us preferentially match counterparts that are more closely related/trace more of their genes that account for psychological features back to the same more recent ancestors.
Transworld identity is just a special case of this kind of causal counterpart relation where the common causes of psychological features are especially potent or of a particular kind, e.g. the “same” brain, which we can trace through spacetime. The gap between distinct persons is admittedly generally much larger than between the same person across worlds or at different points in time, but if it’s more a difference in degree than kind since both are graded, then this would give us reason to accept or reject both transworld/personal identity and causal counterpart relations together, rather than accept transworld/personal identiy and reject causal counterpart relations.
One potential supporting argument for the generalization from direct inheritance of psychological features to common causes of psychological features for counterpart relations:
While adult Alice inherits some psychological features from her infant self and infant brain, many of her cognitive capacities as an adult — which are plausibly important to her identity — were not directly inherited from her infant self or infant brain (or fetal brain), but were caused in part by general and often region-specific DNA-driven processes to restructure her brain. Furthermore, the vast majority of the particles in her neurons and brain get replaced even if most neurons are preserved, and (I’d guess) the DNA in those neurons are necessary for ensuring their function even as the particles in them turn over. So, Alice’s psychological features and identity over time and across worlds come in large part from her DNA. The same has been typically true for conscious biological beings on Earth so far.
The persistent DNA particles over time cause Alice’s psychological features over time and across worlds. Copies of them from her ancestors cause many of her relative’s similar psychological features over time and across worlds. What grounds her identity across time and worlds is common causes of her psychological features, but going back up the causal chain, we find common causes of psychological features between moral patients, too, not just within, through copies of the same DNA.[1]
If common causes, like someone’s DNA, of shared psychological features across worlds are what ground transworld identity, then we should be able to use common causes, like a common ancestor’s DNA from which copies were inherited, of shared psychological features to ground counterpart relations across worlds to generalize transworld identity, too.
We can use other common causes of shared psychological features to ground counterparts more generally. Or even common causes of individuals’ existences across worlds, e.g. if someone is deciding between dog breeders to breed a puppy for them (or buying a puppy from them and creating demand for further puppies), they are causally downstream of each of the possible resulting puppies, and this further common cause supports matching the possible resulting puppies across worlds as counterparts.
I also don’t think it would make a difference if all of Alice’s DNA got replaced by exact copies and none of her particles were preserved over time. Either causal relationships or continuity are doing the work here.
Interesting, thanks––more later, just one (meta-)comment: Maybe, if huge numbers of individuals are pointing in each direction (i.e., if we are clueful enough to be able to pick out these individuals and assign them a contrastive reason of determinate direction but vague magnitude), it would be a mistake for impartial altruists to reach a determinate overall verdict. In cases where the balance of contrastive person-attributable reasons is vague, it seems inadequate to favor either option. In other words, indeterminacy may not be a problem to “solve” in these cases (whether hypothetical or actual); instead, it would be a problem if our theory told us that the situation, in these particular cases, is determinate.
I might be able to share a couple of thoughts on identity and counterpart relations later––it’s very tricky business, of course. For now, just one more thought on your apparent intuition (?) that, in the cases we are actually/empirically facing today, we should be able to set far future individuals aside. There might be another, principled way of doing this that may align quite well with the defense of person-centered bottom-up bracketing offered in the post (which justifies its verdicts in terms of each person’s ex ante perspective on our choices). Start with the plausible, widely shared idea that no number of mild, barely noticeable headaches can outweigh unbearable, torture-level suffering, i.e., draw a distinction between “lower” and “higher” kinds of suffering (and perhaps an analogous distinction between lower and higher kinds of happiness, à la John Stuart Mill). Then argue that sufficiently tiny probabilities of higher suffering still fall into the lower prospect category, i.e., can be traded off with headaches. (In other words, come up with a way to avoid the kind of fanaticism at issue here.) Finally, argue that our empirical situation happens to be such that, with our actions today, we can only make sufficiently tiny probability-dents in the fates of individual far future people (as represented by us).
I agree with the meta point, but my reaction is that if this particular theory is practically never action-guiding, I’ll just move onto other theories that could be action-guiding, say via some kind of metanormative bracketing or wager.
I think treating tiny probabilities of severe suffering (or any large difference for an individual) as lower would probably work to often give determinate comparisons, as you suggest. We could get a range of views that set the thresholds between higher and lower in different places and have moral uncertainty over them.
It could go too far or turn on empirical facts that in my view it shouldn’t really, although this is pulling in nonidentity/counterpart intuitions, so basically question begging.
Generally any moral patients who do not yet exist / are not yet conceived could be dramatically discounted because each such pre-specified individual is extremely unlikely to exist, based on the huge number of sperm cells in the race to fertilize an egg. The view could practically be a strict person-affecting view like presentism or necessitarianism.
All of our apparently cost-effective animal welfare interventions could only help animals to the lower level, because none of them help already conceived individuals, given the delay between the decision to support an intervention and its actual implementation.
Causing millions more chickens to be factory farmed per year would only reach the lower level for each resulting chicken ex ante.
Plausibly each specific far future moral patient is far far far less likely to exist than any specific chicken in the next 10 years. Each individual’s probability of existing could roughly decrease exponentially with their generation number from the present, at least for biological moral patients. So, there could be thresholds where chickens over the next few years reach higher, but far future moral patients only reach lower. But should the view turn on these particulars?
Hi again, thanks––that’s indeed what follows for the chickens, on this approach. I don’t necessarily want to defend this implication, but on the assumption that sufficiently tiny probabilities of “higher” suffering put the respective prospects in the “lower” category, it’s less troubling than one might think. Consider another case: A trillion existing people each have the option to participate in a lottery that will cause one person higher suffering and make everybody else happy. They are all asking you to let them participate in the lottery, and would object otherwise (on personal welfare grounds). You point out that one person will certainly end up experiencing higher suffering, and that certain higher suffering cannot be outweighed by non-higher happiness. And yet, that should not dissuade them (on the assumption that a one-in-a-trillion chance of higher suffering is sufficiently small). Hence, if you want to take seriously the welfare-based verdicts of the people affected by your choice, you should arguably run the lottery.
This approach may allow us to discount the reasons supplied by far future individuals sufficiently to place them in the lower category––as you say. If we want/expect determinate “consequentialist” verdicts in favor of saving people from malaria today (or any higher harms), despite long-term cluelessness, this is a welcome result.
However, the implication for the chickens is troubling, and it’s unclear why empirical specifics about the causal origins of moral patients should be so important. What may have gone wrong, in this approach, is that the designators we use (e.g., “the chicken with DNA xyz”) are out of line with our moral concern for those we know exist or will exist. To the extent possible, our designators should arguably pick them out. This may recommend switching to an ex post view and respective designators such as “the chickens who will come into torturous existence given action A.” Or, within a formally ex ante view, it may recommend switching to person-moments as the basic objects of concern: “the person-moments who will experience higher suffering after the lottery,” in the above case. (The ex ante/ex post distinction is harder to draw than is often assumed.) This would allow us to avoid the troubling implication for the chickens, and avoid having to run the lottery in the above case. Both the person-moments who will suffer after the lottery and the chicken-moments who will come into torturous existence are in the higher category and supply decisive reasons. (As mentioned in another comment, I’m open to person-moment-centered bottom-up bracketing, which can be justified by exactly parallel arguments and is not “impersonal” or “aggregate-first.”)
What about far future individuals? Take a very simple case involving two people or person-moments: the one who will suffer at welfare level −10 if we choose A and x-risk is averted (Alice), and the one who will suffer at −10 if we choose B and x-risk is averted (Bob). Suppose we are clueless about how A and B affect the probability of x-risk being averted. On some sharpenings, the probability is sufficiently low to place Alice and Bob in the lower category. Consequently, it is not the case that they are determinately in the higher category. That may or may not provide a basis for subordinating them to the people we can save from malaria today.
The defense of person(-moment)-centered bottom-up bracketing I give in the post grants Kollin et al.‘s background views about how to deal with representors. These entail that, in the above case involving Alice and Bob, the situation is indeterminate (there are sharpenings on which Alice supplies the stronger contrastive reason, and sharpenings on which Bob does). This may “threaten” cluelessness in the cases we happen to be facing in the actual world, depending on the number of people like Alice and Bob. (If the people we can save from malaria were numerous enough relative to the Alice- and Bob-like people, the situation would determinately favor saving the people from malaria. Their combined determinate reasons would outweigh the admissible net reason supplied by the Alice- and Bob-like people under every sharpening.) Given Kollin et al.’s unanimity requirement––a single dissenting sharpening is sufficient for indeterminacy––this is exactly as it should be. Personally, I don’t necessarily expect more determinacy than that (see below). But if you do, you should question the unanimity requirement:
You might argue that since Alice’s and Bob’s reasons are of the same kind (anti-suffering), occur in equal number (1), and have mirror-symmetric magnitudes (p∈[0, 1]; 10), their reasons should balance each other out. If we added Carol at −10 alongside Bob, Carol and Bob’s reasons should be stronger than Alice’s. If, instead of adding Carol, we put Bob at −20, his reason should also be stronger than Alice’s. And if we narrowed Bob’s p to [0.5,1], his reason should again become stronger. (Suppose you are offered a choice between p1∈[0,1] of serious −10 suffering and an independently varying p2∈[0.5,1] of the same −10 suffering, what would you choose? Or suppose you must choose between p1∈[0,1] of −10 and independently varying p2∈[0,1] of −20? Intuitively, the second prospect is worse in each comparison.)
Kollin et al.’s unanimity rule denies this and entails indeterminacy in each of these cases. But some standard, independently axiomatized, and prima facie attractive choice rules entail all of the comparative verdicts just suggested: e.g., minimax regret and non-extremal Hurwicz (see Hayashi 2008, Stoye 2010 and 2011, and Pettigrew 2016). These rules can be applied after the person-centered bottom-up bracketing filter.
If you wish to avoid indeterminacy, this is arguably the way to go. Indeterminacy is not forced by person-centered bottom-up bracketing. It results from combining that architecture with a unanimity rule for sharpenings. Other rules can recover additional action guidance while preserving person-first filtering.
Personally, I’m quite sympathetic to the unanimity rule. But I have sympathies for it across the board: In section 4 of my post, I argue that it’s unclear why impartial altruists must be scope-sensitive. If you can either (1) save one person or (2) save two other people but not all three, there is no unanimity. The set of factors relevant to the choice contains three members, two of which favor (2) but one of which favors (1). Kollin et al. should, I think, take seriously the view that the situation is indeterminate. It’s unclear to me why one would strongly favor the unanimity rule for representors while rejecting it outright for sets of persons. Just like each admissible probability-sharpening has an equal “claim” to determining our belief, each person has an equal claim to determining our preference. Why “collapse the information” we have in the case of separate persons, but not in the case of separate sharpenings? And if every sharpening must agree before a verdict is epistemically determinate, why is it not the case that every person must agree before a verdict is morally determinate? Why give each separate sharpening veto power, but not each separate person? If anything, I would have thought veto power even more plausible for persons who each have their life on the line––the only one they have––and are insisting to be saved.
Finally, my post briefly discusses Anthony’s metanormative bracketing. Even if our favorite rule for representors remains the unanimity of sharpenings, metanormative considerations should perhaps warm us up to alternative rules such as minimax regret and Hurwicz (which plausibly deserve non-negligible credence). When the unanimity rule outputs indeterminacy, the other rules will have a preference. On metanormative bottom-up bracketing, the unanimity rule is bracketed out and the others will decide the case.