I think if you believe the conditions of the theorem are all plausible or desirable and so give them some weight, then you should give the conclusion some weight, too.
This makes sense, but the type of things that tend to convince me to believe in an ethical theory generally depend a lot on how much I resonate with the main claims of the theory. When I look at the premises in this theorem, none of them seem to be type of things that I care about.
On the other hand, pointing out that utilitarians care about people and animals, and they want them to be as happy as possible (and free, or with agency, desire satisfaction) that makes me happy to endorse the theory. When I think about all people and animals being happy and free from pain in a utilitarian world, I get a positive feeling. When I think about “Total utilitarians are the only ones that satisfy these three assumptions” I don’t get the same positive feeling.
When it comes to ethics, it’s the emotional arguments that really win me over.
This makes sense, but the type of things that tend to convince me to believe in an ethical theory generally depend a lot on how much I resonate with the main claims of the theory. When I look at the premises in this theorem, none of them seem to be type of things that I care about.
If you want to deal with moral uncertainty with credences, you could assign each of the 3 major assumptions an independent credence of 50%, so this argument would tell you should be utilitarian with credence at least 123=18=12.5%. (Assigning independent credences might not actually make sense, in case you have to deal with contradictions with other assumptions.)
On the other hand, pointing out that utilitarians care about people and animals, and they want them to be as happy as possible (and free, or with agency, desire satisfaction) that makes me happy to endorse the theory. When I think about all people and animals being happy and free from pain in a utilitarian world, I get a positive feeling.
Makes sense. For what it’s worth, this seems basically compatible with any theory which satisfies the Pareto principle, and I’d imagine you’d also want it to be impartial (symmetry). If you also assume real-valued utilities, transitivity, independence of irrelevant alternatives, continuity and independence of unconcerned agents, you get something like utilitarianism again. In my view, independence of unconcerned agents is doing most of the work here, though.
This makes sense, but the type of things that tend to convince me to believe in an ethical theory generally depend a lot on how much I resonate with the main claims of the theory. When I look at the premises in this theorem, none of them seem to be type of things that I care about.
On the other hand, pointing out that utilitarians care about people and animals, and they want them to be as happy as possible (and free, or with agency, desire satisfaction) that makes me happy to endorse the theory. When I think about all people and animals being happy and free from pain in a utilitarian world, I get a positive feeling. When I think about “Total utilitarians are the only ones that satisfy these three assumptions” I don’t get the same positive feeling.
When it comes to ethics, it’s the emotional arguments that really win me over.
If you want to deal with moral uncertainty with credences, you could assign each of the 3 major assumptions an independent credence of 50%, so this argument would tell you should be utilitarian with credence at least 123=18=12.5%. (Assigning independent credences might not actually make sense, in case you have to deal with contradictions with other assumptions.)
Makes sense. For what it’s worth, this seems basically compatible with any theory which satisfies the Pareto principle, and I’d imagine you’d also want it to be impartial (symmetry). If you also assume real-valued utilities, transitivity, independence of irrelevant alternatives, continuity and independence of unconcerned agents, you get something like utilitarianism again. In my view, independence of unconcerned agents is doing most of the work here, though.