edit: I wrote this comment before I refreshed the page and I now see that these points have been raised!
Thanks for flagging that all ethical views have bullets to bite and for pointing at previous discussion of asymmetrical views!
However, I’m not really following your argument.
Several of your arguments are arguments for the view that “intrinsically positive lives do not exist,” [...] It implies that there wouldn’t be anything wrong with immediately killing everyone reading this, their families, and everyone else, since this supposedly wouldn’t be destroying anything positive.
This doesn’t necessarily follow, as Magnus explicitly notes that “many proponents of the Asymmetry argue that there is an important distinction between the potential value of continued existence (or the badness of discontinued existence) versus the potential value of bringing a new life into existence.” So given that everyone reading this already exists, there is in fact potential positive value in continuing our existences.
However, I may have missed some stronger views that Magnus mentions that would lead to this implication. The closest I can find is when Magnus writes, some “views of wellbeing likewise support the badness of creating miserable lives, yet they do not support any supposed goodness of creating happy lives. On these views, intrinsically positive lives do not exist, although relationally positive lives do.” As I understand that, though, this means that there can be positive value in lives, specifically lives that are interacting with others?
I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d just missed the relevant view that you are describing here, so I’d appreciate if you could point to the specific quotes that you were thinking of.
Finally, you are implicitly assuming hedonism + consequentialism — so if it turned out that happiness had no intrinsic value, there’s no reason to continue life. But you could hold a suffering-focused view that cares about other values (e.g. preference satisfaction), or a form of non-consequentialism that sees intrinsic value in life beyond happiness. (Thanks to Sean Richardson for making this point to me!)
Thanks for the thoughtful reply; I’ve replied to many of these points here.
In short, I think you’re right that Magnus doesn’t explicitly assume consequentialism or hedonism. I understood him to be implicitly assuming these things because of the post’s focus on creating happiness and suffering, as well as the apparent prevalence of these assumptions in the suffering-focused ethics community (e.g. the fact that it’s called “suffering-focused ethics” rather than “frustration-focused ethics”). But I should have more explicitly recognized those assumptions and how my arguments are limited to them.
edit: I wrote this comment before I refreshed the page and I now see that these points have been raised!
Thanks for flagging that all ethical views have bullets to bite and for pointing at previous discussion of asymmetrical views!
However, I’m not really following your argument.
This doesn’t necessarily follow, as Magnus explicitly notes that “many proponents of the Asymmetry argue that there is an important distinction between the potential value of continued existence (or the badness of discontinued existence) versus the potential value of bringing a new life into existence.” So given that everyone reading this already exists, there is in fact potential positive value in continuing our existences.
However, I may have missed some stronger views that Magnus mentions that would lead to this implication. The closest I can find is when Magnus writes, some “views of wellbeing likewise support the badness of creating miserable lives, yet they do not support any supposed goodness of creating happy lives. On these views, intrinsically positive lives do not exist, although relationally positive lives do.” As I understand that, though, this means that there can be positive value in lives, specifically lives that are interacting with others?
I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d just missed the relevant view that you are describing here, so I’d appreciate if you could point to the specific quotes that you were thinking of.
Finally, you are implicitly assuming hedonism + consequentialism — so if it turned out that happiness had no intrinsic value, there’s no reason to continue life. But you could hold a suffering-focused view that cares about other values (e.g. preference satisfaction), or a form of non-consequentialism that sees intrinsic value in life beyond happiness. (Thanks to Sean Richardson for making this point to me!)
Thanks for the thoughtful reply; I’ve replied to many of these points here.
In short, I think you’re right that Magnus doesn’t explicitly assume consequentialism or hedonism. I understood him to be implicitly assuming these things because of the post’s focus on creating happiness and suffering, as well as the apparent prevalence of these assumptions in the suffering-focused ethics community (e.g. the fact that it’s called “suffering-focused ethics” rather than “frustration-focused ethics”). But I should have more explicitly recognized those assumptions and how my arguments are limited to them.