I agree that preferences at different times and different subsystems can conflict. In particular, high discounting of the future can lead to forgoing a ton of positive reward or accepting lots of negative reward in the future in exchange for some short-term change. This is one reason to pay extra attention to cases of near-simultaneous comparisons, or at least to look at different arrangements of temporal ordering. But still the tradeoffs people make for themselves with a lot of experience under good conditions look better than what they tend to impose on others casually. [Also we can better trust people’s self-benevolence than their benevolence towards others, e.g. factory farming as you mention.]
And the brain machinery for processing stimuli into decisions and preferences does seem very relevant to me at least, since that’s a primary source of intuitive assessments of these psychological states as having value, and for comparisons where we can make them. Strong rejection of interpersonal comparisons is also used to argue that relieving one or more pains can’t compensate for losses to another individual.
I agree the hardest cases for making any kind of interpersonal comparison will be for minds with different architectural setups and conflicting univocal viewpoints, e.g. 2 minds with equally passionate complete enthusiasm (with no contrary psychological processes or internal currencies to provide reference points) respectively for and against their own experience, or gratitude and anger for their birth (past or future). They can respectively consider a world with and without their existences completely unbearable and beyond compensation. But if we’re in the business of helping others for their own sakes rather than ours, I don’t see the case for excluding either one’s concern from our moral circle.
Now, one can take take a more nihilistic/personal aesthetics view of morality, and say that one doesn’t personally care about the gratitude of minds happy to exist. I take it this is more your meta-ethical stance around these things? There are good arguments for moral irrealism and nihilism, but it seems to me that going too far down this route can lose a lot of the point of the altruistic project. If it’s not mainly about others and their perspectives, why care so much about shaping (some of) their lives and attending to (some of) their concerns?
David Pearce sometimes uses the Holocaust to argue for negative utilitarianism, to say that no amount of good could offset the pain people suffered there. But this view dismisses (or accidentally valorizes) most of the evil of the Holocaust. The death camps centrally were destroying lives and attempting to destroy future generations of peoples, and the people inside them wanted to live free, and being killed sooner was not a close substitute. Killing them (or willfully letting them die when it would be easy to prevent) if they would otherwise escape with a delay would not be helping them for their own sakes, but choosing to be their enemy by only selectively attending to their concerns. And even though some did choose death. Likewise to genocide by sterilization (in my Jewish household growing up the Holocaust was cited as a reason to have children).
Future generations, whether they enthusiastically endorse or oppose their existence, don’t have an immediate voice (or conventional power) here and now their existence isn’t counterfactually robust. But when I’m in a mindset of trying to do impartial good I don’t see the appeal of ignoring those who would desperately, passionately want to exist, and their gratitude in worlds where they do.
I see demandingness and contractarian/game theory/cooperation reasons that bound sacrifice to realize impartial uncompensated help to others, and inevitable moral dilemmas (almost all beings that could exist in a particular location won’t, wild animals are desperately poor and might on average wish they didn’t exist, people have conflicting desires, advanced civilizations I expect will have far more profoundly self-endorsing good lives than unbearably bad lives but on average across the cosmos will have many of the latter by sheer scope). But being an enemy of all the countless beings that would like to exist, or do exist and would like to exist more (or more of something), even if they’re the vast supermajority, seems at odds to me with my idea of impartial benevolence, which I would identify more with trying to be a friend to all, or at least as much as you can given conflicts.
e.g. 2 minds with equally passionate complete enthusiasm (with no contrary psychological processes or internal currencies to provide reference points) respectively for and against their own experience, or gratitude and anger for their birth (past or future). They can respectively consider a world with and without their existences completely unbearable and beyond compensation. But if we’re in the business of helping others for their own sakes rather than ours, I don’t see the case for excluding either one’s concern from our moral circle.
…
But when I’m in a mindset of trying to do impartial good I don’t see the appeal of ignoring those who would desperately, passionately want to exist, and their gratitude in worlds where they do.
I don’t really see the motivation for this perspective. In what sense, or to whom, is a world without the existence of the very happy/fulfilled/whatever person “completely unbearable”? Who is “desperate” to exist? (Concern for reducing the suffering of beings who actually feel desperation is, clearly, consistent with pure NU, but by hypothesis this is set aside.) Obviously not themselves. They wouldn’t exist in that counterfactual.
To me, the clear case for excluding intrinsic concern for those happy moments is:
“Gratitude” just doesn’t seem like compelling evidence in itself that the grateful individual has been made better off. You have to compare to the counterfactual. In daily cases with existing people, gratitude is relevant as far as the grateful person would have otherwise been dissatisfied with their state of deprivation. But that doesn’t apply to people who wouldn’t feel any deprivation in the counterfactual, because they wouldn’t exist.
I take it that the thrust of your argument is, “Ethics should be about applying the same standards we apply across people as we do for intrapersonal prudence.” I agree. And I also find the arguments for empty individualism convincing. Therefore, I don’t see a reason to trust as ~infallible the judgment of a person at time T that the bundle of experiences of happiness and suffering they underwent in times T-n, …, T-1 was overall worth it. They’re making an “interpersonal” value judgment, which, despite being informed by clear memories of the experiences, still isn’t incorrigible. Their positive evaluation of that bundle can be debunked by, say, this insight from my previous bullet point that the happy moments wouldn’t have felt any deprivation had they not existed.
In any case, I find upon reflection that I don’t endorse tradeoffs of contentment for packages of happiness and suffering for myself. I find I’m generally more satisfied with my life when I don’t have the “fear of missing out” that a symmetric axiology often implies. Quoting myself:
Another takeaway is that the fear of missing out seems kind of silly. I don’t know how common this is, but I’ve sometimes felt a weird sense that I have to make the most of some opportunity to have a lot of fun (or something similar), otherwise I’m failing in some way. This is probably largely attributable to the effect of wanting to justify the “price of admission” (I highly recommend the talk in this link) after the fact. No one wants to feel like a sucker who makes bad decisions, so we try to make something we’ve already invested in worth it, or at least feel worth it. But even for opportunities I don’t pay for, monetarily or otherwise, the pressure to squeeze as much happiness from them as possible can be exhausting. When you no longer consider it rational to do so, this pressure lightens up a bit. You don’t have a duty to be really happy. It’s not as if there’s a great video game scoreboard in the sky that punishes you for squandering a sacred gift.
“Gratitude” just doesn’t seem like compelling evidence in itself that the grateful individual has been made better off
What if the individual says that after thinking very deeply about it, they believe their existence genuinely is much better than not having existed? If we’re trying to be altruistic toward their own values, presumably we should also value their existence as better than nothingness (unless we think they’re mistaken)?
One could say that if they don’t currently exist, then their nonexistence isn’t a problem. It’s true that their nonexistence doesn’t cause suffering, but it does make impartial-altruistic total value lower than otherwise if we would consider their existence to be positive.
This is one reason to pay extra attention to cases of near-simultaneous comparisons
In cases of extreme suffering (and maybe also extreme pleasure), it seems to me there’s an empathy gap: when things are going well, you don’t truly understand how bad extreme suffering is, and when you’re in severe pain, you can’t properly care about large volumes of future pleasure. When the suffering is bad enough, it’s as if a different brain takes over that can’t see things from the other perspective, and vice versa for the pleasure-seeking brain. This seems closer to the case of “univocal viewpoints” that you mention.
I can see how for moderate pains and pleasures, a person could experience them in succession and make tradeoffs while still being in roughly the same kind of mental state without too much of an empathy gap. But the fact of those experiences being moderate and exchangeable is the reason I don’t think the suffering in such cases is that morally noteworthy.
we can better trust people’s self-benevolence than their benevolence towards others
Good point. :) OTOH, we might think it’s morally right to have a more cautious approach to imposing suffering on others for the sake of positive goods than we would use for ourselves. In other words, we might favor a moral view that’s different from MacAskill’s proposal to imagine yourself living through every being’s experience in succession.
Strong rejection of interpersonal comparisons is also used to argue that relieving one or more pains can’t compensate for losses to another individual.
Yeah. I support doing interpersonal comparisons, but there’s inherent arbitrariness in how to weigh conflicting preferences across individuals (or sufficiently different mental states of the same individual), and I favor giving more weight to the extreme-suffering preferences.
But if we’re in the business of helping others for their own sakes rather than ours, I don’t see the case for excluding either one’s concern from our moral circle.
That’s fair. :) In my opinion, there’s just an ethical asymmetry between creating a mind that desperately wishes not to exist versus failing to create a mind that desperately would be glad to exist. The first one is horrifying, while the second one is at most mildly unfortunate. I can see how some people would consider this a failure to impartially consider the preferences of others for their own sakes, and if my view makes me less “altruistic” in that sense, then I’m ok with that (as you suspected). My intuition that it’s wrong to allow creating lots of extra torture is stronger than my intuition that I should be an impartial altruist.
If it’s not mainly about others and their perspectives, why care so much about shaping (some of) their lives and attending to (some of) their concerns?
The extreme-suffering concerns are the ones that speak to me most strongly.
seems at odds to me with my idea of impartial benevolence, which I would identify more with trying to be a friend to all
Makes sense. While raw numbers count, it also matters to me what the content of the preference is. If 99% of individuals passionately wanted to create paperclips, while 1% wanted to avoid suffering, I would mostly side with those wanting to avoid suffering, because that just seems more important to me.
Hi Brian,
I agree that preferences at different times and different subsystems can conflict. In particular, high discounting of the future can lead to forgoing a ton of positive reward or accepting lots of negative reward in the future in exchange for some short-term change. This is one reason to pay extra attention to cases of near-simultaneous comparisons, or at least to look at different arrangements of temporal ordering. But still the tradeoffs people make for themselves with a lot of experience under good conditions look better than what they tend to impose on others casually. [Also we can better trust people’s self-benevolence than their benevolence towards others, e.g. factory farming as you mention.]
And the brain machinery for processing stimuli into decisions and preferences does seem very relevant to me at least, since that’s a primary source of intuitive assessments of these psychological states as having value, and for comparisons where we can make them. Strong rejection of interpersonal comparisons is also used to argue that relieving one or more pains can’t compensate for losses to another individual.
I agree the hardest cases for making any kind of interpersonal comparison will be for minds with different architectural setups and conflicting univocal viewpoints, e.g. 2 minds with equally passionate complete enthusiasm (with no contrary psychological processes or internal currencies to provide reference points) respectively for and against their own experience, or gratitude and anger for their birth (past or future). They can respectively consider a world with and without their existences completely unbearable and beyond compensation. But if we’re in the business of helping others for their own sakes rather than ours, I don’t see the case for excluding either one’s concern from our moral circle.
Now, one can take take a more nihilistic/personal aesthetics view of morality, and say that one doesn’t personally care about the gratitude of minds happy to exist. I take it this is more your meta-ethical stance around these things? There are good arguments for moral irrealism and nihilism, but it seems to me that going too far down this route can lose a lot of the point of the altruistic project. If it’s not mainly about others and their perspectives, why care so much about shaping (some of) their lives and attending to (some of) their concerns?
David Pearce sometimes uses the Holocaust to argue for negative utilitarianism, to say that no amount of good could offset the pain people suffered there. But this view dismisses (or accidentally valorizes) most of the evil of the Holocaust. The death camps centrally were destroying lives and attempting to destroy future generations of peoples, and the people inside them wanted to live free, and being killed sooner was not a close substitute. Killing them (or willfully letting them die when it would be easy to prevent) if they would otherwise escape with a delay would not be helping them for their own sakes, but choosing to be their enemy by only selectively attending to their concerns. And even though some did choose death. Likewise to genocide by sterilization (in my Jewish household growing up the Holocaust was cited as a reason to have children).
Future generations, whether they enthusiastically endorse or oppose their existence, don’t have an immediate voice (or conventional power) here and now their existence isn’t counterfactually robust. But when I’m in a mindset of trying to do impartial good I don’t see the appeal of ignoring those who would desperately, passionately want to exist, and their gratitude in worlds where they do.
I see demandingness and contractarian/game theory/cooperation reasons that bound sacrifice to realize impartial uncompensated help to others, and inevitable moral dilemmas (almost all beings that could exist in a particular location won’t, wild animals are desperately poor and might on average wish they didn’t exist, people have conflicting desires, advanced civilizations I expect will have far more profoundly self-endorsing good lives than unbearably bad lives but on average across the cosmos will have many of the latter by sheer scope). But being an enemy of all the countless beings that would like to exist, or do exist and would like to exist more (or more of something), even if they’re the vast supermajority, seems at odds to me with my idea of impartial benevolence, which I would identify more with trying to be a friend to all, or at least as much as you can given conflicts.
I don’t really see the motivation for this perspective. In what sense, or to whom, is a world without the existence of the very happy/fulfilled/whatever person “completely unbearable”? Who is “desperate” to exist? (Concern for reducing the suffering of beings who actually feel desperation is, clearly, consistent with pure NU, but by hypothesis this is set aside.) Obviously not themselves. They wouldn’t exist in that counterfactual.
To me, the clear case for excluding intrinsic concern for those happy moments is:
“Gratitude” just doesn’t seem like compelling evidence in itself that the grateful individual has been made better off. You have to compare to the counterfactual. In daily cases with existing people, gratitude is relevant as far as the grateful person would have otherwise been dissatisfied with their state of deprivation. But that doesn’t apply to people who wouldn’t feel any deprivation in the counterfactual, because they wouldn’t exist.
I take it that the thrust of your argument is, “Ethics should be about applying the same standards we apply across people as we do for intrapersonal prudence.” I agree. And I also find the arguments for empty individualism convincing. Therefore, I don’t see a reason to trust as ~infallible the judgment of a person at time T that the bundle of experiences of happiness and suffering they underwent in times T-n, …, T-1 was overall worth it. They’re making an “interpersonal” value judgment, which, despite being informed by clear memories of the experiences, still isn’t incorrigible. Their positive evaluation of that bundle can be debunked by, say, this insight from my previous bullet point that the happy moments wouldn’t have felt any deprivation had they not existed.
In any case, I find upon reflection that I don’t endorse tradeoffs of contentment for packages of happiness and suffering for myself. I find I’m generally more satisfied with my life when I don’t have the “fear of missing out” that a symmetric axiology often implies. Quoting myself:
What if the individual says that after thinking very deeply about it, they believe their existence genuinely is much better than not having existed? If we’re trying to be altruistic toward their own values, presumably we should also value their existence as better than nothingness (unless we think they’re mistaken)?
One could say that if they don’t currently exist, then their nonexistence isn’t a problem. It’s true that their nonexistence doesn’t cause suffering, but it does make impartial-altruistic total value lower than otherwise if we would consider their existence to be positive.
Your reply is an eloquent case for your view. :)
In cases of extreme suffering (and maybe also extreme pleasure), it seems to me there’s an empathy gap: when things are going well, you don’t truly understand how bad extreme suffering is, and when you’re in severe pain, you can’t properly care about large volumes of future pleasure. When the suffering is bad enough, it’s as if a different brain takes over that can’t see things from the other perspective, and vice versa for the pleasure-seeking brain. This seems closer to the case of “univocal viewpoints” that you mention.
I can see how for moderate pains and pleasures, a person could experience them in succession and make tradeoffs while still being in roughly the same kind of mental state without too much of an empathy gap. But the fact of those experiences being moderate and exchangeable is the reason I don’t think the suffering in such cases is that morally noteworthy.
Good point. :) OTOH, we might think it’s morally right to have a more cautious approach to imposing suffering on others for the sake of positive goods than we would use for ourselves. In other words, we might favor a moral view that’s different from MacAskill’s proposal to imagine yourself living through every being’s experience in succession.
Yeah. I support doing interpersonal comparisons, but there’s inherent arbitrariness in how to weigh conflicting preferences across individuals (or sufficiently different mental states of the same individual), and I favor giving more weight to the extreme-suffering preferences.
That’s fair. :) In my opinion, there’s just an ethical asymmetry between creating a mind that desperately wishes not to exist versus failing to create a mind that desperately would be glad to exist. The first one is horrifying, while the second one is at most mildly unfortunate. I can see how some people would consider this a failure to impartially consider the preferences of others for their own sakes, and if my view makes me less “altruistic” in that sense, then I’m ok with that (as you suspected). My intuition that it’s wrong to allow creating lots of extra torture is stronger than my intuition that I should be an impartial altruist.
The extreme-suffering concerns are the ones that speak to me most strongly.
Makes sense. While raw numbers count, it also matters to me what the content of the preference is. If 99% of individuals passionately wanted to create paperclips, while 1% wanted to avoid suffering, I would mostly side with those wanting to avoid suffering, because that just seems more important to me.