Is it thought experiments such as the ones Magnus has put forward? I think these argue that alleviating suffering is more pressing than creating happiness, but I don’t think these argue that creating happiness isn’t good.
I think they do argue that creating happiness isn’t intrinsically good, because you can always construct a version of the Very Repugnant Conclusion that applies to a view that says suffering is weighed some finite X times more than happiness, and I find those versions almost as repugnant. E.g. suppose that on classical utilitarianism we prefer to create 100 purely miserable lives plus some large N micro-pleasure lives over creating 10 purely blissful lives. On this new view, we’d prefer to create 100 purely miserable lives plus X*N micro-pleasure lives over the 10 purely blissful lives. Another variant you could try is a symmetric lexical view where only sufficiently blissful experiences are allowed to outweigh misery. But while some people find that dissolves the repugnance of the VRC, I can’t say the same.
Increasing the X, or introducing lexicalities, to try to escape the VRC just misses the point, I think. The problem is that (even super-awesome/profound) happiness is treated as intrinsically commensurable with miserable experiences, as if giving someone else happiness in itself solves the miserable person’s urgent problem. That’s just fundamentally opposed to what I find morally compelling.
(I like the monk example given in the other response to your question, anywho. I’ve written about why I find strong SFE compelling elsewhere, like here and here.)
You could try to use your pareto improvement argument here i.e. that it’s better if parents still have a preference for their child not to have been killed, but also not to feel any sort of pain related to it.
Yeah, that is indeed my response; I have basically no sympathy to the perspective that considers the pain intrinsically necessary in this scenario, or any scenario. This view seems to clearly conflate intrinsic with instrumental value. “Disrespect” and “grotesqueness” are just not things that seem intrinsically important to me, at all.
having a preference that the child wasn’t killed, but also not feeling any sort of hedonic pain about it...is this contradictory?
Depends how you define a preference, I guess, but the point of the thought experiment is to suspend your disbelief about the flow-through effects here. Just imagine that literally nothing changes about the world other than that the suffering is relieved. This seems so obviously better than the default that I’m at a loss for a further response.
“I have basically no sympathy to the perspective that considers the pain intrinsically necessary in this scenario, or any scenario.”
I wasn’t expecting you to. I don’t have any sympathy for it either! I was just giving you an argument that I suspect many others would find compelling. Certainly if my sister died and I didn’t feel anything, my parents wouldn’t like that!
Maybe it’s not particularly relevant to you if an argument is considered compelling by others, but I wanted to raise it just in case. I certainly don’t expect to change your mind on this—nor do I want to as I also think suffering is bad! I’m just not sure suffering being bad is a smaller leap than saying happiness is good.
I think they do argue that creating happiness isn’t intrinsically good, because you can always construct a version of the Very Repugnant Conclusion that applies to a view that says suffering is weighed some finite X times more than happiness, and I find those versions almost as repugnant. E.g. suppose that on classical utilitarianism we prefer to create 100 purely miserable lives plus some large N micro-pleasure lives over creating 10 purely blissful lives. On this new view, we’d prefer to create 100 purely miserable lives plus X*N micro-pleasure lives over the 10 purely blissful lives. Another variant you could try is a symmetric lexical view where only sufficiently blissful experiences are allowed to outweigh misery. But while some people find that dissolves the repugnance of the VRC, I can’t say the same.
Increasing the X, or introducing lexicalities, to try to escape the VRC just misses the point, I think. The problem is that (even super-awesome/profound) happiness is treated as intrinsically commensurable with miserable experiences, as if giving someone else happiness in itself solves the miserable person’s urgent problem. That’s just fundamentally opposed to what I find morally compelling.
(I like the monk example given in the other response to your question, anywho. I’ve written about why I find strong SFE compelling elsewhere, like here and here.)
Yeah, that is indeed my response; I have basically no sympathy to the perspective that considers the pain intrinsically necessary in this scenario, or any scenario. This view seems to clearly conflate intrinsic with instrumental value. “Disrespect” and “grotesqueness” are just not things that seem intrinsically important to me, at all.
Depends how you define a preference, I guess, but the point of the thought experiment is to suspend your disbelief about the flow-through effects here. Just imagine that literally nothing changes about the world other than that the suffering is relieved. This seems so obviously better than the default that I’m at a loss for a further response.
“I have basically no sympathy to the perspective that considers the pain intrinsically necessary in this scenario, or any scenario.”
I wasn’t expecting you to. I don’t have any sympathy for it either! I was just giving you an argument that I suspect many others would find compelling. Certainly if my sister died and I didn’t feel anything, my parents wouldn’t like that!
Maybe it’s not particularly relevant to you if an argument is considered compelling by others, but I wanted to raise it just in case. I certainly don’t expect to change your mind on this—nor do I want to as I also think suffering is bad! I’m just not sure suffering being bad is a smaller leap than saying happiness is good.