Hi Harrison,
Thank you for reading my post!
I admit I know very little about average or aggregate utilitarianism, so thank you for bringing that up—I have some googling to do. In reply to your comments:
you are ultimately arguing that “life” (whether that is measured in population, QALYs, or something else) is not the only “goal of life,” correct?
Yes, I felt unease that it seemed like making “impact” seems (under this framework) to potentially be self-defeating.
Second, one of the reasons that “maximize the population” is not intuitively/necessarily moral is because that does not account for problems from overpopulation, including increased suffering on others who do exist.
Yes—that is something that is most definitely a concern! I do (try) to caveat some of my statements this way: see the last sentence. “If saving lives is the goal, then in almost every case (barring a significant drop in quality of life), we would choose the world where there are more lives.”
Hello MichaelStJules,
This is fantastic, thank you very much! I have never heard of person-affecting views, Thomas, or Greaves. I’m so glad that I haven’t stumbled on something novel and that there are formal philosophers who have written about this.
On reducing the number of life-years lost to death, I don’t personally think that’s a justifiable position, though I’d love to hear your thoughts. It is irrational to be less happy when given $500 and having $50 taken away than just being given $450 in the first place.
Though it’s not the same comparison, there hypothetically should be no difference between <3 lives existing and 1 death>, versus <only 2 lives existing from the start>. The reason we grieve that 1 death is because the person brought happiness to our lives that did not exist were we just 2 people. The world where only 2 lives existed from the start does not seem necessarily better, in my view, than a world where 3 lived and 1 died. Though at large numbers, I may adjust my preferences.
Do you have any personal conclusions that you’ve reached on this issue?