it can be possible to set up population ethical dilemmas in which we reason according to an extremely decontextualized frame and only according to a couple of axioms that have been defined for that frame
however, if we want to learn something from this that’s relevant for real life, we need to re-contextualize the conclusions of that reasoning and indicate how they interact with all the other considerations we might care about
without doing that recontextualization, it’s impossible to know whether the results of population ethical experiments are any more weighty or relevant for anything than the results of much more obviously absurd decontextualized dilemmas, such as “other things being even, is it better for objects to be green or red”.
at the same time, there’s a tendency for some people to make a move that goes something like “but there might be situations where you really do have to make the population-ethical choice, and if you refuse to consider the question in isolation you can’t decide where population levels are significantly influenced by your decision”. which is a reasonable argument for trying out the decontextualization. but often there’s a sleight of hand where the results of this decontextualized analysis are then assumed to be generally significant on their own, glossing over the fact that they are really only useful if you also do the re-contextualization step.
Agree with this. I had a related comment here; the brief summary of it would be that
it can be possible to set up population ethical dilemmas in which we reason according to an extremely decontextualized frame and only according to a couple of axioms that have been defined for that frame
however, if we want to learn something from this that’s relevant for real life, we need to re-contextualize the conclusions of that reasoning and indicate how they interact with all the other considerations we might care about
without doing that recontextualization, it’s impossible to know whether the results of population ethical experiments are any more weighty or relevant for anything than the results of much more obviously absurd decontextualized dilemmas, such as “other things being even, is it better for objects to be green or red”.
at the same time, there’s a tendency for some people to make a move that goes something like “but there might be situations where you really do have to make the population-ethical choice, and if you refuse to consider the question in isolation you can’t decide where population levels are significantly influenced by your decision”. which is a reasonable argument for trying out the decontextualization. but often there’s a sleight of hand where the results of this decontextualized analysis are then assumed to be generally significant on their own, glossing over the fact that they are really only useful if you also do the re-contextualization step.