My point is that you can accept that “most good” does in fact correspond to VNM utility but reject that we want to add up this “most good” for all people and maximize the sum.
Hm. Yeah, you can accept that. You can choose to. I’m not arguing that you can’t — if you accept the axioms, then you must accept the conclusions of the axioms. I just don’t see why you would feel compelled to accept the axioms.
I feel a very strong urge to accept transitivity, others I care somewhat less about, but they seem reasonable too.
then you must accept the conclusions of the axioms
Which conclusions? To reiterate, my point is that “the Torture pill or the Repugnant Conclusion” don’t follow immediately from the existence of individual utility. They also require a demand to increase the total sum of utilities for a category of agents, which does sound vaguely good, but isn’t the only option.
My point is that you can accept that “most good” does in fact correspond to VNM utility but reject that we want to add up this “most good” for all people and maximize the sum.
Hm. Yeah, you can accept that. You can choose to. I’m not arguing that you can’t — if you accept the axioms, then you must accept the conclusions of the axioms. I just don’t see why you would feel compelled to accept the axioms.
I feel a very strong urge to accept transitivity, others I care somewhat less about, but they seem reasonable too.
Which conclusions? To reiterate, my point is that “the Torture pill or the Repugnant Conclusion” don’t follow immediately from the existence of individual utility. They also require a demand to increase the total sum of utilities for a category of agents, which does sound vaguely good, but isn’t the only option.