Oh yes, I’ve seen it—I think the author pointed it out to me. It’s a nice point, but it doesn’t even undermine average utilitarianism. It only undermines particularly naive “birth means nothing” arguments.
I simply take the position that “only the preferences of people currently existing at the time they have those preferences are relevant” (this means that your current preferences about what happens after you die are relevant, but not your preferences “before you were born”). That leaves a lot of flexibility...
Oh yes, I’ve seen it—I think the author pointed it out to me. It’s a nice point, but it doesn’t even undermine average utilitarianism. It only undermines particularly naive “birth means nothing” arguments.
I simply take the position that “only the preferences of people currently existing at the time they have those preferences are relevant” (this means that your current preferences about what happens after you die are relevant, but not your preferences “before you were born”). That leaves a lot of flexibility...
Of course it doesn’t apply to many forms of average utilitarianism. It just struck me as a useful consistency check.