My main argument hasn’t been that it’s wrong to kill Alice and replace her with Bob, even if Bob is better at producing value for others. It has been that it’s wrong to kill Alice and replace her with Bob, even though Bob is better at producing value for himself than Alice is at producing value for herself.
Huh. I think I’m even more deeply confused about your position than I thought I was, and that’s saying something.
But, OK, if we can agree that replacing Alice with Bob is sometimes worth doing because Bob is more valuable than Alice (or valuable-to-others, if that means something different), then most of my objections to it evaporate. I think we’re good.
On a more general note, I’m not really sure how to separate valuable-to-others from valuable-to-self. The examples you give of the latter are things like having fun, but it seems that the moment I decide that Alice having fun is valuable, Alice’s fun stops being merely valuable to Alice… it’s valuable to me, as well. And if Alice having fun isn’t valuable to me, it’s not clear why I should care whether she’s having fun or not.
On a more general note, I’m not really sure how to separate valuable-to-others from valuable-to-self. The examples you give of the latter are things like having fun, but it seems that the moment I decide that Alice having fun is valuable, Alice’s fun stops being merely valuable to Alice… it’s valuable to me, as well.
You’re absolutely right that in real life such divisions are not clear cut, and there is a lot of blurring on the margin. But dividing utility into “utility-to-others” and “utility-to-self” or “self-interest” and “others-interest” is a useful simplifying assumption, even if such categories often blur together in the real world.
Maybe this thought experiment I thought up will make it clearer: Imagine a world where Alice exists, and has a job that benefits lots of other people. For her labors, Alice is given X resources to consume. She gains Y utility from consuming from them. Everyone in this world has such a large amount of resources that giving X resources to Alice generates the most utility, everyone else is more satiated than Alice and would get less use out of her allotment of resources if they had them instead.
Bob, if he was created in this world, would do the same highly-beneficial-to-others job that Alice does, and he would do it exactly as well as she did. He would also receive X resources for his labors. The only difference is that Bob would gain 1.1Y utility from consuming those resources instead of Y utility.
In these circumstances I would say that it is wrong to kill Alice to create Bob.
However, if Bob is sufficiently better at his job than Alice, and that job is sufficiently beneficial to everyone else (medical research for example) then it may be good to kill Alice to create Bob, if killing her is the only possible way to do so.
So, as I said before, as long as you’re not saying that it’s wrong to kill Alice even if doing so leaves everyone better off, then I don’t object to your moral assertion.
That said, I remain just as puzzled by your notion of “utility to Alice but not anyone else” as I was before. But, OK, if you just intend it as a simplifying assumption, I can accept it on that basis and leave it there.
Huh. I think I’m even more deeply confused about your position than I thought I was, and that’s saying something.
But, OK, if we can agree that replacing Alice with Bob is sometimes worth doing because Bob is more valuable than Alice (or valuable-to-others, if that means something different), then most of my objections to it evaporate. I think we’re good.
On a more general note, I’m not really sure how to separate valuable-to-others from valuable-to-self. The examples you give of the latter are things like having fun, but it seems that the moment I decide that Alice having fun is valuable, Alice’s fun stops being merely valuable to Alice… it’s valuable to me, as well. And if Alice having fun isn’t valuable to me, it’s not clear why I should care whether she’s having fun or not.
You’re absolutely right that in real life such divisions are not clear cut, and there is a lot of blurring on the margin. But dividing utility into “utility-to-others” and “utility-to-self” or “self-interest” and “others-interest” is a useful simplifying assumption, even if such categories often blur together in the real world.
Maybe this thought experiment I thought up will make it clearer: Imagine a world where Alice exists, and has a job that benefits lots of other people. For her labors, Alice is given X resources to consume. She gains Y utility from consuming from them. Everyone in this world has such a large amount of resources that giving X resources to Alice generates the most utility, everyone else is more satiated than Alice and would get less use out of her allotment of resources if they had them instead.
Bob, if he was created in this world, would do the same highly-beneficial-to-others job that Alice does, and he would do it exactly as well as she did. He would also receive X resources for his labors. The only difference is that Bob would gain 1.1Y utility from consuming those resources instead of Y utility.
In these circumstances I would say that it is wrong to kill Alice to create Bob.
However, if Bob is sufficiently better at his job than Alice, and that job is sufficiently beneficial to everyone else (medical research for example) then it may be good to kill Alice to create Bob, if killing her is the only possible way to do so.
So, as I said before, as long as you’re not saying that it’s wrong to kill Alice even if doing so leaves everyone better off, then I don’t object to your moral assertion.
That said, I remain just as puzzled by your notion of “utility to Alice but not anyone else” as I was before. But, OK, if you just intend it as a simplifying assumption, I can accept it on that basis and leave it there.