I agree that G’s reasoning is an example of scope insensitivity. I suspect you meant this as a criticism. It seems undeniable that scope insensitivity leads to some irrational attitudes (e.g. when a person who would be horrified at killing one human shrugs at wiping out humanity). However, it doesn’t seem obvious that scope insensitivity is pure fallacy. Mike Vassar’s suggestion that “we should consider any number of identical lives to have the same utility as one life” seems plausible. An extreme example is, what if the universe were periodic in the time direction so that every event gets repeated infinitely. Would this mean that every decision has infinite utility consequence? It seems to me that, on the contrary, this would make no difference to the ethical weight of decisions. Perhaps somehow the utility binds to the information content of a set of events. Presumably, the total variation in experiences a puppy can have while being killed would be exhausted long before reaching 3^^^^^3.
Eli,
I agree that G’s reasoning is an example of scope insensitivity. I suspect you meant this as a criticism. It seems undeniable that scope insensitivity leads to some irrational attitudes (e.g. when a person who would be horrified at killing one human shrugs at wiping out humanity). However, it doesn’t seem obvious that scope insensitivity is pure fallacy. Mike Vassar’s suggestion that “we should consider any number of identical lives to have the same utility as one life” seems plausible. An extreme example is, what if the universe were periodic in the time direction so that every event gets repeated infinitely. Would this mean that every decision has infinite utility consequence? It seems to me that, on the contrary, this would make no difference to the ethical weight of decisions. Perhaps somehow the utility binds to the information content of a set of events. Presumably, the total variation in experiences a puppy can have while being killed would be exhausted long before reaching 3^^^^^3.