My first reply to you focused on point number 2. But in retrospect, I’ve realized that your point 1 has utterly horrifying implications.
I don’t find utility monsters hugely counter-intuitive for total util. If you replace the standard utility monster with something like “extremely efficient simulation of many consciousnesses”, then converting all our inefficient fleshy beings into a much greater number of (lets say) similarly happy other beings seems a good deal to me.
If you want a more grounded form of the utility monster thought experiment there’s no need to invoke futuristic technology. You need only consider the many disutility monsters who actually exist right now, in real life. The world is full of handicapped people whose disabilities make their lives harder than normal, but still worth living. If I am not mistaken the ethical theory you are proposing would recommend killing all of them and replacing them by conceiving new healthy people.
Any ethical theory that suggests we ought to kill handicapped people (who are leading worthwhile lives) and replace them with healthy people has totally failed at being an ethical theory [1].
When people have severe health problems or disabilities we do not kill them and use the money we save to pay some young couple to conceive a replacement. We take care of them. True, we don’t devote all the resources we possibly can to caring for them but we still try harder than one would expect when taking the total view.
Why do we do this? I’d suspect it would be because people’s ethics are more in line with prioritarianism than utilitarianism. Helping the least well off is good even if they are bad at converting resources into utility. Helping the least well off might not have infinite value, there might be some sufficiently huge amount of regular utility that could override it. But it is really, really important.
And no, “not existing” does not count as a form of being “least well off.” Human beings who exist have desires and feelings. They have future-directed preferences. If they die they cannot be replaced. Nonexistant people do not have these properties. If they ever do come into existence they will, so it makes sense to make sure the future will be a good place for future people. But since nonexistant people are replaceable it makes sense to sometimes not create them for the sake of those who already do exist.
Now, you might rightly point out that while people seem to favor “prior existance” or “person affecting” viewpoints like this, there is a certain point after which they stop. For instance, most people would find it bad if the human race went extinct in the future, even if its extinction benefited existing people. What that suggests to me is that having a decent amount of worthwhile lives in existence is an important value for people, but one that has diminishing returns relative to other values. Preventing the human race from going extinct is a good thing, but once you’ve assured a decent amount of people will exist other things become important.
I think that this establishes at least three different values in play, which have diminishing returns relative to each other:
Amount of utility (I am unsure whether that is total or average. It may be some combo of both).
Prioritarianism, (I am unsure as to whether that is traditional prioritarianism, or whether something like Amartya Sen’s “capabilities approach” is better).
Number of worthwhile lives (I’m not sure whether having a large number of worthwhile lives is literally what is valuable, or if what is actually valuable is things like love, friendship, diversity, etc. that can only be achieved by having large amounts of worthwhile lives. I suspect the later).
This ethical system can explain why people are willing to not create new people in order to benefit existing people in situations where the population is large, but would not do so if it would cause the human race to go extinct. It can explain why people feel we should still share resources even in “utility monster” scenarios. And it explains why it is bad to kill handicapped people.
(1]. I know Peter Singer has gained some notoriety for suggesting it might be acceptable to kill handicapped infants. However, his argument was based on the idea that the infants had not matured enough to attain personhood yet, not on the idea that it’s okay to kill a fully developed person and replace them with someone who might enjoy their life slightly more. Your ethical theory would endorse killing fully grown adult people with normal cognitive skills merely because they possess some physical disability or health problem.
My first reply to you focused on point number 2. But in retrospect, I’ve realized that your point 1 has utterly horrifying implications.
If you want a more grounded form of the utility monster thought experiment there’s no need to invoke futuristic technology. You need only consider the many disutility monsters who actually exist right now, in real life. The world is full of handicapped people whose disabilities make their lives harder than normal, but still worth living. If I am not mistaken the ethical theory you are proposing would recommend killing all of them and replacing them by conceiving new healthy people.
Any ethical theory that suggests we ought to kill handicapped people (who are leading worthwhile lives) and replace them with healthy people has totally failed at being an ethical theory [1].
When people have severe health problems or disabilities we do not kill them and use the money we save to pay some young couple to conceive a replacement. We take care of them. True, we don’t devote all the resources we possibly can to caring for them but we still try harder than one would expect when taking the total view.
Why do we do this? I’d suspect it would be because people’s ethics are more in line with prioritarianism than utilitarianism. Helping the least well off is good even if they are bad at converting resources into utility. Helping the least well off might not have infinite value, there might be some sufficiently huge amount of regular utility that could override it. But it is really, really important.
And no, “not existing” does not count as a form of being “least well off.” Human beings who exist have desires and feelings. They have future-directed preferences. If they die they cannot be replaced. Nonexistant people do not have these properties. If they ever do come into existence they will, so it makes sense to make sure the future will be a good place for future people. But since nonexistant people are replaceable it makes sense to sometimes not create them for the sake of those who already do exist.
Now, you might rightly point out that while people seem to favor “prior existance” or “person affecting” viewpoints like this, there is a certain point after which they stop. For instance, most people would find it bad if the human race went extinct in the future, even if its extinction benefited existing people. What that suggests to me is that having a decent amount of worthwhile lives in existence is an important value for people, but one that has diminishing returns relative to other values. Preventing the human race from going extinct is a good thing, but once you’ve assured a decent amount of people will exist other things become important.
I think that this establishes at least three different values in play, which have diminishing returns relative to each other:
Amount of utility (I am unsure whether that is total or average. It may be some combo of both).
Prioritarianism, (I am unsure as to whether that is traditional prioritarianism, or whether something like Amartya Sen’s “capabilities approach” is better).
Number of worthwhile lives (I’m not sure whether having a large number of worthwhile lives is literally what is valuable, or if what is actually valuable is things like love, friendship, diversity, etc. that can only be achieved by having large amounts of worthwhile lives. I suspect the later).
This ethical system can explain why people are willing to not create new people in order to benefit existing people in situations where the population is large, but would not do so if it would cause the human race to go extinct. It can explain why people feel we should still share resources even in “utility monster” scenarios. And it explains why it is bad to kill handicapped people.
(1]. I know Peter Singer has gained some notoriety for suggesting it might be acceptable to kill handicapped infants. However, his argument was based on the idea that the infants had not matured enough to attain personhood yet, not on the idea that it’s okay to kill a fully developed person and replace them with someone who might enjoy their life slightly more. Your ethical theory would endorse killing fully grown adult people with normal cognitive skills merely because they possess some physical disability or health problem.