Yes, I had thought about setting the zero of the function to be summed across individuals to a higher level than “just barely good enough for them not to want to die”. The problem with that is that then there would be people who don’t want to die but still have a negative utility, and even a total utilitarian would conclude they had better die (at least in “dry water” models when you neglect the grief of their friends and family, and the cessation of the externalities of their life).
Edit: It looks like “dry water” has acquired a meaning totally unrelated to the one I had in mind. (It was the derogatory term John von Neumann used to refer to models of fluids without viscosity, whose proprieties are very different from those of real fluids.)
Yes, I had thought about setting the zero of the function to be summed across individuals to a higher level than “just barely good enough for them not to want to die”. The problem with that is that then there would be people who don’t want to die but still have a negative utility, and even a total utilitarian would conclude they had better die (at least in “dry water” models when you neglect the grief of their friends and family, and the cessation of the externalities of their life).
Edit: It looks like “dry water” has acquired a meaning totally unrelated to the one I had in mind. (It was the derogatory term John von Neumann used to refer to models of fluids without viscosity, whose proprieties are very different from those of real fluids.)