The most basic premise is that we have some way of ordering individual lives.
I reject this premise. Specifically, I believe I have some ordering, and you have some ordering, but strongly suspect those orderings disagree, so don’t think we have one unambiguous joint ordering.
In either case, we require that the ranking remain consistent when we add people to the population.
I reject this premise. Specifically, I believe that lives interact. Suppose Bob by himself has a medium quality life, and Alice by herself has a medium quality life. Putting them in a universe together by no means guarantees that each of them will have a medium quality life.
Total utilitarianism is a dead simple conclusion from its premises—you don’t need to bring in group theory. This is only a “pure math” argument for total utilitarianism because you’re talking about the group (R,+) instead of addition, but the two are the same, and the core of the argument remains the contentious moral premises.
Specifically, I believe I have some ordering, and you have some ordering, but strongly suspect those orderings disagree, so don’t think we have one unambiguous joint ordering.
I’m not certain this proves what you want it to—it would still hold that you and I are individually total utilitarians. We would just disagree about what those utilities are.
Specifically, I believe that lives interact
I guess I don’t find this very convincing. Any reasonably complicated argument is going to say “ceteris paribus” at some point—I don’t think you can just reject the conclusion because of this.
This is only a “pure math” argument for total utilitarianism because you’re talking about the group (R,+) instead of addition, but the two are the same
I guess I don’t know what you mean. By (R,+) I was trying to refer to addition, so I apologize if this has some other meaning and you thought I was “proving” them equivalent.
I’m not certain this proves what you want it to—it would still hold that you and I are individually total utilitarians. We would just disagree about what those utilities are.
I was unclear, and agree that stated rejection is weak. Here’s the stronger version: I see the central premise underlying total and average utilitarianism as “Preferences are determined over life-histories, rather than universe-histories.” If you accept this premise, then you need some way to aggregate life-utilities to get a universe-utility. But if you reject that premise, and see all preferences as over universe-histories, then it’s not clear that an aggregation procedure is necessary.
I guess I don’t find this very convincing. Any reasonably complicated argument is going to say “ceteris paribus” at some point—I don’t think you can just reject the conclusion because of this.
But look at the horrible world you’ve created! Any sort of empathy is banned. Bob cannot delight in Alice’s happiness, and Alice cannot suffer because of Bob’s sadness. They cannot even be heartless traders, who are both made wealthier and happier by the other’s existence, even though they are otherwise indifferent to whether or not the other lives or dies.
The argument against various repugnant conclusions often hinges on ceteris paribus being violated. The “mere addition” paradox, for example, is easily dispensed with if each person has a slight negative penalty in their utility function for the number of other people that exist, or that exist below a certain utility threshold, or so on. It’s worth pointing out that many moral sensations seem like they could be internalization of practical constraints- when you talk about adding more and more people to the world, an instinctual backlash against crowding is probably not due to any malevolence, but rather due to the combined effects of traffic and pollution and scarcity which, in the real world, accompany such crowding.
I, for one, find it ludicrous to posit that the utility functions of a social species would not depend on the sort of society they find themselves in, and that their utilities cannot contain any relative measures.
I guess I don’t know what you mean. By (R,+) I was trying to refer to addition, so I apologize if this has some other meaning and you thought I was “proving” them equivalent.
I was objecting to the title, mostly. In my mind, the core of the argument in this post is “if you believe that preferences are expressed over individual lives, and that the number of lives shouldn’t be relevant to preferences, then total utilitarianism must follow,” which I think is a correct argument. But I disagree that preferences are expressed over individual lives (or at least I think that is a contentious claim which should not be taken as a premise)
Empathy banned? Nature does that for you. ″Brain cells we use to mull over our past must switch off when we do sums, say researchers, who have been spying on a previously inaccessible part of the brain.”″
I reject this premise. Specifically, I believe I have some ordering, and you have some ordering, but strongly suspect those orderings disagree, so don’t think we have one unambiguous joint ordering.
I reject this premise. Specifically, I believe that lives interact. Suppose Bob by himself has a medium quality life, and Alice by herself has a medium quality life. Putting them in a universe together by no means guarantees that each of them will have a medium quality life.
Total utilitarianism is a dead simple conclusion from its premises—you don’t need to bring in group theory. This is only a “pure math” argument for total utilitarianism because you’re talking about the group (R,+) instead of addition, but the two are the same, and the core of the argument remains the contentious moral premises.
I’m not certain this proves what you want it to—it would still hold that you and I are individually total utilitarians. We would just disagree about what those utilities are.
I guess I don’t find this very convincing. Any reasonably complicated argument is going to say “ceteris paribus” at some point—I don’t think you can just reject the conclusion because of this.
I guess I don’t know what you mean. By (R,+) I was trying to refer to addition, so I apologize if this has some other meaning and you thought I was “proving” them equivalent.
I was unclear, and agree that stated rejection is weak. Here’s the stronger version: I see the central premise underlying total and average utilitarianism as “Preferences are determined over life-histories, rather than universe-histories.” If you accept this premise, then you need some way to aggregate life-utilities to get a universe-utility. But if you reject that premise, and see all preferences as over universe-histories, then it’s not clear that an aggregation procedure is necessary.
But look at the horrible world you’ve created! Any sort of empathy is banned. Bob cannot delight in Alice’s happiness, and Alice cannot suffer because of Bob’s sadness. They cannot even be heartless traders, who are both made wealthier and happier by the other’s existence, even though they are otherwise indifferent to whether or not the other lives or dies.
The argument against various repugnant conclusions often hinges on ceteris paribus being violated. The “mere addition” paradox, for example, is easily dispensed with if each person has a slight negative penalty in their utility function for the number of other people that exist, or that exist below a certain utility threshold, or so on. It’s worth pointing out that many moral sensations seem like they could be internalization of practical constraints- when you talk about adding more and more people to the world, an instinctual backlash against crowding is probably not due to any malevolence, but rather due to the combined effects of traffic and pollution and scarcity which, in the real world, accompany such crowding.
I, for one, find it ludicrous to posit that the utility functions of a social species would not depend on the sort of society they find themselves in, and that their utilities cannot contain any relative measures.
I was objecting to the title, mostly. In my mind, the core of the argument in this post is “if you believe that preferences are expressed over individual lives, and that the number of lives shouldn’t be relevant to preferences, then total utilitarianism must follow,” which I think is a correct argument. But I disagree that preferences are expressed over individual lives (or at least I think that is a contentious claim which should not be taken as a premise)
Empathy banned? Nature does that for you. ″Brain cells we use to mull over our past must switch off when we do sums, say researchers, who have been spying on a previously inaccessible part of the brain.”″