This is the same ethical judgement that an average utilitarian makes when they say that, to calculate social good, we should calculate the average utility of the population
This is the part that I think is wrong. You don’t assess your average utility when you evaluate your utility function, you evaluate your aggregate utility. 10 utilons plus 0 utilons is equivalent to 5 utilons plus 5 utilons not because their average is the same but because their total is the same.
10 utilons plus 0 utilons is equivalent to 5 utilons plus 5 utilons not because their average is the same but because their total is the same.
This is incoherent. “Average is the same” and “total is the same” are logically equivalent for cases where n is the same, which I think are all we’re concerned about here.
It could be either, so he’s not justified in assuming that it’s the average one in order to support his conclusion. He’s extrapolating beyond the scope of their actual equivalence, that’s the reason his argument is bringing anything new to the table at all.
He’s using their mathematical overlap in certain cases as prove that in cases where they don’t overlap the average should be used as superior to the total. That makes no sense at all, when thought of in this way. That is what I think the hole in his argument is.
Giving one future self u=10 and another u=0 is equally as good as giving one u=5 and another u=5.
So, to give a concrete example, you have $10 dollars. You can choose between gaining 5 utilons today and five tomorrow by spending half of the money today and half of the money tomorrow, or between spending all of it today and gaining 10 utilons today and 0 tomorrow. These outcomes both give you equal numbers of utilons, so they’re equal.
Phil says that the moral reason they’re both equal is because they both have the same amount of average utility distributed across instances of you. He then uses that as a reason that average utilitarianism is correct across different people, since there’s nothing special about you.
However, an equally plausible interpretation is that the reason they are morally equal in the first instance is because the aggregate utilities are the same. Although average utilitarianism and aggregate utilitarianism overlap when N = 1, in many other cases they disagree. Average utilitarianism would rather have one extremely happy person than twenty moderately happy people, for example. This disagreement means that average and aggregate utilitarianism are not the same (as well as the fact that they have different metaethical justifications which are used as support), which means he’s not justified in either his initial privileging of average utilitarianism or his extrapolation of it to large groups of people.
This is the part that I think is wrong. You don’t assess your average utility when you evaluate your utility function, you evaluate your aggregate utility. 10 utilons plus 0 utilons is equivalent to 5 utilons plus 5 utilons not because their average is the same but because their total is the same.
This is incoherent. “Average is the same” and “total is the same” are logically equivalent for cases where n is the same, which I think are all we’re concerned about here.
It could be either, so he’s not justified in assuming that it’s the average one in order to support his conclusion. He’s extrapolating beyond the scope of their actual equivalence, that’s the reason his argument is bringing anything new to the table at all.
He’s using their mathematical overlap in certain cases as prove that in cases where they don’t overlap the average should be used as superior to the total. That makes no sense at all, when thought of in this way. That is what I think the hole in his argument is.
Can you give an example of a case where they don’t overlap, that PhilGoetz is arguing about?
So, to give a concrete example, you have $10 dollars. You can choose between gaining 5 utilons today and five tomorrow by spending half of the money today and half of the money tomorrow, or between spending all of it today and gaining 10 utilons today and 0 tomorrow. These outcomes both give you equal numbers of utilons, so they’re equal.
Phil says that the moral reason they’re both equal is because they both have the same amount of average utility distributed across instances of you. He then uses that as a reason that average utilitarianism is correct across different people, since there’s nothing special about you.
However, an equally plausible interpretation is that the reason they are morally equal in the first instance is because the aggregate utilities are the same. Although average utilitarianism and aggregate utilitarianism overlap when N = 1, in many other cases they disagree. Average utilitarianism would rather have one extremely happy person than twenty moderately happy people, for example. This disagreement means that average and aggregate utilitarianism are not the same (as well as the fact that they have different metaethical justifications which are used as support), which means he’s not justified in either his initial privileging of average utilitarianism or his extrapolation of it to large groups of people.