I think some of our confusion over these issues stems from our reluctance to admit how many of us have negative utility. If you suppose that average utility is zero, the practical problems with both total utilitarianism and average utilitarianism go away: It isn’t ethical to replace the current population with a larger group of less-happy people, because that would decrease total utility; and it is is unethical to create more, less-happy people, but that’s not a problem, because they would have negative utility and everybody will agree it’s bad to create negative utility.
It is reasonable to suppose that average utility is zero, because “utility” has to do with our happiness, and humans evolved so that happiness is a function of the rate at which our degree of satisfaction of our goals is changing, rather than a function of how many of our goals are satisfied. This means that, unless things are getting better or worse for you on average over your entire life, your average happiness, and hence utility, will be near zero.
That’s true to an extent, but I think there are work arounds, certain applications of Buddhism being one example.
A different way to phrase what I meant is: would those new people be grateful they were created, will they wish they hadn’t been born, or feel neutral about the matter?
What point are you trying to make?
I think some of our confusion over these issues stems from our reluctance to admit how many of us have negative utility. If you suppose that average utility is zero, the practical problems with both total utilitarianism and average utilitarianism go away: It isn’t ethical to replace the current population with a larger group of less-happy people, because that would decrease total utility; and it is is unethical to create more, less-happy people, but that’s not a problem, because they would have negative utility and everybody will agree it’s bad to create negative utility.
It is reasonable to suppose that average utility is zero, because “utility” has to do with our happiness, and humans evolved so that happiness is a function of the rate at which our degree of satisfaction of our goals is changing, rather than a function of how many of our goals are satisfied. This means that, unless things are getting better or worse for you on average over your entire life, your average happiness, and hence utility, will be near zero.
That’s true to an extent, but I think there are work arounds, certain applications of Buddhism being one example.
A different way to phrase what I meant is: would those new people be grateful they were created, will they wish they hadn’t been born, or feel neutral about the matter?