Anyways I’m confused by your initial reaction. I’ll pretend you said something other than depravity; I’ll pretend you mentioned some kind of actual real problem, like non-[meta-wanted] unwanted suffering.
Just measure the suffering and do the calculation.
I understand one’s uncertainty about how much (non-[meta-wanted] unwanted) suffering a human life is worth, as well as one’s uncertainty about how much money is worth how much suffering.
But the global facts of your conditional perferences don’t go away just because the local facts (a subspace of all possible situational facts) you have to deal aren’t the facts of the conditions of those preferences. Not thinking about the questions doesn’t make them go away.
This is why I value ideal speech situations. I can’t pretend to have solve ethics by myself. Someone will have good, hard questions for whatever my theory is. And I don’t trust (at this time)* Committees For Solving Ethics to give due reverence to ideal speech situations, nor [good, hard] questions.
*(I may be surprised.)
Endorsed counterperspective: suffering-upon-learning-about can turn out to be a good heuristic for structural issues related to suffering. It might also be inherently meaningful, but hopefully there is something deeper than just culture underneath the unhappiness-upon-learning-about, otherwise there are some bullets to bite about so-called social progress, which I find too implausible.
Nature does not create ideal situations for doing things that do not harm others; that’s the problem. Then humans rationalize the cruelty of nature.
You said that, not me.
Depravity is not a real problem.
Anyways I’m confused by your initial reaction. I’ll pretend you said something other than depravity; I’ll pretend you mentioned some kind of actual real problem, like non-[meta-wanted] unwanted suffering.
Just measure the suffering and do the calculation.
I understand one’s uncertainty about how much (non-[meta-wanted] unwanted) suffering a human life is worth, as well as one’s uncertainty about how much money is worth how much suffering.
But the global facts of your conditional perferences don’t go away just because the local facts (a subspace of all possible situational facts) you have to deal aren’t the facts of the conditions of those preferences. Not thinking about the questions doesn’t make them go away.
This is why I value ideal speech situations. I can’t pretend to have solve ethics by myself. Someone will have good, hard questions for whatever my theory is. And I don’t trust (at this time)* Committees For Solving Ethics to give due reverence to ideal speech situations, nor [good, hard] questions.
*(I may be surprised.)
Endorsed counterperspective: suffering-upon-learning-about can turn out to be a good heuristic for structural issues related to suffering. It might also be inherently meaningful, but hopefully there is something deeper than just culture underneath the unhappiness-upon-learning-about, otherwise there are some bullets to bite about so-called social progress, which I find too implausible.
Nature does not create ideal situations for doing things that do not harm others; that’s the problem. Then humans rationalize the cruelty of nature.