There are also ethical (even utilitarian) frameworks that consider hypothetical people to be fundamentally different than real current people. I can say that I think we should maximize the average utility of all current people going into the future while also thinking that I should choose the future where the hypothetical people have the highest average happiness. How you weigh current people versus future hypothetical people is complex but beyond the scope of this post I think.
That is, if there are ten people alive today and I’m choosing between an option where the ten people each have 10 utils or 100 utils, obviously I should choose the 100 utils. But if I’m choosing between a future where 100 people will exist with 5 utils each or a future where 10 people will exist with 10 utils each, there is no person who is worse off in the second future compared to the first future, so no person is harmed by choosing the second future.
Frankly I don’t think that people have a moral intuition that actually matches your suggestions. Almost any couple in a developed world could probably support raising ten children, and all of those children would be happy to exist, but it just seems wrong to say that couples have a moral imperative to have as many children as possible. (I think that would still hold true even if pregnancy and childbirth were painless and free.)
Saying “it’s good to be alive” is not the same as saying people have a moral imperative to bring children into the world. It would probably improve human welfare if I gave all my assets to the poor and starved to death, but I don’t have a moral imperative to do it. Judgments of overall welfare are ways of deciding what to do collectively, but no individual has an absolute duty to maximize overall welfare at the expense of his own basic desires and life choices.
(This is my personal view, not especially carefully thought-out. Some people probably do think we have an absolute duty to maximize welfare. I think your example of having to have 10 children is a reductio ad absurdum of that view, not of the view that the marginal extra human life is a good thing.)
There are also ethical (even utilitarian) frameworks that consider hypothetical people to be fundamentally different than real current people. I can say that I think we should maximize the average utility of all current people going into the future while also thinking that I should choose the future where the hypothetical people have the highest average happiness. How you weigh current people versus future hypothetical people is complex but beyond the scope of this post I think.
That is, if there are ten people alive today and I’m choosing between an option where the ten people each have 10 utils or 100 utils, obviously I should choose the 100 utils. But if I’m choosing between a future where 100 people will exist with 5 utils each or a future where 10 people will exist with 10 utils each, there is no person who is worse off in the second future compared to the first future, so no person is harmed by choosing the second future.
Frankly I don’t think that people have a moral intuition that actually matches your suggestions. Almost any couple in a developed world could probably support raising ten children, and all of those children would be happy to exist, but it just seems wrong to say that couples have a moral imperative to have as many children as possible. (I think that would still hold true even if pregnancy and childbirth were painless and free.)
Saying “it’s good to be alive” is not the same as saying people have a moral imperative to bring children into the world. It would probably improve human welfare if I gave all my assets to the poor and starved to death, but I don’t have a moral imperative to do it. Judgments of overall welfare are ways of deciding what to do collectively, but no individual has an absolute duty to maximize overall welfare at the expense of his own basic desires and life choices.
(This is my personal view, not especially carefully thought-out. Some people probably do think we have an absolute duty to maximize welfare. I think your example of having to have 10 children is a reductio ad absurdum of that view, not of the view that the marginal extra human life is a good thing.)