Right—it’s a little misleading to cast the decision procedure as if it was some person-independent thing. If you make a decision based on how happy you think the puppy will be, it’s not because some universal law forced you to against your will, it’s because you care how happy the puppy will be.
If there’s some game-theory thing going on where you cooperate with puppies in exchange for them cooperating back (much like how Bertrand and Cedric are cooperating with each other), that’s another reason to care about the puppy’s preferences, but I don’t think actual puppies are that sophisticated.
Sure, but there’s still a meaningful question whether you’d prefer many moderately happy puppies or few very happy puppies to exist. Maybe tomorrow you’ll think of a compelling intuition one way or the other.
Sure. But it will be my intuition, and not some impersonal law. This means it’s okay for me to want things like “there should be some puppies, but not too many,” which makes perfect sense as a preference about the universe, but practically no sense in terms of population ethics.
Right—it’s a little misleading to cast the decision procedure as if it was some person-independent thing. If you make a decision based on how happy you think the puppy will be, it’s not because some universal law forced you to against your will, it’s because you care how happy the puppy will be.
If there’s some game-theory thing going on where you cooperate with puppies in exchange for them cooperating back (much like how Bertrand and Cedric are cooperating with each other), that’s another reason to care about the puppy’s preferences, but I don’t think actual puppies are that sophisticated.
Sure, but there’s still a meaningful question whether you’d prefer many moderately happy puppies or few very happy puppies to exist. Maybe tomorrow you’ll think of a compelling intuition one way or the other.
Sure. But it will be my intuition, and not some impersonal law. This means it’s okay for me to want things like “there should be some puppies, but not too many,” which makes perfect sense as a preference about the universe, but practically no sense in terms of population ethics.