But from a consistent description doesn’t follow concrete existence. Otherwise an ontological argument could imply the existence of God. And if someone doesn’t exist, their parts don’t exist either. A preference is a part of someone, like an arm or a leg, and they wouldn’t exist. A description could only answer what preference someone would have if they existed. But that’s only a hypothetical preference, not one that exists.
We can estimate that an arm or a leg still have such and such weight, even for a hypothetical person who doesn’t exist, and plan how to build bridges that won’t collapse if that person who doesn’t exist were to come into existence and walk on them.
The question is preference, a thing that tells you whether X is better than Y, which is abstract data that doesn’t depend on a bearer of it existing in some place or other. If you can point to preference, you can answer such questions, including about existence of instances of some bearer of that preference.
But that’s only a hypothetical preference, not one that exists.
Certainly, but it answers the same questions in the same way, so why should that matter at all? We are asking what this preference says about its bearer existing in some world, so we can ask the hypothetical preference and get the same answer, just as good as the real one. An abstract program computes the same results as one actually running on a physical computer, it answers all the same questions in the same way.
In a preference utilitarian calculus it does matter which possible preferences actually exist and which don’t. We don’t count hypothetical votes in an election either.
Whether you count the hypothetical votes or not, doesn’t address the question of what those votes say. I’m objecting to the claim that the votes are saying nothing, not necessarily to the claim that they are to be ignored.
But from a consistent description doesn’t follow concrete existence. Otherwise an ontological argument could imply the existence of God. And if someone doesn’t exist, their parts don’t exist either. A preference is a part of someone, like an arm or a leg, and they wouldn’t exist. A description could only answer what preference someone would have if they existed. But that’s only a hypothetical preference, not one that exists.
We can estimate that an arm or a leg still have such and such weight, even for a hypothetical person who doesn’t exist, and plan how to build bridges that won’t collapse if that person who doesn’t exist were to come into existence and walk on them.
The question is preference, a thing that tells you whether X is better than Y, which is abstract data that doesn’t depend on a bearer of it existing in some place or other. If you can point to preference, you can answer such questions, including about existence of instances of some bearer of that preference.
Certainly, but it answers the same questions in the same way, so why should that matter at all? We are asking what this preference says about its bearer existing in some world, so we can ask the hypothetical preference and get the same answer, just as good as the real one. An abstract program computes the same results as one actually running on a physical computer, it answers all the same questions in the same way.
In a preference utilitarian calculus it does matter which possible preferences actually exist and which don’t. We don’t count hypothetical votes in an election either.
Whether you count the hypothetical votes or not, doesn’t address the question of what those votes say. I’m objecting to the claim that the votes are saying nothing, not necessarily to the claim that they are to be ignored.