My answers (contingent on the view OP describes, which is close enough to my own view for the sake of this discussion) would, of course, be the same in each of these scenarios. Why would they be different?
Do you have an intuition that the last 1000 elephants (or humans, if you consider elephants to have weight zero or some such), are more valuable than 1000 elephants/humans if there are a million of them)?
(It’s not obvious you should have such an intuition, just that it seemed like the conversation was predicated on that, and the most obvious reason it’d be the case is that one might care about preserving a species existing at all [for various possible reasons] than being slightly more numerous)
That is the view the OP describes (with respect to elephants—it’s different for humans), and as I said, my own view is effectively the same, for the purpose of the current conversation.
As someone who also roughly beliefs what is outlined in the OP, I don’t think I would pay the same in each of these scenarios. I do have a model that I “should” pay the same in each scenario in a way that I cannot easily externalize, and definitely not in a way that is obvious to me.
If you were to put a gun to my head and force me to give an answer in a minute, I think, though it might honestly depend on the day, I would probably pay the same in each scenario. Though I would assign significant probability to having made the “wrong” choice (and I wish I could give you a clear and precise definition of what I mean by “wrong” here, but my metaethics have not reached reflective equilibrium, and so the closest thing I have is just “would preferred to have made a different choice given 10000 more years to think, with greater intelligence, all the world’s knowledge at my fingertips, etc.”)
Internally, this situation feels like I have something closer to an inside-view gears-like model that predicts that I should pay different amounts, combined with a “conservation of energy”/”dutch-book” like model that tells me that if I were to pay different amounts, I would have to be irrational in some way, even if I don’t know how precisely yet.
In all but the second scenario, more than 1,000,000 million elephants do indeed “exist” (though the point of the exercise is at least in part to poke at what it means for something to exist), and so based on the argument made above, the first scenario would suggest the value of the marginal 1000 (which would move the total number of elephants from 1,001,000 to 1,000,000) elephants to be lower than in the second scenario (which would move the total number of elephants from 1,000 to 0).
Continuing in the tradition of socratic questioning, if you would respond with the same amount in all the scenarios above, would you also respond the same if there were 1 million elephants buried deep underground in a self-sustaining bunker on a different planet in our solar system, and you would never expect to interact with them further? Would your answer change if there was an easily available video-feed of the elephants that you could access from the internet?
would you also respond the same if there were 1 million elephants buried deep underground …
Yes.
Would your answer change if there was an easily available video-feed of the elephants that you could access from the internet?
No.
I do want to note, however, that you have transitioned from “slightly different interpretations of physics” and “very nuanced facts about cosmology” to “extremely improbable counterfactual scenarios”. Those are importantly different categories of hypothetical scenario.
That aside, however:
In all but the second scenario, more than 1,000,000 million elephants do indeed “exist”
That is not the relevant consideration. From the OP:
This is why we consider it worse when a species goes from 1,000 members to 0 members than when it goes from 1,001,000 members to 1,000,000 members, for instance.
If all the elephants on Earth die, but elephants still exist in an alternate universe, it is not correct to say that “the elephant species yet survives”. Rather, the appropriate description would be “the elephant species has gone extinct; matters may, however (in this as in other things), be different in some alternate universe”.
Your 1st and 3rd scenario (i.e., the other ones where some extra-terrestrial elephants remain) similarly do not introduce any interesting facts about the elephant species.
Continuing more with the thought experiments, since I find your answers (as well as your confidence in them) surprising. I have a sense that you believe that the responses to these questions are obvious, and if that is true, I would be interested in whether you can generate an explanation that makes them obvious to me as well.
Let’s imagine the inverse scenario in which you travel in a spaceship away from earth to a new planet far away and you never expect to come back. The new planet has a million elephants on it, old earth has only 1000 thousand elephants left on it. Imagine the alternative scenario in which you never leave earth and stay with the 1000 elephants, and also never expect to leave for any other planet. Would you pay the same amount to save the 1000 elephants on earth in either case?
To make this concrete, the two compared scenarios are:
1. You are on earth, there are a million elephants on a far away planet you never expect to see, and you are offered a trade to save the last 1000 animals on earth
2. You are on a distant planet with a million elephants on it, far away earth’s last 1000 elephants are about to die and you are offered a trade to save them
If so, how is this different from the scenario in which there are a million elephants in a bunker you will never visit? Also, does this mean that your moral evaluation of the same group of animals changes as you travel in a spaceship from one planet to another?
(Also, in considering these, try to control for as much of the secondary benefits of elephants as possible. I.e. maybe imagine that you are the last human and try to account for the potential technological, hedonic and cultural benefits of having elephants around)
If all the elephants on Earth die, but elephants still exist in an alternate universe, it is not correct to say that “the elephant species yet survives”. Rather, the appropriate description would be “the elephant species has gone extinct; matters may, however (in this as in other things), be different in some alternate universe”.
I don’t think everyone who agrees with the OP would agree with this statement. At least I do not. Though this feels more like arguing definitions in a way that is less likely to result in much productive discourse.
Well, as far as the prevalence of my view goes, I can’t speak to that. But I do not think this is a matter of arguing definitions—rather, it’s a real difference in values. Lanrian’s comment elsethread mentions one important category of difference here.
Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that there isn’t a real difference here. I was just commenting on the specific statement “the appropriate description would be” which does seem primarily to be a statement about wording, and not about ethics.
My answers (contingent on the view OP describes, which is close enough to my own view for the sake of this discussion) would, of course, be the same in each of these scenarios. Why would they be different?
Do you have an intuition that the last 1000 elephants (or humans, if you consider elephants to have weight zero or some such), are more valuable than 1000 elephants/humans if there are a million of them)?
(It’s not obvious you should have such an intuition, just that it seemed like the conversation was predicated on that, and the most obvious reason it’d be the case is that one might care about preserving a species existing at all [for various possible reasons] than being slightly more numerous)
That is the view the OP describes (with respect to elephants—it’s different for humans), and as I said, my own view is effectively the same, for the purpose of the current conversation.
As someone who also roughly beliefs what is outlined in the OP, I don’t think I would pay the same in each of these scenarios. I do have a model that I “should” pay the same in each scenario in a way that I cannot easily externalize, and definitely not in a way that is obvious to me.
I don’t think I understand what you mean by these two statements, taken together:
So… you do or you don’t think that it’s right to pay the same in each given case…?
If you were to put a gun to my head and force me to give an answer in a minute, I think, though it might honestly depend on the day, I would probably pay the same in each scenario. Though I would assign significant probability to having made the “wrong” choice (and I wish I could give you a clear and precise definition of what I mean by “wrong” here, but my metaethics have not reached reflective equilibrium, and so the closest thing I have is just “would preferred to have made a different choice given 10000 more years to think, with greater intelligence, all the world’s knowledge at my fingertips, etc.”)
Internally, this situation feels like I have something closer to an inside-view gears-like model that predicts that I should pay different amounts, combined with a “conservation of energy”/”dutch-book” like model that tells me that if I were to pay different amounts, I would have to be irrational in some way, even if I don’t know how precisely yet.
In all but the second scenario, more than 1,000,000 million elephants do indeed “exist” (though the point of the exercise is at least in part to poke at what it means for something to exist), and so based on the argument made above, the first scenario would suggest the value of the marginal 1000 (which would move the total number of elephants from 1,001,000 to 1,000,000) elephants to be lower than in the second scenario (which would move the total number of elephants from 1,000 to 0).
Continuing in the tradition of socratic questioning, if you would respond with the same amount in all the scenarios above, would you also respond the same if there were 1 million elephants buried deep underground in a self-sustaining bunker on a different planet in our solar system, and you would never expect to interact with them further? Would your answer change if there was an easily available video-feed of the elephants that you could access from the internet?
Yes.
No.
I do want to note, however, that you have transitioned from “slightly different interpretations of physics” and “very nuanced facts about cosmology” to “extremely improbable counterfactual scenarios”. Those are importantly different categories of hypothetical scenario.
That aside, however:
That is not the relevant consideration. From the OP:
If all the elephants on Earth die, but elephants still exist in an alternate universe, it is not correct to say that “the elephant species yet survives”. Rather, the appropriate description would be “the elephant species has gone extinct; matters may, however (in this as in other things), be different in some alternate universe”.
Your 1st and 3rd scenario (i.e., the other ones where some extra-terrestrial elephants remain) similarly do not introduce any interesting facts about the elephant species.
Continuing more with the thought experiments, since I find your answers (as well as your confidence in them) surprising. I have a sense that you believe that the responses to these questions are obvious, and if that is true, I would be interested in whether you can generate an explanation that makes them obvious to me as well.
Let’s imagine the inverse scenario in which you travel in a spaceship away from earth to a new planet far away and you never expect to come back. The new planet has a million elephants on it, old earth has only 1000 thousand elephants left on it. Imagine the alternative scenario in which you never leave earth and stay with the 1000 elephants, and also never expect to leave for any other planet. Would you pay the same amount to save the 1000 elephants on earth in either case?
To make this concrete, the two compared scenarios are:
1. You are on earth, there are a million elephants on a far away planet you never expect to see, and you are offered a trade to save the last 1000 animals on earth
2. You are on a distant planet with a million elephants on it, far away earth’s last 1000 elephants are about to die and you are offered a trade to save them
If so, how is this different from the scenario in which there are a million elephants in a bunker you will never visit? Also, does this mean that your moral evaluation of the same group of animals changes as you travel in a spaceship from one planet to another?
(Also, in considering these, try to control for as much of the secondary benefits of elephants as possible. I.e. maybe imagine that you are the last human and try to account for the potential technological, hedonic and cultural benefits of having elephants around)
I don’t think everyone who agrees with the OP would agree with this statement. At least I do not. Though this feels more like arguing definitions in a way that is less likely to result in much productive discourse.
Well, as far as the prevalence of my view goes, I can’t speak to that. But I do not think this is a matter of arguing definitions—rather, it’s a real difference in values. Lanrian’s comment elsethread mentions one important category of difference here.
Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that there isn’t a real difference here. I was just commenting on the specific statement “the appropriate description would be” which does seem primarily to be a statement about wording, and not about ethics.