Thanks, gwern, for this summary. I have a different way of criticizing Sobel’s premise 1. I think he implicitly imposes a requirement of complete determinacy for the value (to the agent) of a life. But that is probably too strong.
A definition/theory/account shouldn’t provide too much determinacy. For example: a definition of “baldness” should avoid, if at all possible, classifying one head as determinately “bald” and the next as determinately “not bald” when the difference in hair on those heads is minimal. Less trivially: a philosophical account of “sentience” need not be embarrassed if there are some cases (insects?) on which it cannot deliver a clear verdict. Maybe that’s a feature of the account, not a bug (pardon the pun). Similarly, an account of “torekp’s well-being” need not be rejected if there are some alternative life-courses it cannot definitively rank relative to each other. If, among the closest possible worlds in which me+ is well-informed about these life-courses, some me+s recommend life A and others recommend life B, it seems to me reasonable to posit that the two lives are incomparable.
Also, one should consider alternate epistemic routes to value-conclusions that are congruent with, but need not follow logically from, the informed-desire perspective. We might hypothesize specific causes for the changes in a person’s desires with increasing information. I mean the usual suspects: fun, intimacy, knowledge, autonomy, etc., along with the psycho-physical characteristics of human beings that make us respond positively to these. If we develop theories along these lines with explanatory power, we may be able to kick away the ladder of our informed-self advisers. (ETA:) In other words, we directly consult the reduction base for facts about what our informed-selves would do; this might be simpler than constructing detailed hypothetical scenarios.
Thanks, gwern, for this summary. I have a different way of criticizing Sobel’s premise 1. I think he implicitly imposes a requirement of complete determinacy for the value (to the agent) of a life. But that is probably too strong.
A definition/theory/account shouldn’t provide too much determinacy. For example: a definition of “baldness” should avoid, if at all possible, classifying one head as determinately “bald” and the next as determinately “not bald” when the difference in hair on those heads is minimal. Less trivially: a philosophical account of “sentience” need not be embarrassed if there are some cases (insects?) on which it cannot deliver a clear verdict. Maybe that’s a feature of the account, not a bug (pardon the pun). Similarly, an account of “torekp’s well-being” need not be rejected if there are some alternative life-courses it cannot definitively rank relative to each other. If, among the closest possible worlds in which me+ is well-informed about these life-courses, some me+s recommend life A and others recommend life B, it seems to me reasonable to posit that the two lives are incomparable.
Also, one should consider alternate epistemic routes to value-conclusions that are congruent with, but need not follow logically from, the informed-desire perspective. We might hypothesize specific causes for the changes in a person’s desires with increasing information. I mean the usual suspects: fun, intimacy, knowledge, autonomy, etc., along with the psycho-physical characteristics of human beings that make us respond positively to these. If we develop theories along these lines with explanatory power, we may be able to kick away the ladder of our informed-self advisers. (ETA:) In other words, we directly consult the reduction base for facts about what our informed-selves would do; this might be simpler than constructing detailed hypothetical scenarios.