I have no interest in defending utilitarianism, but I do have an interest in a total welfare (yes I think such a concept can make sense) of sentient beings. The repugnance of the Repugnant Conclusion, I suggest, is a figment of your lack of imagination. When you imagine a universe with trillions of people whose lives are marginally worth living, you probably imagine people whose lives are a uniform grey, just barely closer to light than darkness. In other words, agonizingly boring lives. But this is unnecessary and prejudicial. Instead, imagine people with ups and downs like ours, but with a closer balance of ups and downs. Imagine rich cultures, intense personal relationships, exciting mathematical discoveries, etc., etc. - but perhaps more repression, more romantic breakups, more dead end derivations.
Perhaps there are values that are nonlocal, in the sense of not belonging to any one person and not being the sum of values belonging each to one person. And the Repugnant world you’re imagining may lack those values. But that’s a problem with Utilitarianism, not with Totality. In other words I suggest that insofar as moral value depends on how things go for individuals (considering individuals other than those to whom you have special obligations), it depends on the total rather than the average, or the pre-existing persons’ welfare.
Why think so? Because having children normally isn’t wrong, but having children when you know the child will only suffer horribly for a year and then die, is. Normal parents know, however, that there is a very slight chance of that type of horrible result. What justifies childbearing in the normal case? The obvious answer is the high probability that the child will lead a good life. Therefore, adding more good lives is a good-making feature. This doesn’t show that adding more good lives is comparable to making the same number of pre-existing equally good lives twice as good—but I think that is the answer most coherent with the meager truth about personal identity.
Other comments:
The “real world analogues” of the killing-and-replacing-people thought experiments turn out to be just more thought experiments. Not that there need be anything wrong with that, but the weirdness of the thought-experimental situation should be considered. If the intent is simply to show that utilitarianism faces a burden of argument in the face of counterintuitive results, it succeeds in that easy goal.
Interpersonal comparisons of utility suffer from the same difficulties, in principle, as intrapersonal comparisons. They’re just a lot more intense in the former case. This applies to both preference and hedonics, and also to many more sophisticated evaluative schemes which may include both, plus more.
I have no interest in defending utilitarianism, but I do have an interest in a total welfare (yes I think such a concept can make sense) of sentient beings. The repugnance of the Repugnant Conclusion, I suggest, is a figment of your lack of imagination. When you imagine a universe with trillions of people whose lives are marginally worth living, you probably imagine people whose lives are a uniform grey, just barely closer to light than darkness. In other words, agonizingly boring lives. But this is unnecessary and prejudicial. Instead, imagine people with ups and downs like ours, but with a closer balance of ups and downs. Imagine rich cultures, intense personal relationships, exciting mathematical discoveries, etc., etc. - but perhaps more repression, more romantic breakups, more dead end derivations.
Perhaps there are values that are nonlocal, in the sense of not belonging to any one person and not being the sum of values belonging each to one person. And the Repugnant world you’re imagining may lack those values. But that’s a problem with Utilitarianism, not with Totality. In other words I suggest that insofar as moral value depends on how things go for individuals (considering individuals other than those to whom you have special obligations), it depends on the total rather than the average, or the pre-existing persons’ welfare.
Why think so? Because having children normally isn’t wrong, but having children when you know the child will only suffer horribly for a year and then die, is. Normal parents know, however, that there is a very slight chance of that type of horrible result. What justifies childbearing in the normal case? The obvious answer is the high probability that the child will lead a good life. Therefore, adding more good lives is a good-making feature. This doesn’t show that adding more good lives is comparable to making the same number of pre-existing equally good lives twice as good—but I think that is the answer most coherent with the meager truth about personal identity.
Other comments: The “real world analogues” of the killing-and-replacing-people thought experiments turn out to be just more thought experiments. Not that there need be anything wrong with that, but the weirdness of the thought-experimental situation should be considered. If the intent is simply to show that utilitarianism faces a burden of argument in the face of counterintuitive results, it succeeds in that easy goal.
Interpersonal comparisons of utility suffer from the same difficulties, in principle, as intrapersonal comparisons. They’re just a lot more intense in the former case. This applies to both preference and hedonics, and also to many more sophisticated evaluative schemes which may include both, plus more.