“Wouldn’t you still get weird conclusions if you replaced happiness in the argument by “the messier thing that happiness is trying to get at”?”
Sure, I agree, though I would argue that less reductive the measurement the less weird the outcome. So the closer you get to accuracy in your measurement of “the messier thing that happiness is trying to get at” the better the outcomes of the weird edge cases.
“arithmetic is just writing down how we compare things”
err, a minor point, you can totally compare things without math. Compare the pleasure of holding a baby with the pleasure of solving a hard problem, people will have consistent, different views on the matter without anyone reaching for a calculator.
A more major point you are making is that ethics / morality must produce a total ordering over all possible world states. I disagree with that point. It’s totally fine that Ethics can rank A>B and C>D without ranking A vs C. Some questions just don’t have determinate answers. In the example with the happy people, perhaps there is an acceptable range, say anywhere from one very happy person to 20 sort of happy people. I’m not claiming this range precisely or even that the range is the answer to this one, I don’t know the answer here. I am simply claiming that answers in ethics can be fuzzy or ranges or not an answerable question.
If there is an acceptable range, then there is no repugnant conclusion. The interval breaks the iteration needed to reach the extremes.
It’s totally fine that Ethics can rank A>B and C>D without ranking A vs C.
In the repugnant conclusion case, you are ranking A>B and B>C, which implies that you can rank A>C. It wouldn’t make sense to not be able to rank A>C under these circumstances.
In the example with the happy people, perhaps there is an acceptable range, say anywhere from one very happy person to 20 sort of happy people.
If you do that, then you are able to rank 19 happy people versus 20 slightly less happy ones, but you are not able to rank 20 happy people versus 21 slightly less happy ones. That isn’t logically impossible, but it leads to weird conclusions. For instance, it may mean that if you are comparing 19 people to 20, adding one unchanged person to the comparison changes it into a comparison of 20 to 21 and suddenly you are no longer able to do it. “I am not able to compare these groups” doesn’t suddenly mean that it’s not arithmetic; arithmetic can then be used to figure out what things you can and cannot compare.
I think it should be a total order. Given a choice, one can either try to make one of the two happen, or not particularly care either way—that is, indifference.
With the repugnant conclusion, the problem is that each iteration really does still seem to be an improvement to me. Of course, if you don’t feel this way then it doesn’t work.
Sure, I agree, though I would argue that less reductive the measurement the less weird the outcome. So the closer you get to accuracy in your measurement of “the messier thing that happiness is trying to get at” the better the outcomes of the weird edge cases.
err, a minor point, you can totally compare things without math. Compare the pleasure of holding a baby with the pleasure of solving a hard problem, people will have consistent, different views on the matter without anyone reaching for a calculator.
A more major point you are making is that ethics / morality must produce a total ordering over all possible world states. I disagree with that point. It’s totally fine that Ethics can rank A>B and C>D without ranking A vs C. Some questions just don’t have determinate answers. In the example with the happy people, perhaps there is an acceptable range, say anywhere from one very happy person to 20 sort of happy people. I’m not claiming this range precisely or even that the range is the answer to this one, I don’t know the answer here. I am simply claiming that answers in ethics can be fuzzy or ranges or not an answerable question.
If there is an acceptable range, then there is no repugnant conclusion. The interval breaks the iteration needed to reach the extremes.
In the repugnant conclusion case, you are ranking A>B and B>C, which implies that you can rank A>C. It wouldn’t make sense to not be able to rank A>C under these circumstances.
If you do that, then you are able to rank 19 happy people versus 20 slightly less happy ones, but you are not able to rank 20 happy people versus 21 slightly less happy ones. That isn’t logically impossible, but it leads to weird conclusions. For instance, it may mean that if you are comparing 19 people to 20, adding one unchanged person to the comparison changes it into a comparison of 20 to 21 and suddenly you are no longer able to do it. “I am not able to compare these groups” doesn’t suddenly mean that it’s not arithmetic; arithmetic can then be used to figure out what things you can and cannot compare.
Sorites paradoxes are everywhere, heaps, baldness, colour boundaries. We live with them just fine.
This is that, the worm is not a life, Alice is. Middle is muddled. Type difference.
I think it should be a total order. Given a choice, one can either try to make one of the two happen, or not particularly care either way—that is, indifference.
With the repugnant conclusion, the problem is that each iteration really does still seem to be an improvement to me. Of course, if you don’t feel this way then it doesn’t work.
Aha! A crux! Beautiful. Thank you for the discussion :).