I didn’t claim that the quoted passage universalizes as a version of negative utilitarianism in all imaginable cases, just that it makes sense intuitively in a variety of real-life situations as well as in the many cases not usually considered, like the ones you mentioned, or in case of reversible destruction Scott talks about, or human cloning, or…
And we can see that in your constructed setup the rationale for preserving the variety “it deprives the rest of society of a unique, irreplaceable store of knowledge and experiences” no longer holds.
I don’t think it makes sense intuitively in the cases I mentioned, because intuitively I think we probably should consider the conscious experiences that the creatures are experiencing (whether they are positive or negative, or whether they are conscious at all), and Scott’s theory seems to be saying that we shouldn’t consider that. So I think the correct answer to my question 1 is probably something like “yes only if the creatures will have more negative than positive experiences over the rest of their lives (and their value to society as knowledge/experience do not make up for that)” instead of the “no” given by Scott’s theory. And 3 might be “no if overall the creatures will have more positive experiences, because by shutting down you’d be depriving them of those experiences”. Of course I’m really unsure about all of this but I don’t see how we can confidently conclude that the answer to 3 is “yes”.
I didn’t claim that the quoted passage universalizes as a version of negative utilitarianism in all imaginable cases, just that it makes sense intuitively in a variety of real-life situations as well as in the many cases not usually considered, like the ones you mentioned, or in case of reversible destruction Scott talks about, or human cloning, or…
And we can see that in your constructed setup the rationale for preserving the variety “it deprives the rest of society of a unique, irreplaceable store of knowledge and experiences” no longer holds.
I don’t think it makes sense intuitively in the cases I mentioned, because intuitively I think we probably should consider the conscious experiences that the creatures are experiencing (whether they are positive or negative, or whether they are conscious at all), and Scott’s theory seems to be saying that we shouldn’t consider that. So I think the correct answer to my question 1 is probably something like “yes only if the creatures will have more negative than positive experiences over the rest of their lives (and their value to society as knowledge/experience do not make up for that)” instead of the “no” given by Scott’s theory. And 3 might be “no if overall the creatures will have more positive experiences, because by shutting down you’d be depriving them of those experiences”. Of course I’m really unsure about all of this but I don’t see how we can confidently conclude that the answer to 3 is “yes”.
Hmm, if you ask Scott directly, odds are, he will reply to you :)