tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post1763195253591787963..comments2023-10-29T10:32:36.914-04:00Comments on Philosophy, et cetera: Anti-Consequentialism and Axiological RefinementsRichard Y Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-1715247202650287852013-09-30T01:12:00.748-04:002013-09-30T01:12:00.748-04:00I think you're onto something with the idea th...I think you're onto something with the idea that much of the badness resides in the state of being sadistic racists. It does seem to me that it might be acceptable to harm people in order to prevent a sadistic racist from being born (even if their birth is, in Parfit's words, a "mere addition"). The creation of such sadistic preferences seems a net bad. <br /><br />I'm not sure about curing them. If being a vicious racist is a deeply ingrained part of their personality that might be equivalent to killing them and replacing them with a different person. I'm against creating such people in the first place, but if we do screw up and create them it might still be bad for them to die. I consider the fulfillment of their sadistic preferences to be of zero value, but fulfilling other preferences they have, like not dying, preserving their personal identity, and not being in pain, are presumably still valuable, even if in a better world that person would have never existed. <br /><br />To me replacing the molesting doctor with the spasm doctor does seem a little better. I know if I found out later that a doctor touched me by accident I wouldn't be angry at all, but if they did it on purpose I'd be furious. If the doctor remains titillated by the results of the spasm I think that would still be better, if the doctor apologized to me for having the spasm, and then guiltily admitted that they enjoyed it, I think I'd forgive them, as long as I knew that they would choose to not have the spasm if they could. As with the racist, I think some of the badness resides in having a doctor who intends to molest people existing in the first place, not just in what they do once they exist (although obviously that contains badness as well).Evanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15661002375460378958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-52726077105646605112013-05-30T11:13:07.668-04:002013-05-30T11:13:07.668-04:00Yes, good point, that does seem the best way to go...Yes, good point, that does seem the best way to go in that case. (Some positive badness might instead reside in their pre-existing state of <i>being sadistic racists</i>, rather than any particular emotional expresssion of this. Could it be worth harming one to "cure" a population of their viciousness? *shrug*, maybe...)<br /><br />The molesting doctor case is trickier. Given the intuition that intentional molestation harms the victim in a way that a mere muscular spasm does not, should we then be willing to kill one innocent in order to (somehow) cause a million would-be molesting doctors to instead merely touch their patients' private parts via an unintentional spasm? That seems weird, but on the other hand, I'm reluctant to abandon the intuition that molestation is worse (more positively bad) for a patient than a physically similar spasm on the part of their doctor. (To make the case neater, perhaps we also need to remove any <i>desire</i> on the doctors' parts to molest their patients. If they're still titillated by the results of their spasm, that maybe isn't a huge improvement!)<br /><br />What do you think?Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-87616874309721256712013-05-30T02:32:51.563-04:002013-05-30T02:32:51.563-04:00My main problem with taking vicious emotional resp...My main problem with taking vicious emotional responses as intrinsic bads is that that implies that it might be acceptable to inflict large harms on innocent people to prevent a large amount of vicious emotional responses, even if those responses do not motivate vicious actions.<br /><br />For instance, suppose a delivery driver is going to deliver a videotape of a black man being killed by lightning to a TV studio, where it will be broadcast to the TVs of billions of racists, who will then take malicious pleasure in it. If that maliciousness is an intrinsic bad, does that mean that, if the number of racist viewers is sufficiently large, that it is okay to kill the delivery driver to stop the tape from being delivered? (Assume the delivery driver is innocent, and has no idea what he is delivering). That seems strange to me.<br /><br />I think a better solution is to consider the fulfillment of malicious desires to be neutral. They don't contribute to value, so one black person's desire to live outweighs the desires of a billion racists to lynch him. But they don't contribute to disvalue either, so it's not desirable to inflict large harms on innocent people for no reason other than to thwart malicious desires.Evanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15661002375460378958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-31786556234755199672010-04-10T19:12:41.991-04:002010-04-10T19:12:41.991-04:00Joshua - right, we take vicious emotional response...Joshua - right, we take <i>vicious emotional responses</i> (e.g. sadistic racist pleasure) to be 'intrinsic bads'. But my thought is that this is merely an axiological refinement that consequentialists can happily take on board.Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-14627718575490566072010-04-10T17:43:44.991-04:002010-04-10T17:43:44.991-04:00I wonder if the lightening case is truly naturaliz...I wonder if the lightening case is truly naturalized. It seems that we really take sadistic racist pleasure to be something like an evil act in itself, indeed part of what is wrong with, say, lynching (surely not the biggest part, which I'd say is the outcome).<br /><br />So even though the "action" in the lightening case is naturalized, part of what makes parallel actions wrong seems to remain. I wonder if my point here is a non-sequitur or not...JDBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12642092698398859527noreply@blogger.com