tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post9094392433459830077..comments2023-10-29T10:32:36.914-04:00Comments on Philosophy, et cetera: Welfare and Contributory ValueRichard Y Chappellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-55616753753875767242008-11-08T21:38:00.000-05:002008-11-08T21:38:00.000-05:00Toby - it doesn't necessarily follow from having n...Toby - it doesn't necessarily follow from having negative welfare that it is rational to kill oneself. Strictly speaking, it is merely to say that one would have been better off <I>never to have existed</I> in the first place. Whether it's better to cease existing sooner rather than later is a further question -- you can see how the intrapersonal equivalent of an average utilitarian might give a different answer here, if one's future days would be less bad than one's past.<BR/><BR/>In support of the idea that appending (lesser) negatives can be a good thing, recall the Kahneman studies showing that people prefer a longer pain with a less-painful ending than a shorter pain without that extra less-painful bit tacked on. See <A HREF="http://www.philosophyetc.net/2007/09/evaluating-and-enumerating-pains.html" REL="nofollow">here</A> for further discussion.Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-22625977806453589432008-11-06T06:33:00.000-05:002008-11-06T06:33:00.000-05:00I'm with Pablo on this one. I think the repugnant ...I'm with Pablo on this one. I think the repugnant conclusion is the least troubling option.<BR/><BR/><I>just moderately poorly off (i.e. low negative welfare)</I><BR/><BR/>I don't think this is a good description of low negative welfare. It sounds to me like people who are lower middle class, not people whose lives are so unbearably bad that it is rational for them to kill themselves. I can't see any circumstance when adding such lives improves the world. Note that in your example it also increases inequality.<BR/><BR/>I am interested in your holistic approach though, and would like to see some examples of how it could be plausibly fleshed out. My guess is that it will only avoid troubling examples by not being concrete enough to allow critics to construct them, but I'd like to be proved wrong on this.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-75273733606989911912008-11-05T17:36:00.000-05:002008-11-05T17:36:00.000-05:00Hi Pablo, much depends on whether the other allege...Hi Pablo, much depends on whether the other alleged 'conditions' seem as stringent as the requirement to avoid the RC. I don't think they are; I'm quite happy to instead reject the 'independence' requirement, adopting value holism instead. Hence my claim: "<I>the contributory value of an individual life cannot be assessed in isolation from how it affects the overall pattern or 'shape' of the world as a whole</I>".<BR/><BR/>re:#2, I never discussed a <I>pure</I> average view, but I would reject that too. Even so, I'm open to the possibility that a small extremely bad world <I>could</I> (depending on how we fill out the details) be improved by adding more people who are just moderately poorly off (i.e. low negative welfare). That does seem like the kind of thing that <I>could</I>, perhaps, improve the overall 'shape' of the world, making it a slightly less terrible place, no?<BR/><BR/>Your point #3 is helpful -- it shows ways that even anti-holists might think welfare and contributory (moral) value diverge.Richard Y Chappellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16725218276285291235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6642011.post-44201836594342742972008-11-05T17:11:00.000-05:002008-11-05T17:11:00.000-05:001. Avoidance of the repugnant conclusion is only o...1. Avoidance of the repugnant conclusion is only one among several conditions which we intuitively believe a moral theory must fulfill to be credible. Since fulfillment of all such conditions is <A HREF="http://ppe.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/2/3/342" REL="nofollow">demonstrably impossible</A>, the mere fact that aggregationism implies the repugnant conclusion is not a valid reason for rejecting it.<BR/><BR/>2. The average view fails to fulfill a stronger condition than your example suggests. It implies that adding people whose lives are extremely bad for them is morally good if life for the rest is on average worse than it is for these people.<BR/><BR/>3. Here are two other ways in which good and wellbeing can come apart. First, the welfare level at which a life is neither good nor bad morally may not coincide with the level at which it is neither good nor bad for the person living it. Second, a life twice as morally good may be more or less than twice as good for the person whose life it is.Pablohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10363127923767597327noreply@blogger.com