Your first argument against totalism—that it can’t account for what you see as an intrinsic harm in some deaths—is axiological. You don’t think it’s a decisive argument, however, so you propose a second argument that you think is stronger—that totalism can’t account for us having both “person-directed” and “undirected” reasons, with person-directed reasons being the stronger of the two.
However, this second argument is about moral reasons, not value. It seems you've given up on rejecting totalism as an axiology and are content to only reject it as a moral theory. That would be fine for a non-utilitarian who can accept a significant divergence between axiology and morality, but a utilitarian should, I think, be able to give an axiological account of our moral reasons. If death’s intrinsic harm can't explain why person-directed reasons are stronger than undirected reasons, we need some other axiological explanation.
Among other things, axiological total utilitarianism implies: (a) there is no distinction in value between ceasing to exist or failing to come into existence, and (b), there is no distinction in value between coming into an existence with wellbeing x and continuing a prior existence which then goes on to provide wellbeing x. (There's also no distinction in value between creating a new life with wellbeing x or adding wellbeing x to a prior existence while holding the lifespan of this prior existence fixed.)
In your post, you argue against (a) but not (b). Since you don’t think you have a strong argument against (a), and since death’s harm being partially intrinsic is controversial anyway, maybe you can make up for this with an argument against (b).
Jeff McMahan thinks death is a purely comparative harm, so he wouldn’t agree with your argument against (a). However, he argues against (b) in “Causing People to Exist and Saving People’s Lives.” Like you, he wants to defend a hybrid view. He thinks we have some moral reason to create new happy lives, which is significant but weaker than the moral reason to benefit already existing lives. He just calls these “narrow individual-affecting reasons” and “wide individual-affecting reasons” instead of “person-directed reasons” and “undirected reasons.” I don’t agree with McMahan's argument against (b), but maybe you do, or maybe you could come up with a different argument against it. Or there might be some other key component to axiological totalism that you could identify and dispute in order to give an axiological basis to a weak asymmetry.
I like this blog including the comment section. I wonder why there are not more philosophy blogs and forums (I know there are some) for scholars or well-versed amateurs to discuss things like normative ethics or other philosophical topics.
I suspect one reason we don't see more online discourse by Philosophers is that they are worried that non-philosophers (like me) will come in and try to get a say in things in order to feel like we are important like the real philosophers.
If so, some degree of exclusivity could be brought in. Like maybe there could be an application to the forum to allow only professors or only those with (e.g.) philosophy PhDs to comment. Or maybe people would earn reputation through upvotes or something [I believe such systems have been tried in other settings].
As it is, it's very difficult to figure what others think.
Here's one weird implication: causing someone definitely to exist with well-being level 0 and separately increasing their well-being by 5 is better than creating someone with well-being level 5.
Nice article! This matches my common sense intuitions as well. And I think many other people would agree. I think you’re right that the killing v. never existing distinction intuition is a point against the total view.
I think an especially tricky part is giving the relative weight though. This year I took a look at GiveWell documents to look at the relative weight of saving lives at different ages. The document discussed the difficulty of evaluating this problem prior to birth and it said they would look into it if a charitable intervention to prevent miscarriage was being evaluated if I recall correctly. I’m on mobile at the moment.
To me, it seems like preventing unwanted miscarriage and increasing fertility should be seen as morally good if it increases the total number of happy people. It appears you would agree to some extent but say that helping present people is morally better for the reasons you mention. That makes sense, but what sort of real world trade offs should we make?
If saving one human life cost $4000, how much should we value enabling 1 additional life of equal hedonistic quality to come into existence? It’s hard to say! However, it seems the implications could be very important.
OK, but then how do you avoid the problem of Average Utilitarianism demanding the deaths of miserable homeless people who have no social connections, have negative expected utility over the remainder of their lives, and will be missed by no one after death?
Unless I'm misunderstanding the case, this seems to imply that a glass bottle that will cut open the foot of someone is less bad if the person whose foot it will cut open hasn't been born yet. This doesn't seem plausible.
"For example, we clearly have much stronger moral reasons to save the life of a young child (e.g. by funding anti-malarial bednets) than to simply cause an extra child to exist (e.g. by funding fertility treatments or incentivizing procreation)."
Just to make sure I'm understanding, you mean that's clear based on moral intuition?
Hi Richard, thanks for the excellent article. Having read it though, I'm not sure I understand your basis for "failing to create is importantly morally different from killing"? I think this could be rephrased as asking you to expand on "person-directed reasons explain this common-sense distinction: we have especially strong reasons not to harm or wrong particular individuals."
I believe we are, by construction, ignoring the additional harm that killing a particular individual would cause their friends & family which would not occur with failing to create a new individual, but correct me if wrong?
If anyone’s interested in seeing a defence of the full bulletbiting totalist view, here is one such defence. https://benthams.substack.com/p/utilitarianism-wins-outright-part-67f
Your first argument against totalism—that it can’t account for what you see as an intrinsic harm in some deaths—is axiological. You don’t think it’s a decisive argument, however, so you propose a second argument that you think is stronger—that totalism can’t account for us having both “person-directed” and “undirected” reasons, with person-directed reasons being the stronger of the two.
However, this second argument is about moral reasons, not value. It seems you've given up on rejecting totalism as an axiology and are content to only reject it as a moral theory. That would be fine for a non-utilitarian who can accept a significant divergence between axiology and morality, but a utilitarian should, I think, be able to give an axiological account of our moral reasons. If death’s intrinsic harm can't explain why person-directed reasons are stronger than undirected reasons, we need some other axiological explanation.
Among other things, axiological total utilitarianism implies: (a) there is no distinction in value between ceasing to exist or failing to come into existence, and (b), there is no distinction in value between coming into an existence with wellbeing x and continuing a prior existence which then goes on to provide wellbeing x. (There's also no distinction in value between creating a new life with wellbeing x or adding wellbeing x to a prior existence while holding the lifespan of this prior existence fixed.)
In your post, you argue against (a) but not (b). Since you don’t think you have a strong argument against (a), and since death’s harm being partially intrinsic is controversial anyway, maybe you can make up for this with an argument against (b).
Jeff McMahan thinks death is a purely comparative harm, so he wouldn’t agree with your argument against (a). However, he argues against (b) in “Causing People to Exist and Saving People’s Lives.” Like you, he wants to defend a hybrid view. He thinks we have some moral reason to create new happy lives, which is significant but weaker than the moral reason to benefit already existing lives. He just calls these “narrow individual-affecting reasons” and “wide individual-affecting reasons” instead of “person-directed reasons” and “undirected reasons.” I don’t agree with McMahan's argument against (b), but maybe you do, or maybe you could come up with a different argument against it. Or there might be some other key component to axiological totalism that you could identify and dispute in order to give an axiological basis to a weak asymmetry.
Off Topic:
I like this blog including the comment section. I wonder why there are not more philosophy blogs and forums (I know there are some) for scholars or well-versed amateurs to discuss things like normative ethics or other philosophical topics.
I suspect one reason we don't see more online discourse by Philosophers is that they are worried that non-philosophers (like me) will come in and try to get a say in things in order to feel like we are important like the real philosophers.
If so, some degree of exclusivity could be brought in. Like maybe there could be an application to the forum to allow only professors or only those with (e.g.) philosophy PhDs to comment. Or maybe people would earn reputation through upvotes or something [I believe such systems have been tried in other settings].
As it is, it's very difficult to figure what others think.
Here's one weird implication: causing someone definitely to exist with well-being level 0 and separately increasing their well-being by 5 is better than creating someone with well-being level 5.
Nice article! This matches my common sense intuitions as well. And I think many other people would agree. I think you’re right that the killing v. never existing distinction intuition is a point against the total view.
I think an especially tricky part is giving the relative weight though. This year I took a look at GiveWell documents to look at the relative weight of saving lives at different ages. The document discussed the difficulty of evaluating this problem prior to birth and it said they would look into it if a charitable intervention to prevent miscarriage was being evaluated if I recall correctly. I’m on mobile at the moment.
To me, it seems like preventing unwanted miscarriage and increasing fertility should be seen as morally good if it increases the total number of happy people. It appears you would agree to some extent but say that helping present people is morally better for the reasons you mention. That makes sense, but what sort of real world trade offs should we make?
If saving one human life cost $4000, how much should we value enabling 1 additional life of equal hedonistic quality to come into existence? It’s hard to say! However, it seems the implications could be very important.
OK, but then how do you avoid the problem of Average Utilitarianism demanding the deaths of miserable homeless people who have no social connections, have negative expected utility over the remainder of their lives, and will be missed by no one after death?
Unless I'm misunderstanding the case, this seems to imply that a glass bottle that will cut open the foot of someone is less bad if the person whose foot it will cut open hasn't been born yet. This doesn't seem plausible.
"For example, we clearly have much stronger moral reasons to save the life of a young child (e.g. by funding anti-malarial bednets) than to simply cause an extra child to exist (e.g. by funding fertility treatments or incentivizing procreation)."
Just to make sure I'm understanding, you mean that's clear based on moral intuition?
Hi Richard, thanks for the excellent article. Having read it though, I'm not sure I understand your basis for "failing to create is importantly morally different from killing"? I think this could be rephrased as asking you to expand on "person-directed reasons explain this common-sense distinction: we have especially strong reasons not to harm or wrong particular individuals."
I believe we are, by construction, ignoring the additional harm that killing a particular individual would cause their friends & family which would not occur with failing to create a new individual, but correct me if wrong?
Thanks!