The total view can’t secure (i), but at least it’s got (ii) covered. (ii) utopia is better than a barren rock. (i) utopia (world A) is better than Parfit’s world Z, and To fully avoid repugnance, we want a population axiology that can at least deliver both of the following verdicts: (This is a result that totalists can just as well secure through a more limited critical range that still allows awesome lives to qualify as positive additions to the world.) (If you think the big party doesn’t sound so bad, given that you’re already invited, instead imagine Cleopatra making the decision millennia ago.) Moreover, neutrality doesn’t even fully avoid the original problem! It still doesn’t imply that future utopia A is better than the repugnant world Z just that they are “on a par”. These implications strike me as far more repugnant than the repugnant conclusion. It implies that the total extinction of all future value-bearers could be more than compensated for by throwing a good enough party for those who already exist. Neutrality implies that utopia is (in prospect) no better than a barren, lifeless rock. But he doesn’t mention any costs to neutralism, which may give some readers the misleading impression that this is a cost-free, common-sense solution. ) He swiftly dismisses the total view for implying the repugnant conclusion. (Note that MacAskill’s longtermism is in fact much weaker than total utilitarianism. In ‘ The New Moral Mathematics ’ (reviewing WWOTF ), Kieran Setiya sets up a false choice between total utilitarianism and “the intuition of neutrality” which denies positive value to creating happy lives. Below I’ll briefly step through some basic considerations that bring out how difficult this task can be. You need to actually gesture towards a better alternative, and do the difficult work of determining which view is the least bad. When all views have costs, you cannot refute a view just by pointing to one of its costs. And there’s nothing clever about mocking utilitarians for endorsing a poisonous implication when it’s provably the case that every possibility remaining amongst the non-utilitarian options is similarly poisonous! But what makes these questions such deep puzzles is precisely that we know that no wholly satisfying answer is possible. Being incomplete in this way is surely not an advantage of those theories, unless there’s reason to think that a better answer will eventually be fleshed out. Other theories too often remain silent and non-committal. Why, then, would anyone ever think that these puzzles were limited to utilitarianism? One hypothesis is that only utilitarianism is sufficiently clear and systematic to actually attempt an answer to these questions. And obviously any account relevant to fallible human beings needs to address how we should respond to uncertainty about our empirical circumstances and future prospects.) One which did not would simply be irrational, crazy.” Rossian pluralism explicitly acknowledges a prima facie duty of beneficence that must be weighed against our other-more distinctively deontological-prima facie duties, and will determine what ought to be done if those others are not applicable to the situation at hand. (As even Rawls acknowledged, “All ethical doctrines worth our attention take consequences into account in judging rightness. Their error, of course, is that beneficence and decision theory are essential components of any complete moral theory.
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