Do you think it's conceptually realistic to remove all suffering and keep everything else the same? And if so, how would you define suffering?
The only way I can see things as being all-identical save for the elimination of suffering, is to remove the conscious experience of suffering-- to remove consciousness. Do you think that that would be ideal?
You're right, they could assume that no one will figure it out. Do you have an implausibly simple decision situation in mind? I'm not convinced by the one in the story.
Hence the problem of unconditional cluelessness. And, yes it's possible that it's an unanswerable problem. DiGiovanni and the other judges are hoping it's not.
In theory, yes. I don't believe that he is hopeless that someone, someday, could figure out a way out of this problem (in fact I have my own reasons for thinking we already can), but DiGiovanni seems to believe that assuming someone else will figure it out is "punting to the future," and an unfounded assumption. We may hope that someone will, but do we have a justified, outcome-based reason for assuming that someone else will? The argument says no.
“Exactly,” Tony says. “I like to call this conclusion unconditional cluelessness: the view according to which no one, in any hypothetical situation, is justified in c-preferring any action over any other. No one buys this view, except perhaps some Pyrrhonian skeptics who suspend judgment on everything.[3] And this is clearly not the conclusion DiGiovanni meant to defend.”
It may surprise you to hear that I myself stopped reading before the train left the first station, because I do think, in part, that this is the conclusion which DiGiovanni is defending. The unawareness argument does clearly state that no two actions can be c-preferred based on a framework of outcomes alone.
For everyone who stayed on the train, there is a hidden assumption, value, or belief which caused you to stay on board, something other than "outcomes," alone. DiGiovanni is not necessarily saying that we should hold this view, but his goal is to present the unawareness problem as a justification on behalf of the Pyrrhonian skeptics.
DiGiovanni is not saying, "be a Pyrrhonian skeptic," but he's asking us to examine why we think that we shouldn't be. And it's a genuine question-- I think that they are hosting this competition because he does not want to be a skeptic, he does not want to get off at the first station-- but the logic of the unawareness argument compels him to believe that he must. DiGiovanni is the man who hesitated, and then stepped off at that first station-- and now he's asking you why you stayed on.
(P.S. I did end up reading the whole story, and it was very well written and a great read. My previous belief stands, though.)
DiGiovanni’s framework assumes that the only kind of reason that counts is one that compares expected values. But this is a stipulation, not an argument. If we broaden our conception of what counts as a reason, then even under conditions of severe unawareness, we can have reasons to prefer one action over another.
I believe this is built into and accounted for with DiGiovanni's ultimate conclusion of the unawareness argument. He never claims that there are no reasons to do things, only that what reasons you may find are not universe-wide, self-independent, time-independent altruistic reasons. He argues that they cannot be both impartial and altruistic reasons. (I disagree, but that's for my own argument).
My preference also does not depend on whether I am ultimately correct about what I learned. Nor does it depend on predicting that adding X will improve future decisions. Once I judge X to be a relevant part of reality,[1] knowingly maintaining a model that excludes it is defective. No forecast is required.
Defective how? Defective to what end? Perhaps we should omit this new finding, if the consequences of doing so are better?
Moreover, B does not merely omit one effect from one calculation. It preserves a defect in the instrument that produces future assessments. For an impartial altruist, this is not merely an epistemic failure. It is a failure to remain responsive to consequences one already recognises as relevant.
And what consequences are those, that the impartial altruist recognizes as relevant?
Now, for each of the possibilities in the set, let’s swap the consequences of A and B. The epistemic state then is the following:
Perhaps I'm missing something, but could you explain how this is justifiable? In order to keep it straight in my head, I gave an example to your formula and assumed that, say, action A is letting baby Hitler live, action B is killing baby Hitler, and the "event" consequences are the holocaust. In your first example then, where action A could represent letting baby Hitler live, you are 100% guaranteeing the holocaust (for sake of argument), meanwhile action B could represent killing baby Hitler, thus giving 0% chance of the holocaust (for sake of argument). But I guess I'm not understanding how you can switch these consequences, and assume that somehow, maybe, killing baby Hitler would actually cause the holocaust, and letting him live would prevent it? I guess I just don't see how the 100%/0% formulation can hold if your argument for allowing the swapping is the unawareness/uncertainty itself. If letting baby Hitler live isn't a 100% guarantee of the holocaust, then how can we posit it? And if it is, then how could you ever switch that percentage to 0%?
2. Permuting the outcomes of the actions equivalently permutes the probability the agent assigns to those actions.
E.g. if we swap the consequences of actions A and B so that now, for all possibilities in the set, A behaves exactly like B did (and vice versa), then whatever probability the agent assigned to B must now be assigned to A (and vice versa).
Again, I may be missing something, but to me this seems like an equivocation. Does A actually behave exactly like B, or are you just swapping the definition of A and B, and saying that maybe killing baby Hitler could be A, and letting him live B, and therefore the consequences are identical? Sure, it's true, the naming choices of A and B are arbitrary, but the swapping of consequences, and the set of possible outcomes doesn't intuitively seem to be. At least, not to me. Maybe I'm missing something?
Thank you! That does answer my question, I was assuming it was the same or similar scenario.
Do you think it's conceptually realistic to remove all suffering and keep everything else the same? And if so, how would you define suffering?
The only way I can see things as being all-identical save for the elimination of suffering, is to remove the conscious experience of suffering-- to remove consciousness. Do you think that that would be ideal?
You're right, they could assume that no one will figure it out. Do you have an implausibly simple decision situation in mind? I'm not convinced by the one in the story.
Hence the problem of unconditional cluelessness. And, yes it's possible that it's an unanswerable problem. DiGiovanni and the other judges are hoping it's not.
I think that's why they're having the contest.
In theory, yes. I don't believe that he is hopeless that someone, someday, could figure out a way out of this problem (in fact I have my own reasons for thinking we already can), but DiGiovanni seems to believe that assuming someone else will figure it out is "punting to the future," and an unfounded assumption. We may hope that someone will, but do we have a justified, outcome-based reason for assuming that someone else will? The argument says no.
It may surprise you to hear that I myself stopped reading before the train left the first station, because I do think, in part, that this is the conclusion which DiGiovanni is defending. The unawareness argument does clearly state that no two actions can be c-preferred based on a framework of outcomes alone.
For everyone who stayed on the train, there is a hidden assumption, value, or belief which caused you to stay on board, something other than "outcomes," alone. DiGiovanni is not necessarily saying that we should hold this view, but his goal is to present the unawareness problem as a justification on behalf of the Pyrrhonian skeptics.
DiGiovanni is not saying, "be a Pyrrhonian skeptic," but he's asking us to examine why we think that we shouldn't be. And it's a genuine question-- I think that they are hosting this competition because he does not want to be a skeptic, he does not want to get off at the first station-- but the logic of the unawareness argument compels him to believe that he must. DiGiovanni is the man who hesitated, and then stepped off at that first station-- and now he's asking you why you stayed on.
(P.S. I did end up reading the whole story, and it was very well written and a great read. My previous belief stands, though.)
I believe this is built into and accounted for with DiGiovanni's ultimate conclusion of the unawareness argument. He never claims that there are no reasons to do things, only that what reasons you may find are not universe-wide, self-independent, time-independent altruistic reasons. He argues that they cannot be both impartial and altruistic reasons. (I disagree, but that's for my own argument).
But I like the article!
Defective how? Defective to what end? Perhaps we should omit this new finding, if the consequences of doing so are better?
And what consequences are those, that the impartial altruist recognizes as relevant?
Perhaps I'm missing something, but could you explain how this is justifiable? In order to keep it straight in my head, I gave an example to your formula and assumed that, say, action A is letting baby Hitler live, action B is killing baby Hitler, and the "event" consequences are the holocaust. In your first example then, where action A could represent letting baby Hitler live, you are 100% guaranteeing the holocaust (for sake of argument), meanwhile action B could represent killing baby Hitler, thus giving 0% chance of the holocaust (for sake of argument). But I guess I'm not understanding how you can switch these consequences, and assume that somehow, maybe, killing baby Hitler would actually cause the holocaust, and letting him live would prevent it? I guess I just don't see how the 100%/0% formulation can hold if your argument for allowing the swapping is the unawareness/uncertainty itself. If letting baby Hitler live isn't a 100% guarantee of the holocaust, then how can we posit it? And if it is, then how could you ever switch that percentage to 0%?
Again, I may be missing something, but to me this seems like an equivocation. Does A actually behave exactly like B, or are you just swapping the definition of A and B, and saying that maybe killing baby Hitler could be A, and letting him live B, and therefore the consequences are identical? Sure, it's true, the naming choices of A and B are arbitrary, but the swapping of consequences, and the set of possible outcomes doesn't intuitively seem to be. At least, not to me. Maybe I'm missing something?