Currently working on psychological questions related to minimalist axiologies and on reasons to be careful about the practical implications of abstract formalisms.
I have MA and BA degrees in psychology, with minors in mathematics, cognitive science, statistics, computer science, and analytic philosophy.
Sounds interesting. Can we submit our own writing? If so, I'm curious what might be important errors in this post.
Relevant recent posts:
https://www.simonknutsson.com/undisturbedness-as-the-hedonic-ceiling/
https://centerforreducingsuffering.org/phenomenological-argument/
(I think these unpack a view I share, better than I have.)
Edit: For tranquilist and Epicurean takes, I also like Gloor (2017, sec. 2.1) and Sherman (2017, pp. 103–107), respectively.
To modify the monk case, what if we could (costlessly; all else equal) make the solitary monk feel a notional 11 units of pleasure followed by 10 units of suffering?
Or, extreme pleasure of "+1001" followed by extreme suffering of "-1000"?
Cases like these make me doubt the assumption of happiness as an independent good. I know meditators who claim to have learned to generate pleasure at will in jhana states, who don't buy the hedonic arithmetic, and who prefer the states of unexcited contentment over states of intense pleasure.
So I don't want to impose, from the outside, assumptions about the hedonic arithmetic onto mind-moments who may not buy them from the inside.
Additionally, I feel no personal need for the concept of intrinsic positive value anymore, because all my perceptions of positive value seem just fine explicable in terms of their indirect connections to subjective problems. (I used to use the concept, and it took me many years to translate it into relational terms in all the contexts where it pops up, but I seem to have now uprooted it so that it no longer pops to mind, or at least it stopped doing so over the past four years. In programming terms, one could say that uprooting the concept entailed refactoring a lot of dependencies regarding other concepts, but eventually the tab explosion started shrinking back down again, and it appeared perfectly possible to think without the concept. It would be interesting to hear whether this has simply "clicked" for anyone when reading analytical thought experiments, because for me it felt more like how I would imagine a crisis of faith to feel like for a person who loses their faith in a <core concept>, including the possibly arduous cognitive task of learning to fill the void and seeing what roles the concept played.)
I kindly ask third parties to be mindful of the following points concerning the above reply.
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(1) + (2)
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Would an agent who accepted strong pessimism [i.e. the view that there are no independent goods]—which I absolutely believe we should reject—have most reason to end their own life? Not necessarily. An altruistic agent with this evaluative outlook would have strong instrumental reason to remain alive, in order to alleviate the suffering of others.
I agree that life can be worth living for our positive roles in terms of reducing overall suffering or dukkha. More than that, such a view seems (to me at least) like a perfectly valid view on what constitutes evaluative meaning and positive value.
Indeed, if I knew for a fact that my life were overall (hopelessly) increasing suffering or dukkha, then this would seem to me like a strong reason not to live it, regardless of what I get to experience. So I'm curious how the author has come to believe that we should absolutely reject this view in favor of, presumably, offsetting views.
However, such an agent would be forced to accept the infamous null-bomb implication, which says that the best thing to do would be to permanently destroy all sentient life in the universe. I join almost every other philosopher in taking the fact that an ethical theory accepts the null-bomb implication as a decisive reason to reject the theory (as not merely misguided, but horrifically so).
To properly consider such a theoretical reductio, I trust that most philosophers would agree (on reflection) that we need to account for potential confounders such as status quo bias, omission bias, self-serving bias, and whether alternative views have any less horrific theoretical implications.
In particular, offsetting views theoretically imply things like the “Very Repugnant Conclusion”, “Creating Hell to Please the Blissful”, and “Intense Bliss with Hellish Cessation”, none of which seems to me any less horrific than does the non-creation of an imperfect world (cf. the consequentialist equivalence of cessation and non-creation).
Are these decisive reasons to reject offsetting views? A proponent of such views could still argue that such implications are only theoretical, that we shouldn't let them (mis)guide us in practice, and that the practical implications of impartial consequentialism are a separate question.
Yet the quoted passage neglects to mention that the very same response applies to minimalist consequentialism (whose proponents take pains to practically highlight the importance of cooperation, the avoidance of accidental harm, and the promotion of nonviolence).
I would just generally caution against performing such theoretical reductios so hastily. After all, a more bridge-building and illuminating approach is to consider the confounding factors and intuitions behind our differing perceptions on such questions, which I hope we can all do to better understand each other's views.
Thanks for compiling this! The structure feels very approachable. The bar for engagement is also greatly lowered by your inclusion of the recap, the comparison of theories, and the pointers for discussion and feedback.
Regarding the linked sections, the strongest consensus about the definition of flourishing indeed seems to involve an emphasis on relationships, purpose, and meaning. To me, this emphasis seems to be in tension with the tendency of standard (welfarist) population ethics to only count welfare as a kind of isolated "score" that applies to each life under the (radical) assumption of "all else being equal".
Specifically, perhaps none of the popular notions of flourishing is even possible to actualize in an "all else equal" life. After all, those notions seem to depend (at least partly, if not fully) on our life making a positive difference for others. For me, the centrality of such a causal link back to others casts doubt on the concept of 'flourishing lives' as something that could be mass-produced to independently improve the overall value of the world (contra arguments such as astronomical waste / Bostrom, 2003).
In other words, I think a perfectly valid rejection of the experience machine is to say that entering the machine would sever the essential causal connections of what positive roles we play for how others feel, which seems central to many if not all definitions of flourishing (i.e. the kind of life that we want ours to become).
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So I'm curious what you, or the reviewed theorists, might say about:
1. Is flourishing even possible "all else being equal", such as in an experience machine?
2. Relatedly: To what degree does flourishing refer to positive intrinsic vs. extrinsic value?
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(For my own take, there's e.g. the brief section on "self-contained versus relational flourishing". Worth noting is also that a relational i.e. extrinsic notion of flourishing is perfectly compatible with minimalist theories of welfare, such as the Buddhism-inspired views of antifrustrationism by Fehige, 1998 and tranquilism by Gloor, 2017, which work without needing the assumption of intrinsic positive value at all.
They essentially say that, "all else equal", we are just as well off by satisfying a desire or an unmet need as we would be by letting go of it. Yet a minimalist notion of flourishing would highlight the importance of seeking to satisfy [rather than letting go of] our desires whenever doing so is aligned with making an overall positive difference for others. This we cannot do in an experience machine — nor in population ethics — where such flourishing is impossible, but can do all the time in daily life where other things are never completely unaffected by our actions.)
Your comment above makes all sense regarding the literal questions (even if not the implicit worries that I intended to respond to); thanks for elaborating. :)
Still, I would not reduce my (theoretical) response to the implicit worries all the way down to "yes, but actually that's fine and you shouldn't be worried about it". The "yes" is buried in the middle in 2.3 because it's not the end of the theoretical response. After that, the following sections 2.4–2.6 still address a lot of points that may be relevant for our potential intuitions (such as worries) about endorsing cessation even in theory.
For example, I certainly feel worried myself about endorsing cessation of the 'near-perfect paradise' (even in theory), but I don't tell myself that I "shouldn't be worried about it". Instead, I note (as I do in 2.4) that it seems perfectly fine to both endorse experientialist minimalist consequentialism in theory and to simultaneously deeply account for all the practical reasons that we have to side less with the relatively unpopular ideal of emptiness and more with the equal* and more popular ideal of untroubled lives.
(* equal for minimalists.)
Regarding worried intuitions, I of course also encourage people to compare whether they feel more worried about the (theoretical) minimalist cessation implications than about the (likewise theoretical) implications of offsetting views presented in 2.5. The latter strike me and many others as far more worrisome, so I'd prefer to also highlight that contrast as far as the worries (and not only the literal questions) are concerned.
In any case, I really appreciate that you read my post even if we might have different intuitions about these thought experiments. :)
Hi Rohin; I apologize for being vague and implicit; I agree that the first question is not complex, and I should've clarified that I'm primarily responding to the related (but in the post, almost completely implicit) worries which I think are much more complex than the literal questions are. You helped me realize just now that the post may look like it's primarily answering the written-down questions, even though the main reason for all my elaboration (on the assumptions, possible biases, comparison with offsetting views, etc.) was to respond to the implicit worries.
Regarding whether the answers to the first two questions are straightforwardly "yes", I would still note that such a one-word answer would lack the nuance that is present in what Magnus wrote above (and which I noted already in the overview because I think it's relevant for the worries).
(I'll continue a bit under your other comment.)
In relation to purely suffering-focused views, I also argue here that people may sometimes jump to hasty conclusions about human extinction due to certain forms of misconceived (i.e. non-impartial) consequentialism, and argue (drawing on the linked resources) that an impartial approach would imply strong heuristics of cooperation and nonviolence.
Hey, I had PM'd you that I've been busy and will reply once I've checked out the longish recording. It's on my list for next week. :) Edit: Unfortunately I fell ill with a lot of urgent stuff piling up, so I'll just reply to this once I get to it.