Re: "The" answer? Or...?

On 11/19/2017 10:19 PM, Rupert wrote:
> On Sunday, November 19, 2017 at 6:50:08 PM UTC+1, Rudy Canoza wrote:
>> On 11/18/2017 10:18 PM, Rupert wrote:
>>> On Sunday, November 19, 2017 at 4:34:26 AM UTC+1, Rudy Canoza wrote:
>>>> On 11/18/2017 4:31 PM, Rupert wrote:
>>>>> On Saturday, November 18, 2017 at 11:57:26 PM UTC+1, Rudy Canoza wrote:
>>>>>> On 7/3/2013 10:08 PM, Rupert wrote:
>>>>>>> On Wednesday, July 3, 2013 8:07:32 PM UTC+2, George Plimpton wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 7/3/2013 9:16 AM, Rupert wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> When judging a
>>>>>>>>>> preference utility outcome, can an outcome be judged to be "better" even
>>>>>>>>>> if it is not "better" for *any* entity's welfare, i.e. satisfaction of
>>>>>>>>>> preferences?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> It's better if it contains more preference-satisfaction.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> For whom?  Preference satisfaction is an attribute of welfare-bearing
>>>>>>>> entities.  For which entities?  Answer the question.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Consider an example in which we are comparing two outcomes, which are alike in every respect, except that in the second outcome, one more conscious organism exists who has a life that is on the whole worth living. The second outcome is better, on the preference utilitarian view, because it contains more preference-satisfaction.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Bullshit.  We aren't interested in total preference satisfaction; such a
>>>>>> thing doesn't even exist and cannot be even theoretically measured.
>>>>>> We're interested in *changes* in preference satisfaction for
>>>>>> welfare-bearing entities that exist.  Total number of entities is
>>>>>> meaningless.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But let's suppose that absolute preference satisfaction can be measured.
>>>>>>      Let's suppose the universe consists of exactly one welfare-bearing
>>>>>> entity, and that entity has a very high absolute preference
>>>>>> satisfaction.  Now suppose we add any number you like of additional
>>>>>> welfare-bearing entities whose preference satisfaction is a minute
>>>>>> fraction of the first entity's, and who in fact are rather miserable,
>>>>>> but not so badly that they wish they never existed, nor do they wish to
>>>>>> cease existing.  The point is, their preference satisfaction is greater
>>>>>> than zero.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> You could add just *one* such largely miserable new entity to the
>>>>>> universe, and now total preference satisfaction would be greater, so you
>>>>>> would judge this an improvement, even though the new entity is mostly
>>>>>> miserable.  Or, you could remove the original high preference
>>>>>> satisfaction entity from the universe, or reduce his satisfaction to the
>>>>>> same low level, and add a few billion such entities, such that the total
>>>>>> satisfaction in the universe is higher than when it held just the one
>>>>>> entity, and you would call that an improvement.  That is clearly bullshit.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Total satisfaction doesn't exist.  It can't exist, because there is no
>>>>>> such thing as cardinal utility; there is only ordinal or relative
>>>>>> utility.  Economists recognized that long ago.  The only thing that
>>>>>> exists is the perception by welfare-bearing entities of their own
>>>>>> welfare, especially changes to it.  If you think about it for a while,
>>>>>> it's quite obvious that only humans have the ability to conceive of
>>>>>> changes in their welfare over time, because only humans appear to have a
>>>>>> concept of time in the first place.  No one seriously thinks that even
>>>>>> the most intelligent non-humans, such as the cetaceans or higher apes,
>>>>>> is capable of conceiving that they are better off today than they were
>>>>>> yesterday or last week.  Still less can they contemplate a future
>>>>>> welfare change, either at random or due to some action taken today, such
>>>>>> as forgoing some satisfaction today to achieve greater satisfaction in
>>>>>> the future.
>>>>>
>>>>> Well, I'm happy to give you credit that you have written an interesting post for a change.
>>>>
>>>> Not a change.
>>>
>>> Actually, it's been a while since you made any kind of meaningful intellectual contribution.
>>
>> Wrong.
> 
> You think? :)
> 
>>>>> What you describe in your second last paragraph is Derek Parfit's Repugnant Conclusion.
>>>>
>>>> Which, although upon reading your statement "Derek Parfit's Repugnant
>>>> Conclusion" I now remember having seen those words, I did not remember
>>>> at the time I wrote my post.  This proves to you, beyond dispute, that
>>>> although I may not have read as deeply in this subject as you have, I am
>>>> not "stupid" as you claim to believe I am.  I am highly capable of
>>>> abstract ethical reasoning, and you know this.
>>>
>>> Shame you don't show it more often then
>>
>> I have done.
> 
> You think? :)
> 
>>>> Here is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's description of the
>>>> Repugnant Conclusion:
>>>>
>>>> “For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a
>>>> very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable
>>>> population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better
>>>> even though its members have lives that are barely worth living”
>>>>
>>>> https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/
>>>>
>>>> The fundamental problem with this it it takes cardinal utility as a
>>>> given, when it is anything but.  I keep coming back to the fundamental
>>>> question:  better for whom (or what)?  For whom or what is it a better
>>>> world if there is higher total cardinal utility?  Why should anyone care?
>>>
>>> All right then. So let's say for the sake of argument that donating 3000 euros to the Against Malaria Foundation is a small inconvenience to me (it's not at the moment actually, but we could pretend it is) and suppose that this amount of money saves one child from dying of malaria. Is there no meaningful sense in which that makes the world "better"?
>>
>> Not the world - the child, and your conscience.
> 
> The central assumption of consequentialism is that outcomes for the whole world can be compared.

No - outcomes for all welfare-bearing entities *in* the world.  That welfare 
experience is still at an individual level.  You can count the number of people 
made better off and worse off, and you can speculate about *how much* better off 
or worse off someone is, but you can't measure the welfare changes, and you 
can't calculate a net welfare change for "the world."


> You're challenging that assumption. So good on you. But simply saying "If it's better, then better for whom?" isn't good enough. You need to do more than that. Athough I will admit you're starting to get me interested.
> 
>>>> All that matters is the utility of those welfare-bearing entities that
>>>> exist, and all that matters is their ordinal utility:  do they feel
>>>> better off or worse off given some change in circumstance?  Given a
>>>> fixed number of welfare-bearing entities, if something changes such that
>>>> one entity is better off while another is worse off, all others
>>>> remaining the same, then without the ability to measure the cardinal
>>>> amount of welfare change for the two entities whose welfare has changed
>>>> - and you agree it is impossible - then one can only conclude that the
>>>> change is a wash.
>>>
>>> Huh? When did I agree that is impossible? I was curious for you to tell me more about it. See the example I gave above.
>>
>> That wasn't any example of cardinal utility.
> 
> It could be considered an example of imposing a burden of yourself to spare another individual a greater burden.

You're trying to substitute "burden" for cardinal utility.  You can't measure 
the burden, either.  It may seem obvious that the burden to a child of having 
malaria exceeds the burden to you of forking over 3000 euros, but you still 
aren't assigning an absolute, measurable value to the burden.  In addition, most 
comparisons of burden or utility are not so obvious.

> 
>>>> No one cares about total utility, given its inherently unmeasurable
>>>> aspect.  The only thing that matters is *changes* in utility, and the
>>>> only thing that matters is changes in ordinal utility to entities that
>>>> already exist.
>>>
>>> All right. But as I say, I would like to see this view defended in more detail, by engaging with my example.
>>
>> Your example was not of cardinal utility.  The child is better off, as
>> is your conscience, but neither welfare improvement can be given an
>> absolute value.
> 
> So that last point needs to be argued. Why should I believe that?

Feel free to give it a value.  Show your work.

> Remember it's not just about denying that you can put a number on it, you're denying that the two burdens can even be compared. Or maybe I was confused about that?

See above about certain obvious comparisons.  However, I think the vast majority 
of comparison cannot be made.  If you're going to


>>>>> And I would be interested to hear more about this conclusion economists arrived at that you can't have a cardinal measure of utility.
>>>>
>>>> I didn't say that you can't have a "measure" of it.  I said it doesn't
>>>> exist.  If it doesn't exist, it is by definition unmeasurable.
>>>
>>> How do you know it doesn't exist?
>>
>> No one can assign a number to it - not even to his own.  No one has ever
>> said, "Today my happiness is 13.  Yesterday it was only 11.  Bobby says
>> his happiness is 15, but he always understates everything, and I know
>> for a fact that his happiness is actually 16.4."
>>
>> No one would even think to talk of utility that way, because there's no
>> need for it.  Ordinal comparisons are all that is needed.  "I feel
>> better off since I got that pay rise last week."  That's how everyone
>> conceives of it.
> 
> What about comparing a burden I might impose on myself with a burden that might be suffered by another - my wife, for example?
> 
>>>> What economists realized is, you don't need it in order to obtain the
>>>> same axioms of demand theory, specifically leading to downward sloping
>>>> demand curves.  A purely ordinal utility function will suffice.  It's
>>>> simpler and avoids the intractable problem of not being able to measure
>>>> cardinal utility, as well as the inability to make interpersonal
>>>> comparisons of it.
>>>
>>> That's great that that's enough to give the theory of demand curves, but I'm not convinced that it's enough when we're considering moral questions...
>>
>> It is.  All that's needed is the ability to detect relative shifts in
>> welfare.  There isn't any need to measure it in some arbitrary units.
> 
> Tell me how your ethical system works, then, is it some kind of pure libertarianism for human beings only?
>