Mattering vs Mattering to Me
Mattering vs Mattering to Me
Why they are not the same
An allegation that has been made repeatedly by people like Lance Bush is that moral realists try to sneak in the concept of mattering. They’ll say things like ‘well, maybe things matter to you, but they don’t really matter’. People wonder what it could be to matter over and above mattering to people. Here, I’ll provide some examples of cases wherein things could matter to people but still not matter. This shows that there’s a coherent concept of mattering over and above mattering to people.
We can consider several examples of cases like this.
World A: There is nothing that exists.
World B: Things exist but all agents will have all of their desires precisely offset by things they don’t desire after death, such that their overall state of desire fulfillment is neutral, all experiences of joy are precisely offset by misery and vice versa such that their overall hedonic state if neutral, and they can’t interact with people or gain significant knowledge, such they can’t fulfill their objective list. Additionally, no agents can causally affect other agents, so there’s no chance of rights violations or virtues. Thus, while entities can affect the trajectory of their lives, on all ethical theories, none of their decisions will affect the total amount of goodness of either their lives or of the universe.
In both of these worlds, it seems clear that nothing matters, in the sense in I am describing. Yet these worlds seem in some sense lower stakes than our world. When compared with these worlds in which nothing matters, it becomes very clear that some things do in fact matter.
One might object that they don’t share this intuition, or even understand what I mean by this world being higher stakes. If this is true then this argument will not be persuasive. Fortunately, the rest of this paper will present other arguments.
However, all of the other responses given by anti-realists to defend the claim that things are worth caring about even if they don’t ultimately matter can be equally used to defend world B. World B would similarly have people caring about things and would have motivation. Agents would still have to act in that world and would still make choices. However, there is some difficult-to-describe sense in which world two is lower stakes than world one.
World C: No being can experience pleasure or pain. However, a lot of beings want there to be an odd number of particles in the universe, despite that not making them happy.
These cases show that a world can be such that no action really matters even if it matters to various people. Thus, mattering is not the same as mattering to people — the concepts are distinct.
//In both of these worlds, it seems clear that nothing matters, in the sense in I am describing. //
What do you mean? Where did you describe the sense in which things matter?
//Yet these worlds seem in some sense lower stakes than our world.//
Lower stakes with respect to what? What does that mean?
//When compared with these worlds in which nothing matters, it becomes very clear that some things do in fact matter. //
Nothing became clear to me from reading this example. I’m not sure what you are talking about here.
If the two examples of worlds where nothing matters (I still don’t know what you mean by that, and suspect there’s nothing meaningful being communicated), how would this show that there some things do matter? Whatever the consideration of these examples is supposed to do, it’s completely obscure to me, and you don’t offer an explanation. What are these examples supposed to illustrate?
//One might object that they don’t share this intuition, or even understand what I mean by this world being higher stakes//
You didn’t explain what you meant, so how would people be expected to understand what you mean? You could mean at least a few different things. People can make guesses, or inferences, or whatever, about what you mean, but hopefully you could just tell us yourself.
//However, all of the other responses given by anti-realists to defend the claim that things are worth caring about even if they don’t ultimately matter can be equally used to defend world B.
//
I would try to avoid using the language of things being “worth caring about.” Speaking in a philosophical context I wouldn’t want to say that, since it seems closer to the kind of language realists would use.
//However, there is some difficult-to-describe sense in which world two is lower stakes than world one.//
Do you mean world A and B? What do you mean by stakes?
//These cases show that a world can be such that no action really matters even if it matters to various people. //
You still have not explained what it would mean to say that no action really matters. Also, there is a certain sense in which an antirealist like myself is perfectly happy to grant that “nothing really matters,” where this is understood to mean that nothing matters in the sense realists think it does. What I don’t accept is that anything does matter in the sense realists think things matter, and I don’t see how the considerations here illustrate that they do.