My immediate reaction is to think that all of your alleged counterexamples rest on misconceiving of the objective values at stake. E.g.:
* There's no value to knowledge of random factoids (which is all that most people know about Joan of Arc). If the imagined conspiracy led to sufficiently widespread fundamental misconceptions about deep and general historical processes and explanations then I do think that could be worse than one person being tortured.
* There's no special value to achieving arbitrarily formulated goals. The formulation doesn't matter. What matters is achieving something worthwhile. And whether you (as a trustworthy, non-threatening person) can walk through walls doesn't make any difference to the value (and hence achievement) of creating otherwise-reliable safe rooms that protect people from real threats.
* There's no special value to appreciating the existence of your friend *while they're being tortured to death* that's better than their just already being (painlessly) killed. There's value to appreciating the friendship (now effectively past, though you don't yet realize it). And if your friend was in a good state, there could be value to appreciating that. But they're not in a good state in your imagined case, there's nothing better about their being tortured, and so there's nothing that makes this state more worth appreciating than the less painful alternative.
Without Joan of Arc, France probably wouldn't exist. She was a young girl who got a vision from God about how to save France from the English. Great person to know about- not just for the happiness of knowing- but for the inspiration she provides. If people hear her story, they may be more inclined to listen to God, and to trust that God can do amazing things through frail people. I'm certain that Joan would approve of her own torture to achieve what she achieved. And shouldn't we factor in life after death in these scenarios? Joan endured torture, but she is glorified now, and what she did will be remembered and celebrated in her presence for eternity. Good deal.
This is an interesting argument, but it seems structurally similar to familiar anti-utilitarian arguments in which it’s alleged to be implausible to think trivial benefits (here, knowledge of Joan of Arc’s torture, which I know you think is not an intrinsic benefit at all) can add up to outweigh a serious harm (the torture itself). Any utilitarian is used to biting these kinds of bullets all day long, and I would think an objective-list theorist might be willing to bite the bullet here and say it would have been worse if Joan of Arc hadn’t been tortured and everyone who lived after her was deceived.
The objection to knowledge based on Joan of Arc is the same bad argumentation tactic you often use.
First you say that if knowledge is intrinsically good, then a conspiracy that defrauds millions probably outweighs torture because (despite our intuitions), small harms to lots of people outweigh massive agony.
Then you say that if one agrees with this one must believe that a random conspiracy is so bad it outweighs torture, which is absurd.
But this intitituve absurdity really stems from the same intuitions you assert are bad in your posts about dust specks outweighing torture. *Why* exactly do you think that people being more knowledgeable is categorically unable to outweigh torture? If someone told you that you would avoid billions and billions of people from getting a dust speck in the eye, you would apparently be fine with people being burned alive.
So at bottom this is just a long-winded way for you to disguise a value judgement that you believe knowledge is less valuable then fiat specks. The argumentation and analogies add nothing.
Then you go in to very obviously misunderstand the meaning of knowledge. At present if someone offered to burn you alive on the grounds that historians would learn of it, you should obviously say no even if you are an objective list theorist. Historians will exist in the future regardless of what you do, and if you are not burned alive chances are they will just learn some other cool facts. The marginal value of “knowledge” added would be near zero. Of course, if you had really solid evidence that you burning in agony would somehow inspire the next generation of scientists and philosophers, things would be different. But this is as likely as the utility monster trying to eat you alive and really really enjoying it.
The real question is whether you, at the present, would prefer a world in which Joan or Arc was burned alive or somehow secretly kept alive but out of the historical record that we now see. Personally I don’t think it’s altogether crazy to prefer her dead. Otherwise we would be living in a world where history is much more manipulator and the foundations of knowledge much less trustworthy. But this does not mean that Middle Ages people should have burned her alive. It just means that they should have not burned her alive and kept obvious records of that fact.
" Finding out that some aliens worked hard to get the universe to consist only of one arm people would not prompt us to saw off our arms if they have no way of ever finding out."
I feel like this is just not wholly obvious. This is fundamentally an argument from intuition where cutting arms off seems absurd from our perspective, however I think this is not taking the scenario seriously. If we actually discovered an entire universe dedicated to one arming a large section of humanity would intuitively want to match their morality.
While there are no true examples of similar human behavior for obvious reasons I think cargo cults are a fair comparison. When native people saw Europeans valuing certain behaviors(such as standing in strict lines waring certain clothes etc) they attempted to imitate them. This was not motivated by communication but an attempt to emulate a richer culture.
I think it is very reasonable to believe that if we discovered an entire universe dedicated to one arming a significant part of human society would intuitively want to emulate them and their morality. The fact that this seems absurd from our far removed perceptive has more to do with the absurdity of the situation than the proposed reaction.
I have a less substantiated feeling that the focus on knowledge sharing basically presupposes the value of these things is instrumental to happiness. This might be inherent to arguments around moral intuition, I just feel that people can more reasonably bite the bullet on 'its better for my friend to be alive and tortured longer even if I don't know' than you make out
I guess it doesn't strike me as odd that someone who valued knowledge as an intrinsic good would consider centuries of deception, dishonesty, confusion, and error on the part of billions to be worse than one person's violent death? It only seems counterintuitive when you frame the impact of the conspiracy as merely a reduction in the global "amount of knowledge" rather than a massive expansion in the global "amount of delusion." It's not as if anyone who holds to objective list theories thinks it would be good for someone to be burned at the stake, just so a sufficient number of people could learn about it; they would obviously be happy to choose a world where Joan of Arc was not burned to death and nobody thought she was. But if the choice is between a world in which one person is tortured or billions are severely deluded, then I think most people who hold to objective list theories would happily say the latter might be better, all told.
My immediate reaction is to think that all of your alleged counterexamples rest on misconceiving of the objective values at stake. E.g.:
* There's no value to knowledge of random factoids (which is all that most people know about Joan of Arc). If the imagined conspiracy led to sufficiently widespread fundamental misconceptions about deep and general historical processes and explanations then I do think that could be worse than one person being tortured.
* There's no special value to achieving arbitrarily formulated goals. The formulation doesn't matter. What matters is achieving something worthwhile. And whether you (as a trustworthy, non-threatening person) can walk through walls doesn't make any difference to the value (and hence achievement) of creating otherwise-reliable safe rooms that protect people from real threats.
* There's no special value to appreciating the existence of your friend *while they're being tortured to death* that's better than their just already being (painlessly) killed. There's value to appreciating the friendship (now effectively past, though you don't yet realize it). And if your friend was in a good state, there could be value to appreciating that. But they're not in a good state in your imagined case, there's nothing better about their being tortured, and so there's nothing that makes this state more worth appreciating than the less painful alternative.
Without Joan of Arc, France probably wouldn't exist. She was a young girl who got a vision from God about how to save France from the English. Great person to know about- not just for the happiness of knowing- but for the inspiration she provides. If people hear her story, they may be more inclined to listen to God, and to trust that God can do amazing things through frail people. I'm certain that Joan would approve of her own torture to achieve what she achieved. And shouldn't we factor in life after death in these scenarios? Joan endured torture, but she is glorified now, and what she did will be remembered and celebrated in her presence for eternity. Good deal.
This is an interesting argument, but it seems structurally similar to familiar anti-utilitarian arguments in which it’s alleged to be implausible to think trivial benefits (here, knowledge of Joan of Arc’s torture, which I know you think is not an intrinsic benefit at all) can add up to outweigh a serious harm (the torture itself). Any utilitarian is used to biting these kinds of bullets all day long, and I would think an objective-list theorist might be willing to bite the bullet here and say it would have been worse if Joan of Arc hadn’t been tortured and everyone who lived after her was deceived.
The objection to knowledge based on Joan of Arc is the same bad argumentation tactic you often use.
First you say that if knowledge is intrinsically good, then a conspiracy that defrauds millions probably outweighs torture because (despite our intuitions), small harms to lots of people outweigh massive agony.
Then you say that if one agrees with this one must believe that a random conspiracy is so bad it outweighs torture, which is absurd.
But this intitituve absurdity really stems from the same intuitions you assert are bad in your posts about dust specks outweighing torture. *Why* exactly do you think that people being more knowledgeable is categorically unable to outweigh torture? If someone told you that you would avoid billions and billions of people from getting a dust speck in the eye, you would apparently be fine with people being burned alive.
So at bottom this is just a long-winded way for you to disguise a value judgement that you believe knowledge is less valuable then fiat specks. The argumentation and analogies add nothing.
Then you go in to very obviously misunderstand the meaning of knowledge. At present if someone offered to burn you alive on the grounds that historians would learn of it, you should obviously say no even if you are an objective list theorist. Historians will exist in the future regardless of what you do, and if you are not burned alive chances are they will just learn some other cool facts. The marginal value of “knowledge” added would be near zero. Of course, if you had really solid evidence that you burning in agony would somehow inspire the next generation of scientists and philosophers, things would be different. But this is as likely as the utility monster trying to eat you alive and really really enjoying it.
The real question is whether you, at the present, would prefer a world in which Joan or Arc was burned alive or somehow secretly kept alive but out of the historical record that we now see. Personally I don’t think it’s altogether crazy to prefer her dead. Otherwise we would be living in a world where history is much more manipulator and the foundations of knowledge much less trustworthy. But this does not mean that Middle Ages people should have burned her alive. It just means that they should have not burned her alive and kept obvious records of that fact.
" Finding out that some aliens worked hard to get the universe to consist only of one arm people would not prompt us to saw off our arms if they have no way of ever finding out."
I feel like this is just not wholly obvious. This is fundamentally an argument from intuition where cutting arms off seems absurd from our perspective, however I think this is not taking the scenario seriously. If we actually discovered an entire universe dedicated to one arming a large section of humanity would intuitively want to match their morality.
While there are no true examples of similar human behavior for obvious reasons I think cargo cults are a fair comparison. When native people saw Europeans valuing certain behaviors(such as standing in strict lines waring certain clothes etc) they attempted to imitate them. This was not motivated by communication but an attempt to emulate a richer culture.
I think it is very reasonable to believe that if we discovered an entire universe dedicated to one arming a significant part of human society would intuitively want to emulate them and their morality. The fact that this seems absurd from our far removed perceptive has more to do with the absurdity of the situation than the proposed reaction.
I have a less substantiated feeling that the focus on knowledge sharing basically presupposes the value of these things is instrumental to happiness. This might be inherent to arguments around moral intuition, I just feel that people can more reasonably bite the bullet on 'its better for my friend to be alive and tortured longer even if I don't know' than you make out
I guess it doesn't strike me as odd that someone who valued knowledge as an intrinsic good would consider centuries of deception, dishonesty, confusion, and error on the part of billions to be worse than one person's violent death? It only seems counterintuitive when you frame the impact of the conspiracy as merely a reduction in the global "amount of knowledge" rather than a massive expansion in the global "amount of delusion." It's not as if anyone who holds to objective list theories thinks it would be good for someone to be burned at the stake, just so a sufficient number of people could learn about it; they would obviously be happy to choose a world where Joan of Arc was not burned to death and nobody thought she was. But if the choice is between a world in which one person is tortured or billions are severely deluded, then I think most people who hold to objective list theories would happily say the latter might be better, all told.