I think Torres was endorsing Frick's view. Torres mentions "the conditional wide person-affecting view", and Dustin Crummett responded with discussion of Frick. I'm pretty sure they're referring to the views in this paper:
1 and 7 don't apply to wide person-affecting views, and Torres claimed to hold such a view. Wide person-affecting views, by design, address the non-identity problem, so that it's better to bring into existence someone with a very good life than someone with a good life. I think such a difference can generally be worth paying for at a cost to existing people on wide person-affecting views, as I expect Torres and Frick would agree, although I don't recall if either addresses this explicitly.
2, 3, 5 and 8 can be addressed by allowing good lives to offset but not outweigh bad lives, while allowing bad lives to offset or outweigh good lives (if enough of them are bad enough). I think this is the case for actualist views (which I discuss here https://rychappell.substack.com/p/death-extinction-and-the-epicurean/comment/13820735) and the views in Thomas, 2022. In Thomas, 2022, from my understanding, an extra population with non-negative (including positive) expected total welfare is neutral to add, and a population with negative expected total welfare is bad to add, all else equal (so ignoring the interests of those who would exist anyway and any wide person-affecting reasons). I think such views are closer to common-sense than the standard total view.
I don't think Frick said anything about such offsetting, and I don't know either way if Frick's view can be further developed to accommodate such offsetting and avoid antinatalism. Given that Torres claims not to be an antinatalist, Torres might move onto an offsetting view or something else if Frick's view is inevitably antinatalist.
That being said, I find it plausible that good lives can't offset bad lives and that there are no "good" lives.
4 doesn't really seem problematic at all without elaboration. What exactly are Temkin's arguments? The claim "it would be bad if this happened" also seems overconfident, as if one had access to objective moral truth.
In 6, I'm not really sure what you mean by "troubling". If it's the implications of asymmetry, then I've responded to those above. If it's that the asymmetry is unmotivated or hard to justify, Frick and actualist views have arguments for the asymmetry that are worth engaging with.
Ugh, I typed out a really long reply, and then I accidentally deleted it.
1-7; my understanding of the wide person affecting view was that it said that one had obligations to one when it was guaranteed that they'd exist, but no obligations to hypothetical people. The way you construe it, it violates transitivity and is money pumpable -- see both Gustafsson's book and here. https://benthams.substack.com/p/a-new-utterly-decisive-argument-against
2, 3, etc I'm not sure I understand the proposal. Is it that an action which causes both good lives to exist and bad lives to exist can be good can be neutral but not good, because the good lives can offset the bad ones. If so, that seems really implausible.
A) it implies that, for example, if I'm creating 10 people in different universes, the goodness of creating Jim in universe 1 will depend on the quality of life of creating Todd in universe 5.
B) It also implies that neutral things can offset good things, which is bizarre.
4 seems problematic to me.
6 there isn't a principled explanation for it, even if it meets our intuitions.
"my understanding of the wide person affecting view was that it said that one had obligations to one when it was guaranteed that they'd exist, but no obligations to hypothetical people."
I'm not aware of anyone using it that way, but maybe people do. I think there are multiple views that could be considered "wide person-affecting views". Frick uses "wide-scope conditional reasons", and it doesn't have those implications of 1 and 7, but it's the "Selection Requirement" and "Principle of Standard Selection" from Frick, which are compatible with wide-scope conditional reasons, that deliver the conclusion that it's better to have a very happy person than a different happy person. Torres was very probably referring to "wide-scope conditional reasons" and I'd guess also the the "Selection Requirement" and "Principle of Standard Selection", and Frick, 2020 generally.
Frick also refers to Parfit's "wide person-affecting principle" which allows us to have reasons to create good lives. What I had in mind by "wide" is how Thomas, 2022 uses it, basically just to solve the nonidentity problem (and effectively what the "Selection Requirement" and "Principle of Standard Selection" do for Frick), although I just read in his paper that he considers this "an imperfect match to traditional terminology".
"The way you construe it, it violates transitivity and is money pumpable"
All person-affecting views either violate transitivity or the independence of irrelevant alternatives, AFAIK, but not necessarily specifically transitivity. I think they sometimes are vulnerable in principle to certain money pumps, but I don't find the money pumps in these cases to be decisive arguments against these views, because they require you to assume the individual being money pumped doesn't anticipate the possibility of being money pumped. There's some discussion in the comments here https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DCZhan8phEMRHuewk/person-affecting-intuitions-can-often-be-money-pumped
Also, there are money pump and Dutch book arguments against unbounded utility functions:
"2, 3, etc I'm not sure I understand the proposal. Is it that an action which causes both good lives to exist and bad lives to exist can be good can be neutral but not good, because the good lives can offset the bad ones."
I'm guessing you meant "can be neutral but not good", not "can be good can be neutral but not good". I think this restatement is basically accurate, but the way you use "neutral" and "good" in A and B isn't (I respond directly below).
"A) it implies that, for example, if I'm creating 10 people in different universes, the goodness of creating Jim in universe 1 will depend on the quality of life of creating Todd in universe 5."
I think this isn't the right way to think about it. The reasons to create Jim (assuming he'd have a good life) are specific kinds of reasons or reasons with different kinds of strength (see the quote from Thomas, 2022 and references below, the example before it in the paper and/or section 5 from the paper). Those reasons don't depend on Todd, but whether they (and other reasons) are enough to offset the additional bad lives and tell you that creating the 10 is permissible can depend on Todd. But we can say the same about the total view: the reasons to create Jim don't depend on Todd, but whether they (and other reasons) are enough to offset (or outweigh) the additional bad lives and tell you that creating the 10 is permissible can depend on Todd.
From Thomas, 2022:
"Like Gert (2003), we can distinguish the ‘justifying strength’ from the ‘requiring strength’ of reasons: the reasons to confer existential benefits may have justifying strength but no requiring strength. Or perhaps there are two different types of reasons, rather than two different strengths: Algander (2012), in this very context, distinguishes ‘favouring’ from ‘requiring’ reasons. Finally, in the terminology of McMahan (2013), perhaps existential benefits have ‘cancelling weight’ (or in McMahan (2015), ‘offsetting weight') but no ‘reason-giving weight’. For my current purposes these ways of thinking are equally good."
"B) It also implies that neutral things can offset good things, which is bizarre."
Did you mean "neutral things can offset bad things"? If so, I think "neutral" isn't the right way to think about it. Creating someone with a good life (or a group of people with positive total welfare) may be "neutral" in one way, i.e. doing so and not doing so can both be permissible, but that someone's life would be good is always a "justifying", "favouring", "cancelling" or "offsetting" reason to create them under such views.
"4 seems problematic to me."
Why?
"6 there isn't a principled explanation for it, even if it meets our intuitions."
Whoever this Torres is, you're arguing against an anaemic strawman. Engage with the literature or not at all. Chalmers has more sophisticated things to say, as does Benatar. Population ethics is a terrible example of a near-resolved philosophical field.
I didn’t say it was near resolved--there’s tons of disagreement. I think benatars view is really implausible for a reason I might explain at some point in an article. Where has chalmers written about population ethics?
I focused on this because the person affecting view is implausible but widely believed by laypeople. I wanted to explain why it was wrong!
1) In you smartest blogger post you suggested asymmetry was obviously wrong. 2) Saying asymmetry commits to nuclear war is like saying utilitarianism commits to killing those with currently net negative lives, cetris paribus. 3) Beyond the nb reading, let me provide a thought experiment. Should marginal positive lives be brought into existence and shortly thereafter painlessly killed, eg factory farming with "GMO *mostly pain insensitive chickens" that would commit you to bringing beings into existence for their annihilation. Hunters argue similarly about raising happy elk. Had they not existed, there would be no sentient being deprived of the good they experienced. That Mars is not populated is not bad for the possible world Martians, for they do not exist, and so there is no subject for that harm. Moreover, we're biased by evolution to think net negative lives are net positive. Schopenhauer, Epicurus, also helpful.
1) I think it is obviously wrong. It's rejected by nearly everyone.
2) Why is this true? Only a strange form of average utilitarianism does that. But if you believe in the asymmetry, the future is overwhelmingly terrible.
3) Yes, they should. It is good for those beings to be brought into existence. In fact, if they don't suffer, Benatar wouldn't disagree--he thinks it's good to make people happy not happy people. The claim about bias may be true, but there are also biases going in the opposite direction.
The Asymmetry Thesis is one of the dumbest views in philosophy. I honestly think I have more respect for trivialists than for people like Benatar.
But the Asymmetry thesis is strictly more likely then trivialism!
I mean sure, my credence in trivalism being true is basically 0 and I'd give the asymmetry thesis like 2-3% credence
Me before going 8 rounds with Mr. Bulldog:
I love asymmetry. Your expected value calculations are BS. Longtermism is bunk.
Me after going 8 rounds with Mr. Bulldog:
Q_Q …. good thing logic is false.
I think Torres was endorsing Frick's view. Torres mentions "the conditional wide person-affecting view", and Dustin Crummett responded with discussion of Frick. I'm pretty sure they're referring to the views in this paper:
Frick, J. (2020). Conditional reasons and the procreation asymmetry. Philosophical Perspectives, 34(1), 53-87. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/phpe.12139
1 and 7 don't apply to wide person-affecting views, and Torres claimed to hold such a view. Wide person-affecting views, by design, address the non-identity problem, so that it's better to bring into existence someone with a very good life than someone with a good life. I think such a difference can generally be worth paying for at a cost to existing people on wide person-affecting views, as I expect Torres and Frick would agree, although I don't recall if either addresses this explicitly.
2, 3, 5 and 8 can be addressed by allowing good lives to offset but not outweigh bad lives, while allowing bad lives to offset or outweigh good lives (if enough of them are bad enough). I think this is the case for actualist views (which I discuss here https://rychappell.substack.com/p/death-extinction-and-the-epicurean/comment/13820735) and the views in Thomas, 2022. In Thomas, 2022, from my understanding, an extra population with non-negative (including positive) expected total welfare is neutral to add, and a population with negative expected total welfare is bad to add, all else equal (so ignoring the interests of those who would exist anyway and any wide person-affecting reasons). I think such views are closer to common-sense than the standard total view.
Thomas, T. (2022). The Asymmetry, Uncertainty, and the Long Term. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/phpr.12927
I don't think Frick said anything about such offsetting, and I don't know either way if Frick's view can be further developed to accommodate such offsetting and avoid antinatalism. Given that Torres claims not to be an antinatalist, Torres might move onto an offsetting view or something else if Frick's view is inevitably antinatalist.
That being said, I find it plausible that good lives can't offset bad lives and that there are no "good" lives.
4 doesn't really seem problematic at all without elaboration. What exactly are Temkin's arguments? The claim "it would be bad if this happened" also seems overconfident, as if one had access to objective moral truth.
In 6, I'm not really sure what you mean by "troubling". If it's the implications of asymmetry, then I've responded to those above. If it's that the asymmetry is unmotivated or hard to justify, Frick and actualist views have arguments for the asymmetry that are worth engaging with.
Ugh, I typed out a really long reply, and then I accidentally deleted it.
1-7; my understanding of the wide person affecting view was that it said that one had obligations to one when it was guaranteed that they'd exist, but no obligations to hypothetical people. The way you construe it, it violates transitivity and is money pumpable -- see both Gustafsson's book and here. https://benthams.substack.com/p/a-new-utterly-decisive-argument-against
2, 3, etc I'm not sure I understand the proposal. Is it that an action which causes both good lives to exist and bad lives to exist can be good can be neutral but not good, because the good lives can offset the bad ones. If so, that seems really implausible.
A) it implies that, for example, if I'm creating 10 people in different universes, the goodness of creating Jim in universe 1 will depend on the quality of life of creating Todd in universe 5.
B) It also implies that neutral things can offset good things, which is bizarre.
4 seems problematic to me.
6 there isn't a principled explanation for it, even if it meets our intuitions.
"my understanding of the wide person affecting view was that it said that one had obligations to one when it was guaranteed that they'd exist, but no obligations to hypothetical people."
I'm not aware of anyone using it that way, but maybe people do. I think there are multiple views that could be considered "wide person-affecting views". Frick uses "wide-scope conditional reasons", and it doesn't have those implications of 1 and 7, but it's the "Selection Requirement" and "Principle of Standard Selection" from Frick, which are compatible with wide-scope conditional reasons, that deliver the conclusion that it's better to have a very happy person than a different happy person. Torres was very probably referring to "wide-scope conditional reasons" and I'd guess also the the "Selection Requirement" and "Principle of Standard Selection", and Frick, 2020 generally.
Frick also refers to Parfit's "wide person-affecting principle" which allows us to have reasons to create good lives. What I had in mind by "wide" is how Thomas, 2022 uses it, basically just to solve the nonidentity problem (and effectively what the "Selection Requirement" and "Principle of Standard Selection" do for Frick), although I just read in his paper that he considers this "an imperfect match to traditional terminology".
"The way you construe it, it violates transitivity and is money pumpable"
All person-affecting views either violate transitivity or the independence of irrelevant alternatives, AFAIK, but not necessarily specifically transitivity. I think they sometimes are vulnerable in principle to certain money pumps, but I don't find the money pumps in these cases to be decisive arguments against these views, because they require you to assume the individual being money pumped doesn't anticipate the possibility of being money pumped. There's some discussion in the comments here https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/DCZhan8phEMRHuewk/person-affecting-intuitions-can-often-be-money-pumped
Also, there are money pump and Dutch book arguments against unbounded utility functions:
1. https://academic.oup.com/analysis/article-abstract/59/4/257/173397
2. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/phpr.12704
3. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gJxHRxnuFudzBFPuu/better-impossibility-result-for-unbounded-utilities and https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gJxHRxnuFudzBFPuu/better-impossibility-result-for-unbounded-utilities?commentId=hrsLNxxhsXGRH9SRx
4. http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2022/10/expected-utility-maximization.html
"2, 3, etc I'm not sure I understand the proposal. Is it that an action which causes both good lives to exist and bad lives to exist can be good can be neutral but not good, because the good lives can offset the bad ones."
I'm guessing you meant "can be neutral but not good", not "can be good can be neutral but not good". I think this restatement is basically accurate, but the way you use "neutral" and "good" in A and B isn't (I respond directly below).
"A) it implies that, for example, if I'm creating 10 people in different universes, the goodness of creating Jim in universe 1 will depend on the quality of life of creating Todd in universe 5."
I think this isn't the right way to think about it. The reasons to create Jim (assuming he'd have a good life) are specific kinds of reasons or reasons with different kinds of strength (see the quote from Thomas, 2022 and references below, the example before it in the paper and/or section 5 from the paper). Those reasons don't depend on Todd, but whether they (and other reasons) are enough to offset the additional bad lives and tell you that creating the 10 is permissible can depend on Todd. But we can say the same about the total view: the reasons to create Jim don't depend on Todd, but whether they (and other reasons) are enough to offset (or outweigh) the additional bad lives and tell you that creating the 10 is permissible can depend on Todd.
From Thomas, 2022:
"Like Gert (2003), we can distinguish the ‘justifying strength’ from the ‘requiring strength’ of reasons: the reasons to confer existential benefits may have justifying strength but no requiring strength. Or perhaps there are two different types of reasons, rather than two different strengths: Algander (2012), in this very context, distinguishes ‘favouring’ from ‘requiring’ reasons. Finally, in the terminology of McMahan (2013), perhaps existential benefits have ‘cancelling weight’ (or in McMahan (2015), ‘offsetting weight') but no ‘reason-giving weight’. For my current purposes these ways of thinking are equally good."
"B) It also implies that neutral things can offset good things, which is bizarre."
Did you mean "neutral things can offset bad things"? If so, I think "neutral" isn't the right way to think about it. Creating someone with a good life (or a group of people with positive total welfare) may be "neutral" in one way, i.e. doing so and not doing so can both be permissible, but that someone's life would be good is always a "justifying", "favouring", "cancelling" or "offsetting" reason to create them under such views.
"4 seems problematic to me."
Why?
"6 there isn't a principled explanation for it, even if it meets our intuitions."
Have you looked for or read any attempts at principled explanations? As I wrote in my first comment, I'd recommend Frick and papers on actualism. For some discussion and references for actualism, see this thread: https://rychappell.substack.com/p/death-extinction-and-the-epicurean/comment/13820735
Whoever this Torres is, you're arguing against an anaemic strawman. Engage with the literature or not at all. Chalmers has more sophisticated things to say, as does Benatar. Population ethics is a terrible example of a near-resolved philosophical field.
I didn’t say it was near resolved--there’s tons of disagreement. I think benatars view is really implausible for a reason I might explain at some point in an article. Where has chalmers written about population ethics?
I focused on this because the person affecting view is implausible but widely believed by laypeople. I wanted to explain why it was wrong!
1) In you smartest blogger post you suggested asymmetry was obviously wrong. 2) Saying asymmetry commits to nuclear war is like saying utilitarianism commits to killing those with currently net negative lives, cetris paribus. 3) Beyond the nb reading, let me provide a thought experiment. Should marginal positive lives be brought into existence and shortly thereafter painlessly killed, eg factory farming with "GMO *mostly pain insensitive chickens" that would commit you to bringing beings into existence for their annihilation. Hunters argue similarly about raising happy elk. Had they not existed, there would be no sentient being deprived of the good they experienced. That Mars is not populated is not bad for the possible world Martians, for they do not exist, and so there is no subject for that harm. Moreover, we're biased by evolution to think net negative lives are net positive. Schopenhauer, Epicurus, also helpful.
1) I think it is obviously wrong. It's rejected by nearly everyone.
2) Why is this true? Only a strange form of average utilitarianism does that. But if you believe in the asymmetry, the future is overwhelmingly terrible.
3) Yes, they should. It is good for those beings to be brought into existence. In fact, if they don't suffer, Benatar wouldn't disagree--he thinks it's good to make people happy not happy people. The claim about bias may be true, but there are also biases going in the opposite direction.