Here's a plausible alternative to the impairment principle:
(The harm principle): it's impermissible to cause a conscious person to have a significantly worse life than they otherwise would have, but permissible to prevent or refrain from bringing a conscious person into existence.
The harm principle explains why (2) is false. Permanent zombification prevents a conscious person from existing. Nobody is harmed by this. 40-year zombification deprives a person of the first 40 years of their life. That harms them.
(Just wanted to clarify, I'm (tentatively) pro-choice, I just think there are some interesting pro-life arguments).
When you zombify the fetus, it is not conscious. Thus, it wouldn't run affoul of the harm principle.
Maybe the principle is something like "it's impermissible to give a being that will be conscious a significantly worse life than they otherwise would have had." However, this has the weird implication that, if the being was zombified for every second except one, that would be significantly different from it being permanently zombified.
Also, the harm principle runs affoul of the pareto principle. Temporary zombification leaves everyone better off -- the fetus would rationally rather be zombified for part of their life than all of it. It seems odd to make the fetus worse off for its sake.
Basically, I think that a lot of the thought about abortion is pretty confused. The interests of future people matter just as much as the interests of current people. There is no magic line when the fetus' interests start mattering -- they always have. Of course, this means our analysis of the legality of abortion gets weird and will be dominated by impacts on existential threats.
The harm isn't to the fetus, it's to the person -- call him Bob -- who wakes up 40 years later. But if there never is such a person, then there can be no such harm. (Just a foregone benefit, which carries some weight, but arguably not the same.)
> "this has the weird implication that, if the being was zombified for every second except one, that would be significantly different from it being permanently zombified."
Do you really think it's weird to claim that bringing someone into existence and then immediately killing them is significantly different from never bringing them into existence at all? I think this is a very commonsensical claim! One could put theoretical pressure on it, but I do think it's a pretty natural view to start with.
The Pareto principle is most plausible in same-person cases, not when comparing to non-existence. For it doesn't seem permissible to kill or otherwise significantly harm someone's life (imagine, e.g., farming happy humans for their meat), when you could have refrained from the harm, even if the realistic alternative is that you instead would never have brought them into existence at all. Creators cannot so easily justify exploiting their creations.
Now, it may well be that someone given the opportunity to de-zombify Bob at 40 should do so, as a shorter happy life is better than none at all. (This would retroactively make the original zombification harmful & objectively wrong, when it otherwise wouldn't have been, but that isn't relevant to the merits of *this* decision.) But it doesn't follow that one may permissibly zombify Bob for 40 years when they could just as well have let him live unzombified from the start. Even though it *would* be permissible (because harmless) to prevent Bob from ever existing.
It's an interesting example of the classic "All or Nothing Problem", where an intermediate-valued option is uniquely impermissible due to lacking the countervailing reasons (in this case: harmlessness) that permit the axiologically worse option.
//The harm isn't to the fetus, it's to the person -- call him Bob -- who wakes up 40 years later. But if there never is such a person, then there can be no such harm. (Just a foregone benefit, which carries some weight, but arguably not the same.)//
But if Bob is better off existing non-zombified, then it's hard to see how Bob is harmed. Also, it seems like if we're utilitarians, we should think that comparable harms and benefits offset.
//> "this has the weird implication that, if the being was zombified for every second except one, that would be significantly different from it being permanently zombified."
Do you really think it's weird to claim that bringing someone into existence and then immediately killing them is significantly different from never bringing them into existence at all? I think this is a very commonsensical claim! One could put theoretical pressure on it, but I do think it's a pretty natural view to start with.//
That doesn't itself sound weird -- though the notion that there's a precise point at which a being starts to matter, such that the wrongness of killing it goes immediately from zero to immense is a strange one. But the strange implication I was talking about was the notion that if you fully zombify a fetus that wouldn't be wrong, but if you zombify it for all moments except for a single moment on its 80th birthday, that wouldn't be wrong. In fact that seems clearly better -- certainly better for the person when they have the single second of experience on their 80th birthday.
//The Pareto principle is most plausible in same-person cases, not when comparing to non-existence. For it doesn't seem permissible to kill or otherwise significantly harm someone's life (imagine, e.g., farming happy humans for their meat), when you could have refrained from the harm, even if the realistic alternative is that you instead would never have brought them into existence at all. Creators cannot so easily justify exploiting their creations.//
That seems fine. It seems odd to say that something is wrong while being bad for no one such that one would approve of it from behind the veil of ignorance and if they lived everyone's life. In fact, I'd thought that was a claim you'd accept, though I may have been mistaken.
//Now, it may well be that someone given the opportunity to de-zombify Bob at 40 should do so, as a shorter happy life is better than none at all. (This would retroactively make the original zombification harmful & objectively wrong, when it otherwise wouldn't have been, but that isn't relevant to the merits of *this* decision.) But it doesn't follow that one may permissibly zombify Bob for 40 years when they could just as well have let him live unzombified from the start. Even though it *would* be permissible (because harmless) to prevent Bob from ever existing.//
It's hard to see how that could be the case. If fully zombifying him is fine, and then after full zombification, it's good to partially zombify him, then that wouldn't seem to make the full zombification wrong anymore than buying a house that's already good and making improvements would make the original home purchase retroactively bad.
FAP is wrong since it’s affecting a conscious being (albeit in the future), abortion is wrong to the extent a conscious being is killed.
If the non conscious fetus becomes a zombie, then no conscious being is affected and the grown fetus is outside of our moral universe. No moral wrong can be committed. Yet if the fetus is conscious when zombified, only then is a wrong committed.
Here's a plausible alternative to the impairment principle:
(The harm principle): it's impermissible to cause a conscious person to have a significantly worse life than they otherwise would have, but permissible to prevent or refrain from bringing a conscious person into existence.
The harm principle explains why (2) is false. Permanent zombification prevents a conscious person from existing. Nobody is harmed by this. 40-year zombification deprives a person of the first 40 years of their life. That harms them.
(Just wanted to clarify, I'm (tentatively) pro-choice, I just think there are some interesting pro-life arguments).
When you zombify the fetus, it is not conscious. Thus, it wouldn't run affoul of the harm principle.
Maybe the principle is something like "it's impermissible to give a being that will be conscious a significantly worse life than they otherwise would have had." However, this has the weird implication that, if the being was zombified for every second except one, that would be significantly different from it being permanently zombified.
Also, the harm principle runs affoul of the pareto principle. Temporary zombification leaves everyone better off -- the fetus would rationally rather be zombified for part of their life than all of it. It seems odd to make the fetus worse off for its sake.
Basically, I think that a lot of the thought about abortion is pretty confused. The interests of future people matter just as much as the interests of current people. There is no magic line when the fetus' interests start mattering -- they always have. Of course, this means our analysis of the legality of abortion gets weird and will be dominated by impacts on existential threats.
The harm isn't to the fetus, it's to the person -- call him Bob -- who wakes up 40 years later. But if there never is such a person, then there can be no such harm. (Just a foregone benefit, which carries some weight, but arguably not the same.)
> "this has the weird implication that, if the being was zombified for every second except one, that would be significantly different from it being permanently zombified."
Do you really think it's weird to claim that bringing someone into existence and then immediately killing them is significantly different from never bringing them into existence at all? I think this is a very commonsensical claim! One could put theoretical pressure on it, but I do think it's a pretty natural view to start with.
The Pareto principle is most plausible in same-person cases, not when comparing to non-existence. For it doesn't seem permissible to kill or otherwise significantly harm someone's life (imagine, e.g., farming happy humans for their meat), when you could have refrained from the harm, even if the realistic alternative is that you instead would never have brought them into existence at all. Creators cannot so easily justify exploiting their creations.
Now, it may well be that someone given the opportunity to de-zombify Bob at 40 should do so, as a shorter happy life is better than none at all. (This would retroactively make the original zombification harmful & objectively wrong, when it otherwise wouldn't have been, but that isn't relevant to the merits of *this* decision.) But it doesn't follow that one may permissibly zombify Bob for 40 years when they could just as well have let him live unzombified from the start. Even though it *would* be permissible (because harmless) to prevent Bob from ever existing.
It's an interesting example of the classic "All or Nothing Problem", where an intermediate-valued option is uniquely impermissible due to lacking the countervailing reasons (in this case: harmlessness) that permit the axiologically worse option.
//The harm isn't to the fetus, it's to the person -- call him Bob -- who wakes up 40 years later. But if there never is such a person, then there can be no such harm. (Just a foregone benefit, which carries some weight, but arguably not the same.)//
But if Bob is better off existing non-zombified, then it's hard to see how Bob is harmed. Also, it seems like if we're utilitarians, we should think that comparable harms and benefits offset.
//> "this has the weird implication that, if the being was zombified for every second except one, that would be significantly different from it being permanently zombified."
Do you really think it's weird to claim that bringing someone into existence and then immediately killing them is significantly different from never bringing them into existence at all? I think this is a very commonsensical claim! One could put theoretical pressure on it, but I do think it's a pretty natural view to start with.//
That doesn't itself sound weird -- though the notion that there's a precise point at which a being starts to matter, such that the wrongness of killing it goes immediately from zero to immense is a strange one. But the strange implication I was talking about was the notion that if you fully zombify a fetus that wouldn't be wrong, but if you zombify it for all moments except for a single moment on its 80th birthday, that wouldn't be wrong. In fact that seems clearly better -- certainly better for the person when they have the single second of experience on their 80th birthday.
//The Pareto principle is most plausible in same-person cases, not when comparing to non-existence. For it doesn't seem permissible to kill or otherwise significantly harm someone's life (imagine, e.g., farming happy humans for their meat), when you could have refrained from the harm, even if the realistic alternative is that you instead would never have brought them into existence at all. Creators cannot so easily justify exploiting their creations.//
That seems fine. It seems odd to say that something is wrong while being bad for no one such that one would approve of it from behind the veil of ignorance and if they lived everyone's life. In fact, I'd thought that was a claim you'd accept, though I may have been mistaken.
//Now, it may well be that someone given the opportunity to de-zombify Bob at 40 should do so, as a shorter happy life is better than none at all. (This would retroactively make the original zombification harmful & objectively wrong, when it otherwise wouldn't have been, but that isn't relevant to the merits of *this* decision.) But it doesn't follow that one may permissibly zombify Bob for 40 years when they could just as well have let him live unzombified from the start. Even though it *would* be permissible (because harmless) to prevent Bob from ever existing.//
It's hard to see how that could be the case. If fully zombifying him is fine, and then after full zombification, it's good to partially zombify him, then that wouldn't seem to make the full zombification wrong anymore than buying a house that's already good and making improvements would make the original home purchase retroactively bad.
Thanks for the comment!
Good argument.
FAP is wrong since it’s affecting a conscious being (albeit in the future), abortion is wrong to the extent a conscious being is killed.
If the non conscious fetus becomes a zombie, then no conscious being is affected and the grown fetus is outside of our moral universe. No moral wrong can be committed. Yet if the fetus is conscious when zombified, only then is a wrong committed.