What about a dad having his teenage daughter have her group of friends over for a sleep over then drugging/roofying them all and then molesting and raping them while they are passed out, without them knowing; let's even include the daughter. The next morning no one is the wiser and no one ever finds out. The dad achieves a massive amount of utility. Is this a good thing overall? Should we encourage this sort of behaviour if the people could do it without getting caught?
I'd say that would be a case in which the action was bad for a few reasons.
1 It was extremely negligent leading to a huge risk of harm.
2 A father with the disposition to do that will have very bad consequences.
3 Roofying people causes tons of harm.
This may seem unintuitive. I think a decent analogy is: Imagine a person who goes drunk driving with the intent to run over every child he sees. He happens to see no children and doesn't get into an accident. HIs action ended up not being harmful but it had enormous potential for harm.
To illustrate that this is the case, let's consider a counterfactual case in which there's no risk of harm. Imagine that every seccond aliens molested humans quadrillions of times without the humans ever knowing. If the aliens didn't do that, they would experience every moment more agony than any human has ever experienced in history, but as a result of doing that, end up living good lives. In this case, it seems obvious that the aliens are not blameworthy. The blameworthiness comes from the bad dispositions of the people and from the enormous risk of harm.
In this hypothetical I said that no one is the wiser and no one ever finds out. I will clarify that to it being the case that there was no negative utility at all generated. Would you say this event was a good thing?
For the alien example I would still consider the aliens blameworthy as they didn't get consent from the humans.
So you would condemn a trillion aliens to more misery per second than has been experienced in the history of the world, to prevent something that humans would never find out about?
I would say that the action was wrong in that it shouldn't have been done, but it's possible that it could be good, if we stipulate nothing goes wrong. I think it's analogous to drunk driving in that regard. Drunk driving might not end up being harmful but you shouldn't do it.
I think the man raping teenage girls is wrong (out of line with my preferences) not because there is a chance he could be caught or they could find out but simply in virtue of them having their preferences being violated.
It sounds like you are saying that if he doesn't get caught and no one ever finds out then it is perfectly acceptable since there was no negative utility incurred. That is insane and psychotic from my perspective that someone would find that acceptable.
In regards to the aliens I am not sure what you mean by condemn, but I would consider it a rights violation and wrong that the humans were being violated without their consent. But if you scale up the consequences then eventually you would reach a threshold where I would consider those rights violations to be the preferred/better option. But I would still say there is a wrongness to it since their rights are violated. Where you would say there is no wrongness to people being molested (without their knowledge).
It was not acceptable to do. However, it ended up not being bad. It's like drunk driving in that regard. Drunk driving is something that should never be done, however, it might not end up being harmful.
If it is harmful, then who does it harm, if no ones mental life is affected at all?
I think that our intuitions here are off and the alien case shows it. Condemning billions of aliens to more agony per second than humans have ever experienced to prevent humans from being affected in ways that they enver find out about and don't affect their mental life, seems very unintuitive.
What about a dad having his teenage daughter have her group of friends over for a sleep over then drugging/roofying them all and then molesting and raping them while they are passed out, without them knowing; let's even include the daughter. The next morning no one is the wiser and no one ever finds out. The dad achieves a massive amount of utility. Is this a good thing overall? Should we encourage this sort of behaviour if the people could do it without getting caught?
I'd say that would be a case in which the action was bad for a few reasons.
1 It was extremely negligent leading to a huge risk of harm.
2 A father with the disposition to do that will have very bad consequences.
3 Roofying people causes tons of harm.
This may seem unintuitive. I think a decent analogy is: Imagine a person who goes drunk driving with the intent to run over every child he sees. He happens to see no children and doesn't get into an accident. HIs action ended up not being harmful but it had enormous potential for harm.
To illustrate that this is the case, let's consider a counterfactual case in which there's no risk of harm. Imagine that every seccond aliens molested humans quadrillions of times without the humans ever knowing. If the aliens didn't do that, they would experience every moment more agony than any human has ever experienced in history, but as a result of doing that, end up living good lives. In this case, it seems obvious that the aliens are not blameworthy. The blameworthiness comes from the bad dispositions of the people and from the enormous risk of harm.
In this hypothetical I said that no one is the wiser and no one ever finds out. I will clarify that to it being the case that there was no negative utility at all generated. Would you say this event was a good thing?
For the alien example I would still consider the aliens blameworthy as they didn't get consent from the humans.
So you would condemn a trillion aliens to more misery per second than has been experienced in the history of the world, to prevent something that humans would never find out about?
I would say that the action was wrong in that it shouldn't have been done, but it's possible that it could be good, if we stipulate nothing goes wrong. I think it's analogous to drunk driving in that regard. Drunk driving might not end up being harmful but you shouldn't do it.
I think the man raping teenage girls is wrong (out of line with my preferences) not because there is a chance he could be caught or they could find out but simply in virtue of them having their preferences being violated.
It sounds like you are saying that if he doesn't get caught and no one ever finds out then it is perfectly acceptable since there was no negative utility incurred. That is insane and psychotic from my perspective that someone would find that acceptable.
In regards to the aliens I am not sure what you mean by condemn, but I would consider it a rights violation and wrong that the humans were being violated without their consent. But if you scale up the consequences then eventually you would reach a threshold where I would consider those rights violations to be the preferred/better option. But I would still say there is a wrongness to it since their rights are violated. Where you would say there is no wrongness to people being molested (without their knowledge).
It was not acceptable to do. However, it ended up not being bad. It's like drunk driving in that regard. Drunk driving is something that should never be done, however, it might not end up being harmful.
If it is harmful, then who does it harm, if no ones mental life is affected at all?
I think that our intuitions here are off and the alien case shows it. Condemning billions of aliens to more agony per second than humans have ever experienced to prevent humans from being affected in ways that they enver find out about and don't affect their mental life, seems very unintuitive.
It might be easier to voice chat about this. Are you on Nathan's discord? I can message you on that