View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Sydney eScholarship Shortfall Utilitarianism a theory for variable population decisions Robyn Kath A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences University of Sydney 2017 This thesis is all my own work. To the best of my knowledge, all sources have been duly acknowledged. Acknowledgements Many, many thanks to my supervisors—Michael McDermott, David Braddon- Mitchell, Josh Parsons, and Duncan Ivison—for encouraging, reading, signing, debating, teaching, cajoling, and more. Thanks to Matthew Hanser for enabling my visit to UCSB and for many fruitful discussions during that visit, and to Jonathan Winterbottom for private tuition. Thanks to Matthew Clark, Pierrick Bourat, Johann Hariman, and Teru Thomas for reading chapter drafts. Thanks to Martin Pickup and the TWiPers for reading a draft chapter and for particularly enjoyable philosophising. Thanks to Mark Colyvan for being unnecessarily supportive and interested, and to Kristie Miller for coordinating masterfully. Thanks to David Boonin, Gustaf Arrhenius, Derek Parfit, and Ralf Bader for sharing manuscripts. Thanks to Michelle Boulous-Walker, Phil Dowe, Marguerite La Caze, Michael Ure (and Anita, Louie, and Jules), and Peter Cryle for inspiration, encourage- ment, and my earliest encounters with academia and philosophy. Thanks to Josh Combes, Elizabeth Kath, and Sue Cusbert for support of many kinds. Thanks to David Maze, Genevieve Wilks, Bronwen Nicholls, Calyn van Wyk, Johann Hariman, and Samantha Groenestyn for good times. Thanks to my family, for love and support and lots of putting-up-with. And thanks to John, for everything. iii iv Abstract In this dissertation I propose a novel utilitarian moral theory, Shortfall Util- itarianism (SU). The main advantage of SU over more familiar versions of utilitarianism (including totalist, averagist, and harm-minimising versions) is that it agrees with several common intuitions about variable population deci- sions. These intuitions concern ‘the Asymmetry’, ‘the non-identity problem’, and ‘the repugnant conclusion’. According to SU one ought to minimise two kinds of worseness among available outcomes. Intersectional worseness is a matter of how well the people who exist in both of a pair of outcomes fare in those outcomes. Complementary worseness is a matter of how well the people who exist in either (but not both) of a pair of outcomes fare in those outcomes. Underpinning these two kinds of worseness are many respects of (standardly structured) betterness among outcomes. Very roughly, minimising intersectional and complementary worseness amounts to minimising the extent to which people’s lives are worse, in certain respects, than what might have happened instead. Part of what makes SU a utilitarian theory is that it treats fixed population decisions in the standard utilitarian way. It also has three further characteristics required of a utilitarian theory: it is a consequentialist, axiological, welfarist the- ory. As I define them, these characteristics do not require an overall betterness relation among outcomes. According to SU there is no such relation, which is part of what enables SU to deal intuitively with variable population decisions. My secondary goal in the dissertation is to encourage further exploration of the utilitarian possibilities that rejecting the overall betterness requirement opens up. v vi Contents Abstractv 1 Deciding who exists1 1.1 Outline.................................1 1.2 Moral decision-making........................4 1.3 Method................................. 13 2 General utilitarian theories 19 2.1 Classical Fixed Population Utilitarianism............. 20 2.2 Further constraints.......................... 22 2.3 Three contenders........................... 40 3 Variable population decisions 49 3.1 Wretchedness............................. 50 3.2 Neutrality............................... 61 3.3 Non-identity.............................. 72 3.4 Repugnance.............................. 77 4 Shortfall Utilitarianism 91 4.1 Introducing SU............................ 91 4.2 SU is a general utilitarian theory.................. 110 4.3 SU and variable population decisions............... 119 5 Defending Shortfall Utilitarianism 133 5.1 Menu-dependence.......................... 134 5.2 More on overall betterness...................... 148 5.3 Some conclusions........................... 163 5.4 SU and risk............................... 178 vii viii CONTENTS 6 Conclusion 185 A List of Decisions 193 Bibliography 201 Chapter 1 Deciding who exists Sometimes, our decisions affect who comes to exist. This dissertation is about how we ought to make decisions, and it is especially about how we ought to make decisions that affect who comes to exist. In it I have two objectives. First, to propose and defend a particular moral theory, Shortfall Utilitarianism. Second, to draw attention to some unexplored possibilities in a broad class of moral theory: what I call ‘general utilitarian theories’. Shortfall Utilitarianism is a general utilitarian theory. It is also a theory that accords with some moral beliefs and intuitions that are both widely shared and notoriously difficult to reconcile. This, I argue, gives us reason both to prefer Shortfall Utilitarianism to other known theories, and to further explore the class of general utilitarian theories. 1.1 Outline Let me begin with an outline of the dissertation, chapter by chapter. This first chapter has three sections (of which this outline constitutes the first). In Section 1.2 I set the scene. I introduce some useful terminology, and adopt what I hope is a fairly uncontentious framework in which to represent decisions and moral theories. This enables me to more precisely frame the question of how we ought to make decisions that affect who comes to exist. I also explain why I think that this question is an important one. In Section 1.3 I make some comments on my methods; on the roles of intuitions, consistency, and hypothetical cases in this 1 2 CHAPTER 1. DECIDING WHO EXISTS dissertation. In Chapter2 I narrow my focus to the question of how we ought, as utilitar- ians, to make decisions that affect who comes to exist. My goal in this chapter is to carve out a space of possible utilitarian moral theories; to characterise the class of general utilitarian theories. I begin, in Section 2.1, by assuming Classical Fixed Population Utilitarianism (CFPU), the theory that one ought to maximise total wellbeing in decisions that don’t affect who comes to exist. The first con- straint on a general utilitarian theory is that it agrees with this restricted theory, but also tells us what to do in decisions that do affect who comes to exist. It is in this sense an ‘extension’ of CFPU. In Section 2.2 I further constrain the class of general utilitarian theories by appealing to some characteristics of CFPU that seem central to the utilitarian spirit. I stipulate that a general utilitarian theory is consequentialist, axiological, and welfarist (and provide definitions for each of these characteristics). In this section I also consider and reject another pos- sible constraint, which I call the ‘overall betterness requirement’. The overall betterness requirement features frequently in the population ethics literature, and its rejection will prove important. Having thus characterised the class of general utilitarian theories, in Section 2.3 I introduce three of its well known members: Total Utilitarianism (TU), Average Utilitarianism (AU), and Harm Utilitarianism (HU). In Chapter3 I endorse four widely shared moral intuitions about decisions that affect who comes to exist. Those intuitions, roughly described, are as follows. First, in Section 3.1: that a life can be so bad for the person who lives it, that one ought not create such a person. Second, in Section 3.2: that a life cannot be so good for the person who lives it, that one ought to create such a person. Third, in Section 3.3: that one ought not make it that one happy person exists, instead of a different happier person existing. And fourth, in Section 3.4: that one ought not make it that many happy people exist, instead of fewer happier people existing. Anyone who shares these intuitions should prefer a general utilitarian theory that agrees with them all to one that doesn’t, other things being equal. As I introduce and motivate each intuition, I use it to ‘test’ the general utilitarian theories introduced in the previous chapter (TU, AU, and HU), as well as some variations thereof. None of the theories that I consider agrees with all four intuitions. In Chapter4 I propose Shortfall Utilitarianism (SU), and show that it is a 1.1. OUTLINE 3 general utilitarian theory that agrees with all four of the intuitions endorsed in the previous chapter. In Section 4.1 I set out SU as clearly and simply as I can. It is a theory according to which one outcome can be worse (or better) than another in two ways. It might be intersectionally worse, which is a matter of how well the people who exist in both outcomes fare in each; and it might be complementarily worse, which is a matter of how well the people who exist in one of the outcomes but not the other fare, in the outcome in which they exist. According to SU one ought to make decisions on the basis of these two kinds of worseness. (Exactly how will have to wait.) In Section 4.2 I show that SU is a general utilitarian theory: that it is a consequentialist, axiological, welfarist extension of CFPU. I also show that SU does not meet the overall betterness requirement. In Section 4.3 I show that SU agrees with the four test intuitions, and argue that this provides some reason to prefer SU to any of the other general utilitarian theories considered. In Chapter5 I defend Shortfall Utilitarianism from some possible objections. One feature of SU is a kind of ‘menu-dependence’: what one ought to do depends in interesting ways on what the available options are.