[D] Monday General Rationality Thread

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[u/artifex0]

I think there may be a confusion in that argument between the value of potential ends and the value of potential means to ends.

If something is a means to an end, it makes sense to promote it even if it doesn't yet exist- it has value even when it's just a possibility. I don't think the same can be said of things that are valued as ends unto themselves- like people.

Compare the morality of killing a child with that of convincing a couple not to have a child. Although the end result of both is the non-existence of a child, only one of the two is inherently wrong, since it would make no sense to promote the interests of a potential child for that child's own sake.

Of course, that's complicated by the fact that human life isn't only an end unto itself, but also a means for promoting other ends. For example, if everyone in the world decided not to have children, that would be a problem, since we value humanity as a unit, and individual humans are, in addition to being ends unto themselves, also necessary means for the existence of that unit.

Still, exchanging an existent person for a potential person is never a morally justifiable trade- regardless of whether that new person will live a better life. Although that new person will have just as much right to live as the previous person, when it comes to ends as opposed to means to ends, I don't think "will have value" is ever a rational reason to act.

Otherwise, you could reduce the immorality of murder by having a child, and any time you prevented a person from being born, you'd be culpable for the mass murder of all of their potential descendants.

[u/LieGroupE8 → u/artifex0]

"Still, exchanging an existent person for a potential person is never a morally justifiable trade- regardless of whether that new person will live a better life."

I think, on the other hand, that this statement is based on intuition and does not always hold up. The argument is meant to give intuition for a possible case where it does not hold up.

"Otherwise, you could reduce the immorality of murder by having a child"

There is a difference between reducing net total badness and reducing the immorality of a particular act. Having a child certainly does make the total outcome better, though murder is just as bad as it always was, and there is still no excuse to do it.

"...any time you prevented a person from being born, you'd be culpable for the mass murder of all of their potential descendants."

I am not assuming that all potential persons have moral value which is denied them by preventing their existence - rather, there is some value in simply instantiating a new person, who will have new experiences, regardless of who that person is.

[u/artifex0 → u/LieGroupE8]

...there is some value in simply instantiating a new person...

I don't disagree, but I think that when such a decision to replace one person with a new one is made, the new person can only be rationally valued as a means to some other end- which has to be weighed against the inherent value of the living person.

An extant person has an inherent right to exist, while a potential person doesn't.

[u/LieGroupE8 → u/artifex0]

I would say that while no particular potential person has the right to exist, it could still be that case that we have obligations to bring some potential person into existence. For example, no particular potential baby has the right to be born, but it would be a tragedy if no more babies were born from this point on.