The Philosophical Bullet Bites (parts 1 and 2)

Ethics and Possibilities

A fair number of people have written to me about "Biting the Philosophical Bullet" in Losing My Religions. (You will have to read that chapter for this post to make sense.)

Someone in Greece asked if I wouldn't choose one individual suffering level 10 vs two individuals suffering level 10, everything else being equal.

Well, sure, but that's just my intuition. It is only because I am experiencing more suffering at the thought of two vs one.

If this is the Chicken World example, there is nothing worse about FL (two chickens suffering independently) than RR (one chicken suffering). As Robert Daoust of the Organization to Prevent Intense Suffering noted, there is more badness in FL, but no worseness. 

The real problem becomes apparent once you choose one over two based on your intuition. The next question is: Wouldn't you choose one person suffering level 10 than X people suffering level 9.9? (Where X can be any number from 2 on up.) 

Again, that makes intuitive sense, but it is wrong. 

This becomes clear once you follow the logic that flows from choosing one suffering level 10 over X suffering level 9.9. That choice leads inexorably to choosing 1 suffering level 10 over Y suffering level 0.0001. 

The error comes from thinking about "the amount of suffering in the universe." The "universe" doesn't suffer. Only individual conscious minds suffer. 

Each individual conscious mind is an entire universe unto itself.

The only relevant units for ethical calculations are individual conscious minds. In the case of X people suffering level 9.9, there is no “universe” (i.e., mind) that is “worse” than the universe (mind) suffering level 10.

Robert also sent me this CS Lewis quote, which I wish I had read way back in the day:

We must never make the problem of pain worse than it is by vague talk about the "unimaginable sum of human misery. . ." Search all time and space and you will not find that composite pain in anyone's consciousness. There is no such thing as a sum of suffering, for no one suffers it. When you have reached the maximum that a single person can suffer, we have, no doubt, reached something very horrible, but we have reached all the suffering there ever can be in the universe. The addition of a million fellow-sufferers adds no more pain.

-CS Lewis in The Problem of Pain 

For a Xtian apologist, he was pretty smart in this area.

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A lifetime ago, I regularly gave talks to students about animal rights – everyone from middle schoolers to college groups to Future Farmers of America at their national conference chanting "Eat more meat!"

Regularly, I would get a question along the lines of, “Don’t you think people are more important than pigs?” Or, “Wouldn’t you sacrifice a rat to save your child?”

I loved this question. I would hold up a cute picture of the baby and say, “Obviously, I care about our kid more than a rat. I care about our kid more than I care about all of you! Without a doubt, I would sacrifice each and every one of you to save them!”

This story came to mind when someone who read “Biting the Philosophical Bullet” in Losing My Religions asked, “Why can’t we add up the chickens’ suffering in Chicken Worlds?”

Of course, we can add up lives / suffering / utility. Just as we can value our kid over every other living being, or care about our neighbors and fellow citizens more than people in Venezuela and Syria. Or believe white people are the devil, or Aryans are the master race, or the possibility of trillions of future happy robots matters more than people suffering cluster headaches right now.

We can do anything! Our “moral intuitions” are strong. But they are just intuitions, even ours are less overtly prejudicial than the Klan’s.

It seems obvious that we should sum up the happiness / suffering (net utility) of sentient beings to determine “good” and “bad,” “better” and “worse.” But there is absolutely nothing in the actual, physical world that corresponds to this sum. The universe as a whole does not experience anything. 

There is no entity experiencing the net utility that utilitarians try to maximize.

“Net utility” doesn’t exist.

The sum of total pleasure minus total pain is no more real than the belief that a certain god (or gods) commands you to convert or kill infidels. Both are made-up illusions.

“But Matt,” you say, “of course, you agree that, everything else being exactly equal, fewer suffering individuals is better than more suffering individuals.”

Of course I feel that way. But also, of course, I would kill you in the blink of an eye to save Anne. I would kill all of you! 

My personal, emotional attraction to less total suffering and more total happiness in the world is just that – my attraction. Others might have an attraction to more suffering because pain makes us stronger, or teaches us to love (their) god and value heaven over earth.

My attraction, my intuition, my feelings – those are not and cannot be the basis for a fair and just set of ethics.

The only thing we know exists – and thus the only morally relevant thing – is an individual’s consciousness. (This is why it is impossible to disprove the Simulation Hypothesis. Everything could be an illusion – signals fed to a digital brain. All that we can be sure actually exists is our personal consciousness.) 

Each individual’s consciousness is the entire world, the entire universe. 

Of course, it took me into my fifth decade to realize this. That’s how strong I found the attraction of Xtianity, then deontology, then utilitarianism. 

But then, as discussed in Losing My Religions, I realized that ethics based on summing utility across individuals can justify any amount of cruelty, any level of agony, as long as more positive experiences across more people offset it, no matter how faint their pleasure. Even people who don’t yet exist. Even people who might not ever exist. 

That’s what broke the spell. That’s what led to the realization that this exalted “sum” of pleasure and pain (or worse, the “expected value” of this sum) is simply an illusion, a made-up fantasy. It certainly seems useful, attractive, and mesmerizing. But in reality, it is a myth, a mirage that has led to an immoral acceptance of – or even blindness to – worlds of actual agony.