There are some philosophical views that a lot of non-philosophers believe but are rejected by almost all philosophers because they face totally decisive objections. You’ll be about as likely to encounter someone naked at a philosophy conference as someone who adopts these views. In this piece, I thought I’d go through some widely-held philosophical views among laypeople—that nearly all philosophers agree are wrong—and explain why they aren’t correct.
There’s a common canard one hears along the following lines: “well, utilitarianism has some problems with population ethics—there are some issues if you try to maximize total utility, and some others if you try to maximize average utility. Overall, it’s just not totally clear what you’re supposed to be maximizing.”
This statement is technically true, just like the statement “oh you know, string theory, the flat Earth theory, both have some problems, not clear which, if either, is right.” Total utilitarianism is a reasonable view adopted by a lot of serious people. Average utilitarianism is just about as false as anything could be.
Why is this?
Well to start with, here’s one problem: average utilitarianism implies the following ridiculous conclusion:
It is sometimes better to create a billion people in extreme agony in hell than a billion people in extreme bliss in heaven, assuming their creation has no effects on anyone else.
Why is this right? Well, imagine a world where there’s just a single supremely well-off person. Creating a bunch of people in extreme bliss would bring down the average (assuming they’re in less bliss than him). In contrast, if a bunch of people are very badly off, creating miserable people in hell might be better. So the view implies each of the following:
Sometimes you have strong moral reason not to create a bunch of supremely happy people in heaven, even if they have no effect on anyone else, are all suitably deserving, etc.
Sometimes you have strong moral reason to create a bunch of supremely miserable people in hell, even if they’re all undeserving, etc, and have no effects on anyone else.
Sometimes creating people in hell is better than in other situations creating people in heaven.
That is very implausible. Average utilitarianism also implies that if you’re deciding whether it’s good to have kids, it’s relevant how many ancient Egyptians there were, how much fermented grain they ate, etc, because that will affect the global average. But that’s clearly absurd. For similar reasons, the goodness of having children becomes dependent, according to average utilitarianism, on how many distant aliens there are who we’ll never interact with.
The view also implies that if I’m the only person around, my eating a cake is a much bigger deal than a million people being spared from rape and torture if the world had had a large number of people. That’s obviously false.
For these reasons and others, philosophers are basically never average utilitarians, perhaps literally never.
