> Virtually everyone thinks A is better than B. (Indeed, prior to my publishing this article, there was probably no one who disagreed with this, and there probably still is no one who disagrees with it for any reason other than that they want to avoid the argument of this article.)
Well, I for one, disagree. And not "to avoid the argument of this article". Historically many others have disagreed. For example people advocating for making do with less, people against consumerism, people in favor of more ecological sustainability throu degrowth, and several other angles as well. I'm actually for all of the above. I don't think "welfare" is well defined, and if it's about "more stuff" I think it's bound by diminishing returns or even negative returns beyond some point.
The world comparison I also found mere abstractions. People advocating for equality advocate for it in this world, and are not concerned with abstract comparisons.
Real advocates for equality also don't advocate for any "perfect" equality (another strawman or slippery slope, as if advocating equality means making everybody 100% equal, as opposed to not having some homeless and others living in $100 million dollar homes).
So the only thing this did, perhaps, is refute some strawman, perfectly abstract and technical (as opposed to real-world-fuzzy and political) arguments about equality, that no actual person actually has.
> I find that many people find egalitarianism (properly explained) non-obvious, and many are opposed to it.
"Properly explained" here is a cop-out, meaning "this abstraction I put forward, and not as what people think of when they use the term and advocate for".
Mike doesn't even suggest that "welfare" = "more stuff", so I think you should tidy your own house before leveling charges of strawmanning at others. Also, it's fair to pick at definitions a bit; philosophers do that all the time. But in an article like this, if the author uses a term like "welfare" without defining it, it's a fairly good bet that he's using it in a broadly accepted philosophical sense, which can be discovered by looking at philosophical sources on the web (e.g. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/well-being/).
Likewise, Mike's definition of egalitarianism is indeed framed as an intrinsically good end goal, but I think it's pretty fair to assume that egalitarians would prefer a world that's closer to equality to one farther from it, and Mike's argument doesn't depend at all on the absolutism that you're trying to characterize the egalitarianism he's criticizing with.
"Mike doesn't even suggest that "welfare" = "more stuff", so I think you should tidy your own house before leveling charges of strawmanning at others."
You could just state your counter-argument, instead of coming of with charges against others at the personal level. It would be more polite.
In any case, I even write explicitly " I don't think "welfare" is well defined, and if it's about "more stuff" I think it's bound by diminishing returns or even negative returns beyond some point.".
So I wasn't taking for granted that Mike meant it that way, but framed my response as a provisional "if he does mean it this way, then...".
That said, Mike doesn't say it, but he does appear to imply it. He defines it as "people being equally well off". Do you think that this means enjoying "more kindness and love" as opposed to more material wealth? What would this "broadly accepted philosophical sense" be in the context of welfare and equality as being "more well of"?
> Likewise, Mike's definition of egalitarianism is indeed framed as an intrinsically good end goal, but I think it's pretty fair to assume that egalitarians would prefer a world that's closer to equality to one farther from it, and Mike's argument doesn't depend at all on the absolutism that you're trying to characterize the egalitarianism he's criticizing with.
It kind of does, as all the made up examples are concerned with marginal equality/welfare differences, whereas most proponents of egalitarianism would very well be fine with major fixes that would not be affected at all by such comparisons.
You say that "Likewise, Mike's definition of egalitarianism is indeed framed as an intrinsically good end goal, but I think it's pretty fair to assume that egalitarians would prefer a world that's closer to equality to one farther from it" but real-world egalitarians wouldn't "prefer" equality at all costs, without any further qualification (while the naive version of them put forward does so, in order for Mike's hypothetical scenarios to work).
For example, real world egalitarians wouldn't prefer today's world to a world that everybody just has no house and lives on a $1 a day, even though it would be way more egalitarian. Or to world where there's just ten persons alive, each having the exact same wealth (or even same attributes).
In general, except if we're talking about Bolsheviks in 1917 USSR, real world egalitarians aren't concerned with world-to-world comparisons, but with active changes in this world, changing this like access to education and healthcare, fair taxation for the rich, fewer outliers in the distribution of wealth, and so on. Most don't even go for the slogan "eat the rich!" anymore (which is a shame).
So, the "proof" is mostly a series of variations on strawmen and the slippery slope fallacy ("people asking for more equality means they MUST ASK for ABSOLUTE equality, UNDER ANY CONDITIONS, which would lead to this or that absurd outcome, thus equality is bad!").
I think there's still a not-totally-dogmatic way a proponent of 1/2 could reject your argument. One can deny the completeness of preferences over worlds by postulating that all worlds with a different number of people are incomparable. This assumption is highly questionable, but someone can hold it for independent reasons: for example, it would also let them avoid the Repugnant Conclusion. This would deny both 4 and 5, and rescue 1 or 2.
I wonder if someone else in the literature has already raised that objection.
By this supposition, if we had a world with 100 people where everyone is blissfully happy, and one with 99 people where everyone is miserable, we'd be unable to say the first world is better. That can't be right, surely?
I think it is false, but I feel like someone might still bite that bullet. One possible justification would be postulating that we can only compare welfare levels between individual persons, and a comparison between the welfare of an individual with the "welfare" of nothingness is a category error. This does have some plausibility. Then, the proponent of the above view would concede that first 99 people in the suffering world lead much worse lives, but say that including the last person makes the comparison ill-defined.
I don't think it a satisfying conclusion for egalitarians: an undefined comparison between A and B commits the decision-maker to choosing between them unpredictably when forced to choose, and no actual egalitarian would ever choose a unanimously miserable world over a unanimously happy one. But people have raised similar objections to the Repugnant Conclusion before, so maybe someone will be happy with just a technical victory in the argument.
Maybe there's a way you can leave just some comparisons undefined, retaining some justification for rejecting 4 or 5 while avoiding absurd conclusions like your example. But I haven't come up with one, and I doubt any of them will be convincing.
> Virtually everyone thinks A is better than B. (Indeed, prior to my publishing this article, there was probably no one who disagreed with this, and there probably still is no one who disagrees with it for any reason other than that they want to avoid the argument of this article.)
Well, I for one, disagree. And not "to avoid the argument of this article". Historically many others have disagreed. For example people advocating for making do with less, people against consumerism, people in favor of more ecological sustainability throu degrowth, and several other angles as well. I'm actually for all of the above. I don't think "welfare" is well defined, and if it's about "more stuff" I think it's bound by diminishing returns or even negative returns beyond some point.
The world comparison I also found mere abstractions. People advocating for equality advocate for it in this world, and are not concerned with abstract comparisons.
Real advocates for equality also don't advocate for any "perfect" equality (another strawman or slippery slope, as if advocating equality means making everybody 100% equal, as opposed to not having some homeless and others living in $100 million dollar homes).
So the only thing this did, perhaps, is refute some strawman, perfectly abstract and technical (as opposed to real-world-fuzzy and political) arguments about equality, that no actual person actually has.
> I find that many people find egalitarianism (properly explained) non-obvious, and many are opposed to it.
"Properly explained" here is a cop-out, meaning "this abstraction I put forward, and not as what people think of when they use the term and advocate for".
Mike doesn't even suggest that "welfare" = "more stuff", so I think you should tidy your own house before leveling charges of strawmanning at others. Also, it's fair to pick at definitions a bit; philosophers do that all the time. But in an article like this, if the author uses a term like "welfare" without defining it, it's a fairly good bet that he's using it in a broadly accepted philosophical sense, which can be discovered by looking at philosophical sources on the web (e.g. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/well-being/).
Likewise, Mike's definition of egalitarianism is indeed framed as an intrinsically good end goal, but I think it's pretty fair to assume that egalitarians would prefer a world that's closer to equality to one farther from it, and Mike's argument doesn't depend at all on the absolutism that you're trying to characterize the egalitarianism he's criticizing with.
"Mike doesn't even suggest that "welfare" = "more stuff", so I think you should tidy your own house before leveling charges of strawmanning at others."
You could just state your counter-argument, instead of coming of with charges against others at the personal level. It would be more polite.
In any case, I even write explicitly " I don't think "welfare" is well defined, and if it's about "more stuff" I think it's bound by diminishing returns or even negative returns beyond some point.".
So I wasn't taking for granted that Mike meant it that way, but framed my response as a provisional "if he does mean it this way, then...".
That said, Mike doesn't say it, but he does appear to imply it. He defines it as "people being equally well off". Do you think that this means enjoying "more kindness and love" as opposed to more material wealth? What would this "broadly accepted philosophical sense" be in the context of welfare and equality as being "more well of"?
> Likewise, Mike's definition of egalitarianism is indeed framed as an intrinsically good end goal, but I think it's pretty fair to assume that egalitarians would prefer a world that's closer to equality to one farther from it, and Mike's argument doesn't depend at all on the absolutism that you're trying to characterize the egalitarianism he's criticizing with.
It kind of does, as all the made up examples are concerned with marginal equality/welfare differences, whereas most proponents of egalitarianism would very well be fine with major fixes that would not be affected at all by such comparisons.
You say that "Likewise, Mike's definition of egalitarianism is indeed framed as an intrinsically good end goal, but I think it's pretty fair to assume that egalitarians would prefer a world that's closer to equality to one farther from it" but real-world egalitarians wouldn't "prefer" equality at all costs, without any further qualification (while the naive version of them put forward does so, in order for Mike's hypothetical scenarios to work).
For example, real world egalitarians wouldn't prefer today's world to a world that everybody just has no house and lives on a $1 a day, even though it would be way more egalitarian. Or to world where there's just ten persons alive, each having the exact same wealth (or even same attributes).
In general, except if we're talking about Bolsheviks in 1917 USSR, real world egalitarians aren't concerned with world-to-world comparisons, but with active changes in this world, changing this like access to education and healthcare, fair taxation for the rich, fewer outliers in the distribution of wealth, and so on. Most don't even go for the slogan "eat the rich!" anymore (which is a shame).
So, the "proof" is mostly a series of variations on strawmen and the slippery slope fallacy ("people asking for more equality means they MUST ASK for ABSOLUTE equality, UNDER ANY CONDITIONS, which would lead to this or that absurd outcome, thus equality is bad!").
I think there's still a not-totally-dogmatic way a proponent of 1/2 could reject your argument. One can deny the completeness of preferences over worlds by postulating that all worlds with a different number of people are incomparable. This assumption is highly questionable, but someone can hold it for independent reasons: for example, it would also let them avoid the Repugnant Conclusion. This would deny both 4 and 5, and rescue 1 or 2.
I wonder if someone else in the literature has already raised that objection.
By this supposition, if we had a world with 100 people where everyone is blissfully happy, and one with 99 people where everyone is miserable, we'd be unable to say the first world is better. That can't be right, surely?
I think it is false, but I feel like someone might still bite that bullet. One possible justification would be postulating that we can only compare welfare levels between individual persons, and a comparison between the welfare of an individual with the "welfare" of nothingness is a category error. This does have some plausibility. Then, the proponent of the above view would concede that first 99 people in the suffering world lead much worse lives, but say that including the last person makes the comparison ill-defined.
I don't think it a satisfying conclusion for egalitarians: an undefined comparison between A and B commits the decision-maker to choosing between them unpredictably when forced to choose, and no actual egalitarian would ever choose a unanimously miserable world over a unanimously happy one. But people have raised similar objections to the Repugnant Conclusion before, so maybe someone will be happy with just a technical victory in the argument.
Maybe there's a way you can leave just some comparisons undefined, retaining some justification for rejecting 4 or 5 while avoiding absurd conclusions like your example. But I haven't come up with one, and I doubt any of them will be convincing.