I'm not sure I understand what net suffering is. It seems to me that every person born increases total suffering, but net?
What do you "net" it against? I guess you can equate "increase net suffering" to a concept of "increasing the average intensity of suffering per unit time across all people". But you can't net my pleasure against your suffering, can you?
Or say I spend 80 years of a perfect life, and then die of Alzheimers or a particularly painful cancer. Did I accumulate a "balance" that can be counted against someone else's relatively miserable life? Or did my illness and death mean that my average is really no better than someone whose life sucked but died suddenly of a heart attack?
If someone has great achievements and suffers from chronic mental illness that gives them huge ups and downs, can their suffering and pleasure be compared to someone who has neither? Which increased/decreased net suffering for the world or population?
> I'm not sure I understand what net suffering is. It seems to me that every person born increases total suffering, but net?
Utilitarians say there is only one moral dimension, utility. Suffering is negative utility. If you create more utility than you consume you decrease total suffering (or increase total utility, which amounts to the same thing).
> But you can't net my pleasure against your suffering, can you?
> Or say I spend 80 years of a perfect life, and then die of Alzheimers or a particularly painful cancer. Did I accumulate a "balance" that can be counted against someone else's relatively miserable life? Or did my illness and death mean that my average is really no better than someone whose life sucked but died suddenly of a heart attack?
> If someone has great achievements and suffers from chronic mental illness that gives them huge ups and downs, can their suffering and pleasure be compared to someone who has neither? Which increased/decreased net suffering for the world or population?
I agree with these objections. To me, this kind of utilitarianism seems like a bizarre simplification. How can you weigh a sunny day against a panic attack?
What do you "net" it against? I guess you can equate "increase net suffering" to a concept of "increasing the average intensity of suffering per unit time across all people". But you can't net my pleasure against your suffering, can you?
Or say I spend 80 years of a perfect life, and then die of Alzheimers or a particularly painful cancer. Did I accumulate a "balance" that can be counted against someone else's relatively miserable life? Or did my illness and death mean that my average is really no better than someone whose life sucked but died suddenly of a heart attack?
If someone has great achievements and suffers from chronic mental illness that gives them huge ups and downs, can their suffering and pleasure be compared to someone who has neither? Which increased/decreased net suffering for the world or population?