Published August 25, 2022; substantial revisions May 16, 2023
Simon Knutsson
Work in progress
Abstract
I give an argument for pessimism about the value of the world, the value of the future, and the welfare of present and future beings. My argument essentially says that various acts and traits have final disvalue and that there are reasons to believe that they are and will be common. More specifically, the following are my main new contributions and the essence of my argument: I argue that six types of acts and traits have final disvalue. These types are such that much counts as having final disvalue. And many kinds of beings in addition to humans can carry out acts and have traits that have final disvalue. I also present reasons to believe that the acts and traits in question are and will be common among humans, other animals, aliens (if there are any), and new beings that might exist in the future, such as enhanced humans and artificial beings. The broad conclusion is that welfare, the world, and the future are and will plausibly be worse than one might have thought before taking into account the disvalue of the acts and traits.
1 Introduction
For many years, people have written about whether life, the world, and the future are or will be good or bad.[1] I aim to contribute to these topics. The topics are related, for example, in that the value of the world and the future is often taken to at least partly depend on the inhabitants’ quality of life. Of special importance in this paper is the value of the future. It seems fairly common to have a bleak view of the value of our current world and the quality of life among beings on Earth but to be more optimistic about the value of the future.[2] For example, the following are statements about the future among one strand of authors: Parfit (2011, 616) writes: “We shall soon be able to prevent most human suffering. … We shall soon have even greater powers to transform, not only our surroundings, but ourselves and our successors. … Our descendants could, if necessary, go elsewhere, spreading through this galaxy. … Our descendants might, I believe, make the further future very good.” And “we can expect that future humans, or supra-humans, may achieve some great goods that we cannot now even imagine” (p. 618).[3] Tännsjö’s (2016) article titled “Why the universe becomes a better place when the human is gone” (my translation) says:
Suppose that we really can replace humans with beings who are wiser, more able to live in peace and harmony with one another, and far more innovative and with a great appetite for life. Suppose that they can live far better lives than the lives we live; suppose that they can handle different negative existential threats far better than we can. Why would “we” then not step down in favour of them? I think that it is clear that this is what in this situation should happen. … I guess that it starts with genetically improved beings. … The development will continue with artificial intelligences. … By their construction … there will be room made for an exponential growth of the number of happy beings in the universe, who live in mutual symbiosis without getting in one another’s way. Imagine a sparkling starry sky, where each light that twinkles towards you is a blissful robot. … Let us … rejoice with all those who one day hopefully … will take our place in the universe and manage it better than we have ever been able to do. (My translation.)
In these passages, Parfit and Tännsjö mention new beings (e.g., supra-humans and blissful robots) and expansionist ideas about spreading life in space. Several other philosophers speak similarly (e.g., Leslie 1989, 31; Bostrom 2003; Beckstead 2013). These ideas will be important in this paper as I will, among other things, argue that there are reasons to believe that such scenarios would contain various neglected sources of disvalue.
In the literature on whether life, the world, and the future are or will be good or bad—especially the literature on the value of the future—a consideration that has been too neglected, I think, is the final value of acts and traits. In other words, the consideration is how acts and traits can directly (non-instrumentally) affect the quality of life of an individual and the value of the world and the future.
I argue that various acts and traits have final disvalue and that there are reasons to believe that these acts and traits are and will be common. The disvalue of those acts and traits speaks in favour of the idea that welfare,[4] the world, and the future are and will be worse than one might have thought before considering the disvalue of these acts and traits. One could say that the considerations I bring up lower the expected value of the future. This is what I have in mind when I say that I give an argument for pessimism about the value of the world, the value of the future, and the welfare of present and future beings. In other words, the considerations I bring up support such a pessimism but I do not claim in this paper that my arguments establish that lives, the world, and the future are and will be bad. There are other considerations and arguments that bear on that. I do think that the bad acts and traits that already occur nowadays are sufficient to settle that the world is bad, that the future is bad, and that overall welfare is negative in the world and in the future.[5] But I do not try to argue for that stronger position in this paper.
My main goal in this paper is to put forth a line of reasoning or a broad type of argument. This paper touches on many issues that could each be dealt with more thoroughly. That said, I think the most important thing to put forth at this point is the general new way of reasoning about various acts and traits being disvaluable, their prevalence, and the implications for welfare and the value of the world and the future.
Let me explain my argument in more detail. When I talk about final disvalue, I mean disvalue for its own sake; non-instrumental disvalue. Some would say ‘intrinsic disvalue’ instead of ‘final disvalue’. I am only concerned with final value in this paper, so I will sometimes omit writing ‘final’, and I will sometimes write ‘bad’ instead of ‘finally disvaluable’.
I will argue that many acts and traits of the following six kinds have final disvalue: (1) Harming others. (2) Subjecting others to risks of harm. (3) Enabling suffering to bring about purported goods. (4) Ignoring harms to bring about purported goods. (5) Evaluative optimism. (6) Not being pained by others’ misery. And I will use four ways to argue for these acts and traits having disvalue.
Along the way, I will argue that many kinds of beings in addition to humans can carry out bad acts or have bad traits. These beings include non-human animals, aliens (if there are any), and new beings that might exist in the future such as enhanced humans and artificial beings.
When it comes to the prevalence of the bad acts and traits that I focus on, I will briefly mention how common they are and likely will be among humans and other animals on Earth. That seems to be a comparatively uncontroversial point. So my main contribution about the prevalence of these bad acts and traits is the following: I present reasons to believe that such bad acts and traits are or will be common among aliens (if there are any) and new beings that might exist in the future,[6] and that the acts and traits will be common in expansionist futures in which much life spreads beyond Earth. When say ‘expansionist futures’, I am not referring to utopian futures in which there is merely, say, complete peace, harmony, justice, and happiness on Earth. I am referring to futures that contain vast amounts of what is claimed to be valuable, such as pleasure, desire satisfaction, or positive welfare. Typical scenarios would include the colonisation of space to realise vastly more putatively positive value than can be realised on Earth.
A reason why it is important to investigate expansionist futures is that such futures can be important for optimism about the expected value of the future. For example, even if the near term will be bad and merely a later utopia on Earth could hardly make the expected value of the future positive, an expansionist future in which vast amounts of value are created beyond Earth for extremely long periods could be considered so good that it carries much weight when it comes to the expected value of the future.[7]
An aspect of my argument that can be specified in two different ways concerns which type of disvalue the acts and traits in question possess. The first option, which is the option I will most often have in mind, is to say that acting or being in various ways directly (i.e., non-instrumentally) lowers the individual’s welfare; that is, it is finally bad for the individual to act or be like that. This affects the value of the world or the future (depending on when the individual exists) if the following common idea is granted: the value of the world and the future at least partly depends on the welfare of the inhabitants. The second option is to say that an individual acting or being in various ways directly lowers the value of the world or the future. In other words, the acts and traits themselves have final disvalue-period (final disvalue simpliciter). Here, nothing is said about welfare or badness for individuals. Although I will typically have the first option in mind, I find both options reasonable, and I will often simply speak about the disvalue of acts and traits (or about bad acts and traits) without specifying whether they have disvalue for the individual or disvalue-period.
An objection that has been raised against my reasoning is about acts and traits that might be thought to have positive final value.[8] I will reply to this objection in Section 4, but here is a summary: My first and main reply is that it is not the case that some acts and traits are negative and some are positive, and that one needs to balance them against one another. Rather, there is an ideal way to act and be (but it does not make welfare positive or the world or the future good), and failing to act and be in this ideal way lowers welfare and the value of the world and the future. My second reply is that even if there were some acts or traits that had positive final value such as benefiting others, they cannot counterbalance the badness of the bad acts and traits.
That was an overview of the main content of this paper. The following is some more background and an explanation of what is new about my argument. At a high level, one could say that I connect existing ideas about disvaluable acts and traits with the literatures on welfare (in real life and the future) and the value of the world and the future, and I build from that intersection.
The idea that some acts and traits have final disvalue is old. It has been said that actions, motives, virtue and vice can have intrinsic value, for example, that lying can be intrinsically bad (see, e.g., Ewing 1948, 108–11; Brennan 1989; Hurka 2001, 33, 51; Skelton 2011; Orsi 2012). A related existing idea is that it is bad for someone to be immoral or have vices (see, e.g., Nozick 1981, 409–13; Hurka 2001, 3; 2011, 3–7; Smuts 2014, 723; Fletcher 2013, 214, 219). Traditionally, the focus has been on humans in this literature, although there is writing on whether other animals can have vices and whether they are moral agents (e.g., Cooper 2018, 60–65, 73; Johannsen 2019). My main new contributions about disvaluable acts and traits concern which acts and traits are disvaluable and which beings’ acts and traits are disvaluable. I widen the scope of existing ideas so that more acts and traits count as having disvalue and so that more beings are included.
As mentioned, I will argue that many acts and traits of six kinds have final disvalue. It has already been said that at least some acts or traits of these six kinds are immoral, bad for the person who embodies them, or the like. I strengthen and adjust those existing ideas so that more acts and traits of these kinds have disvalue. I do not mean that only acts and traits of these six kinds have final disvalue, but these are the kinds I focus on in this paper.[9]
When it comes to how common the disvaluable acts and traits are and will be, it would not be especially novel to merely point to the ubiquity of bad acts and traits among humans. Much has been written about how common immorality and vices are among humans and about the harm humans cause (e.g., Kidd 2021; 2022; Cooper 2018; Benatar and Wasserman 2015, 78–112; van der Lugt 2021, 49, 197–98; Huemer 2019). People have also pointed out how much wild animals harm one another (e.g., Animal Ethics 2021a; 2021b; 2021c) and that much suffering is likely to occur wherever sentient life arises partly due to antagonism among the beings there (G. D. O’Brien 2022, sec. 2.4). But I am not aware of anything written on non-human animals, beings beyond Earth, or new future beings acting or being in finally disvaluable ways. My main contribution about the prevalence of disvaluable acts and traits is that I consider life beyond Earth, expansionist futures, and new beings that might exist in the future.
A somewhat separate contribution I make is based on the view that trait (6), that is, not being pained by others’ misery, is bad to have but also, in many situations, bad to lack because being pained by others’ misery also lowers the individual’s welfare (e.g., because it is unpleasant).[10] My idea here is similar to Lemos’ (2007) and Feldman’s (2007) talk about how compassionate suffering is intrinsically bad and that being indifferent to or happy about others’ suffering is even worse.[11] My new contributions here are essentially that this view is a further consideration that speaks in favour of pessimism about welfare and the value of the world and the future and that this consideration becomes important when we consider life beyond Earth and in the far future.
In Section 2, I argue that various acts and traits have final disvalue and that many kinds of beings in addition to humans can carry out bad acts or have bad traits. Section 3 concerns how widespread the acts and traits are and will be. In Section 4, I reply to the objection about acts and traits that might be thought to have positive final value. Section 5 concludes.
2 The bad acts and traits and why they are bad
In this section, I argue that many acts and traits of six types have final disvalue. Broadly speaking, the first three types have to do with harming and the last three concern ignoring harms. As a reminder, the following are the six types: (1) Harming others. (2) Subjecting others to risks of harm. (3) Enabling suffering to bring about purported goods. (4) Ignoring harms to bring about purported goods. (5) Evaluative optimism. (6) Not being pained by others’ misery. I usually speak of acts and traits for brevity, but I also have in mind that, for example, dispositions, attitudes, thoughts, feelings, and wishes can be bad. My aim in this paper is not to give a comprehensive account of exactly which acts and traits of these six types are disvaluable and which ones are not. My aim is rather more modestly to argue that some acts and traits of these types are disvaluable (and the disvalue of those acts turns out to be interesting when it comes to welfare, the value of the world, and the value of the future).
I will present my arguments for why the acts and traits are bad as we go. I will use four ways to argue for them having disvalue: (i) Appeal to intuition.[12] The idea is essentially that on reflection and once we have grasped the issue, it is plausible that the thing in question is disvaluable. (ii) Appeal to unobvious facts.[13] More specifically, I will point to facts that make it more plausible that something has disvalue. In this paper, such facts are mainly about non-human beings, life beyond Earth, and the future. The idea is that there are reasons for thinking that the acts or traits in question are bad that one might miss if one only considers human acts and traits nowadays. (iii) Generalise. We start from an intuitively disvaluable act or trait. It might be an act or trait that there is at least historical precedent for it being considered problematic or that might even be widely considered problematic in standard cases. Then we generalise to new beings (e.g., non-human animals or new future beings) or non-standard situations (e.g., in the far future). Given that the act or trait is disvaluable in the standard cases, it should also be disvaluable in a wider range of similar cases, unless we have a specific reason for thinking that we cannot generalise. (iv) Argue that an act or the like is disvaluable partly because it expresses, exhibits or reflects, for example, neglectfulness (cf. Slote 2007, 31). Let us now turn to the six kinds of acts and traits.
(1) Harming others.[14] I first go through the ways of harming that I claim are bad and then the arguments for why they are bad. Generally speaking, it seems worse to be a being who has an overall harmful impact on others than one who does not. And it generally seems worse for a being the greater its harmful impact is on others. I do not mean that it is always disvaluable to harm others. There may be exceptions such as harming in self-defence or doing harm to prevent a greater evil. So let us be more specific about when it is bad to harm others. When it comes to humans harming humans, there are countless examples ranging from slavery and violence towards children to speaking hurtfully and breaking trust (Benatar and Wasserman 2015, 85–92). And there are more indirect ways of harming such as polluting, disturbing others, and financing harmful practices. Widespread competitive behaviour also seems disvaluable, for example, trying to get scarce resources for oneself at the expense of others. It might be money, land, natural resources, priviliges, status, etc. These more indirect ways of harming seem disvaluable in many cases unless there are specific circumstances that make them not bad. And humans also harm other animals both directly, for instance, by fishing and stepping on small animals, and indirectly by, for example, purchasing animal products (Benatar and Wasserman 2015, 93–99; Cooper 2018).
Non-human animals also harm one another in many disvaluable ways (again, see, e.g., Animal Ethics 2021a; 2021b; 2021c). For example, direct harm such as killing, poisoning, raping, and wounding. And, similarly to humans, they do indirect harm by, for example, competition over scarce resources such as territory, status, reproduction, food, and water. For instance, one animal attaining food might lead to another animal starving to death.
What I have said so far about the disvalue of harming others seems to apply to any beings that have welfare. It simply seems worse to be a being who harms others than one who does not (with the aforementioned caveat that there may be exceptions where harming is not bad such as harming to prevent a greater evil).
The arguments that I next present for these ideas about the disvalue of harming are based on appeal to intuition, generalisation, and what such acts express.
Let us start with intuition. I find it intuitive that all these ways of harming lower the welfare of the individual who harms, and this applies to all these different kinds of beings. That is simply an appeal to intuition. We can say more to at least explain why one might find this intuitive. The reasons in the previous section for why the acts and traits are bad do not appeal to vices, the nature of the being in question, or what is characteristic of the species. I am not saying that the being’s acts and traits are morally wrong, that the being should not have been like that, or that the being is responsible. As I see it, it is a matter of how it is better and worse to act and be, essentially regardless of the being’s nature. Someone might, for example, say that some animals must kill others to survive, that they have instincts to kill, and that they have no sense of right and wrong or no understaning of that they are harming. Then I would say that it is worse to be such a being than a being that does not harm others. Perhaps it is less bad to harm others if it is the only way to survive or if one does not understand that others feel pain and fear, but it still seems bad.
Let us turn to generalisation. It is perhaps most intuitively convincing that some acts and traits are disvaluable when we consider the most monstrous humans who have existed and what they did to others (cf. Smuts 2014, 723). I propose that we can generalise to a much wider range of cases. As a first step, it seems clear that also more common violence among humans is bad, say, violence that would lead to long prison sentences, even though those acts and traits may not be as monstrous as the very worst ones. Such acts and traits seem clearly disvaluable, and why would still less severe and more indirect ways of harming not be disvaluable? I do not see a compelling explanation for that. And where would we draw the line between the harming that is disvaluable and the harming that is not? For example, we can seemingly not appeal to the view that harming is only disvaluable when the being understands that it is doing wrong or causing harm. Consider, for instance, a human who lacks empathy or a sense of right and wrong or does not understand that wounding others feels bad for them. Still, it seems worse to be such a being who harms others. We can then move on to more beings (e.g., non-human animals and any other beings with welfare). There seems to be no feature that would explain why it would not be disvaluable to harm others for those beings (i.e., all beings with welfare).
The final argument for the claim that harming others is disvaluable is that such acts (and traits) in many cases exhibit or involve, for instance, being brutal, inconsiderate, selfish or violent, or mindless harming or a lack of empathy or concern (again, cf. Slote 2007, 31).
(2) Subjecting others to risks of harm. It is widely accepted that it is sometimes morally wrong to subject others to the risk of harm even if no one ends up being harmed.[15] For example, a person who recklessly did something dangerous in traffic although no one got hurt. Subjecting others to risk or having dispositions to do so are plausibly finally bad in a broader range of situations. As with harming, there may be exceptions such as subjecting an aggressor to a risk of harm in self-defence, and I set such exceptions aside.
The following are relevant disvaluable ways of subjecting others to risks of harm. One risk that is important for our purposes is the risk of enabling the existence of beings who might, for example, suffer terribly. Risk has been pointed to in the case against bringing beings into existence (Benatar 2017, chap. 4; Magnusson 2022). One can reasonably claim that it is disvaluable to enable the existence of beings nowadays (or to have traits in favour of it) given the risks beings face in today’s world. But the farther future plausibly carries with it greater risks in terms of (a) more severe suffering and the like and (b) suffering and the like on greater scales. For example, it is plausible that much worse forms of torture will become possible as relevant technology and knowledge advance. And suffering on a larger scale than today might be possible, especially if beings live beyond Earth. For example, what is talked about as risks of astronomical future suffering or s-risks (Vinding 2020, chap. 14; Baumann 2022). At least nowadays, there is both some rough bottom for the suffering of a new being and some restrictive bounds on the scale of the horror due to the limits of present technology and the like. To enable the existence of beings farther into the future with more downside for those individuals and with much more large-scale potential horror seems especially bad.
The arguments that support the final badness of subjecting others to risks of harm are similar to the arguments above in favour of the final badness of harming others. My arguments are again centred on appeal to intuition, generalisation, and what such acts express. In addition, my reasoning in support of the disvalue of subjecting others to risks of harm also contains appeals to unobvious facts (such appeals can be found in the previous paragraph). As with harming others, subjecting others to risks of harm seems intuitively bad, and we can generalise from intuitively clear cases. When it comes to what subjecting others to such risks expresses, we can point to, for example, recklessness and being inconsiderate.
The remaining kinds 3–6 of acts and traits share some features. At the end of this section, after having gone through kinds 3–6, I will present two arguments for why these acts and traits are bad. (And for each of kinds 3–6 below, I will appeal to intuition as I go through them, and for 6 I also generalise and appeal to unobvious facts.)
(3) Enabling suffering to bring about purported goods. It has been argued that it is wrong to create happiness at the expense of suffering (see, e.g., Vinding 2020, chap. 3; Ohlsson 1979) and some talk about related matters in terms of ‘callous’ or the like. For example, the utilitarian Leslie (1983, 337) writes:
I feel somewhat pulled towards J. Rawls when he argues that no addition to the sum of happiness ought to be bought at the price of even one person’s misery. It strikes me that a man would callous, morally stunted, if he could detect absolutely no attractions in Rawls’ position or in K. R. Popper’s advocacy of a Negative Utilitarianism in which preventing misery rather than promoting happiness becomes one’s aim. Yet I urge you to believe such positions to be wrong all the same.
Particularly important for our purposes is to contribute to bringing about a population or future in which some individuals have negative welfare. Another important case is to accept causing harm in the near term to enable the existence of purported goods later. Intuitively, such acts and traits plausibly have final disvalue partly because of the effect on the beings whose suffering is enabled.
(4) Ignoring harms to bring about purported goods. This fourth kind is similar to the third one, but this fourth one is about ignoring harms or suffering instead of enabling suffering. An important case is to not help those currently in need such as victims of violence to instead try to bring about the existence of more future beings or purported goods. Several authors have argued that we should help those in need in similar situations (e.g., Wolf 2004, 63; Vinding 2020, pt. I; Ohlsson 1979, chap. 5; Tranöy 1967), and see the quote from Leslie in the previous paragraph. It seems intuitive that it is finally bad to not try to help partly because those suffering could become less badly off if we try to help.
(5) Evaluative optimism. There is historical precedent for roughly the idea that optimism is immoral and that there is something insensitive, neglectful, mocking, and wicked about it. According to van der Lugt (2021, 126):
Bayle … argues that there is something insensitive and even immoral about the way certain theodicies try to explain away the evils of existence … It is this objection that will arise again in Voltaire and Hume.
And van der Lugt (2021, 347) says that Schopenhauer shares with earlier pessimists “the intuition that optimism neglects or even makes a mockery of the reality of suffering and is therefore morally as well as theoretically in the wrong”. Schopenhauer writes: “optimism … seems to me to be not merely an absurd, but also a really wicked, way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the unspeakable sufferings of mankind”.[16]
My proposal is the similar idea that holding some optimistic evaluative (axiological) views has disvalue—views according to which various outcomes are good. An important example is the optimistic and plausibly disvaluable view that one or more individuals’ extreme misery can be outweighed by unrelated purported goods or by others’ purported bliss, positive welfare or the like, especially when the miserable individuals do not think it can be outweighed. Several authors have expressed sympathy for views along the lines that such misery cannot be outweighed.[17] My arguments for why evaluative optimism is bad are that it is intuitive, in addition to the two arguments at the end of this section.
(6) Not being pained by others’ misery. I propose that it is disvaluable to not be pained or bothered by others’ misery (for similar ideas, see, e.g., O’Brien 2014; Lemos 2007; Feldman 2007; 2001, 17, 19, 21; Brady 2019). To be pained or bothered in the relevant ways presumably has to do with at least feeling a certain way and having an aversion to others’ misery.
The following is a simple example to illustrate why one might consider it disvaluable to not be pained by others’ misery. Imagine that a person just found out that an innocent close relative got into an accident today and is suffering severely in the emergency room. Then it would intuitively be disvaluable if the person were not pained or bothered, even if there is nothing the person could do for their relative.[18] And it seems one need not be certain that the other individual is suffering. For example, if the person is very confident but not certain that their close relative is suffering in the emergency room, then it would seemingly still be disvaluable to not be pained or bothered. And that the suffering being is a stranger, far away, or that we know that someone is suffering although we do not know the being’s identity should seemingly not remove the need to be pained (cf. W. O’Brien 2014).
At a first pass, it might seem like we should always be pained by others suffering and that it is always disvaluable not to be pained. As O’Brien (2014, 31) notes, “the proposition that I always know suffering is occurring, is undeniable… We know the world is full of suffering. We always know that it is always full.” But there may be exceptions. O’Brien (2014, 34, 36) mentions a surgeon and those who are suffering themselves. Perhaps they need not always be pained by others’ suffering. But it seems we can tentatively say that if an individual is not suffering and does not have negative welfare, and there is no special circumstance such as that the individual is a surgeon, then it is disvaluable not to be pained or bothered by others’ suffering.
I gather O’Brien (2014) talks about how humans should be in light of suffering on Earth. And Lemos’ (2007) and Feldman’s (2007) talk about Anna in Nazi Germany who is pained by the victims’ suffering. I think we should also consider how other beings are and will be, as well as suffering beyond Earth and in the future. For example, there might be suffering beyond Earth or suffering in the future, and this is and will be something to be bothered by even if Earth becomes a paradise so that there is no longer any suffering on Earth to be bothered by.
As I mentioned above, trait (6) has the interesting and relevant feature that it is bad to have but lacking it also lowers the individual’s own welfare in many situations. The reason is simply that being pained by others’ misery is plausibly unpleasant and involves the fulfilment of an aversion against others’ suffering.
The following is an argument for thinking that acts and traits of kinds 3–6 are disvaluable, although it is also relevant to kinds 1 and 2. The argument has to do with what certain acts exhibit (or express or reflect) or what certain traits or views involve. For example, several acts and traits of all six kinds exhibit or involve a lack of concern for those who suffer or those who are or might be harmed. We can say they reflect a lack of concern, sympathy, compassion, or empathy. Or that they exhibit neglectfulness or the like. For example, there seems to be something insensitive and neglectful about the view that an outcome that contains extreme misery is good. There are related historical pessimistic ideas (see, e.g., van der Lugt 2021, 126, 347). For example, when Hedenius (1955, 100–101) writes about the weight of evil, he mentions honest and seeing compassion as the noblest passion, that evil dominates once we have opened our eyes to its nature, and he stresses the importance of not closing our eyes. We can similarly say that holding the view that the misery can be outweighed evinces a lack of compassion and amounts to turning a blind eye to the misery (cf. Lazarus 1984).[19]
The following is another argument for acts and traits of kinds 3–6 being finally disvaluable: Carrying out such acts and having such traits can be ways of harming others, and thereby they can be disvaluable by also falling under the first kind of acts and traits (harming others). Some who suffer might become worse off by observing or knowing about the existence of those acts and traits. Lazarus (1984) talks about how the trivialisation of distress has negative consequences for the distressed (see also O’Brien 2014, 32). Similarly, we can say about acts and traits of kinds 3–6 that by perceiving them, some who suffer might feel that they are alone, that they are not understood, or that their suffering is trivialised. For example, people may come to feel that way when they perceive that others think that it is fine to enable or ignore suffering like theirs to bring about purported goods, that others think that the world or the future is good despite suffering like theirs, or that others are not so bothered by suffering like theirs. This argument would be strengthened if such effects of the acts and traits on beings who suffer were established, but I will not delve into that in this paper. My argument here is merely that the acts and traits might have such harmful effects (and one can think of anecdotes supporting that they have such effects) and that if they do have such effects, that is one reason why they are finally disvaluable.
3 How widespread the acts and traits are and will be
In this section, I deal with three categories of situations or scenarios. The first category mainly concerns competition, antagonism, or conflicting interests. An example is how beings compete in the evolutionary process. This category includes the situation on Earth in the past, now, and for the foreseeable future; situations for similar life on other planets that either arose there or were sent from Earth; and futuristic scenarios where there is antagonism or the like. I deal with this first category in section 3.1. The other two categories concern the lead-up and achievement of expansionist futures that some would call more utopian. Recall that an expansionist future is not merely a paradise on Earth but a future that contains much larger amounts of what is claimed to be valuable than there is room for on Earth, so expansionist futures typically involve space colonisation. With that in mind, the second category of situations or scenarios, which I deal with in section 3.2, concerns the lead-up to such expansionist futures. The third category, which is the topic of section 3.3, concerns the resulting expansionist futures that would purportedly contain vast amounts of positive value and perhaps new beings.
Of course, my discussion about the future becomes more and more speculative the farther into the future we go and the more exotic the futures are. Still, I think it is worthwhile to present reasons why something might or might not occur even if it is speculative.
The following is a summary of what I will say about the prevalence of disvaluable acts and traits in these three categories of situations or scenarios: In the first category related to competition, for example, on Earth now and in the near future, we tend to find at least plenty of acts or traits of type 1, harming others. In the second category, the lead-up to a putatively extremely valuable future, it seems plausible that we will find disvaluable acts and traits of types 2–6, which seemingly go hand in hand with such lead-ups, and perhaps also acts or traits of type 1 (harming others). Thinking about the prevalence of bad acts and traits in the third category (the resulting future that is purportedly extremely valuable) becomes even more speculative. Still, there are reasons to believe that disvaluable acts and traits of types 2–6 might exist in such a future, perhaps also type 1 (harming others), and perhaps the flip side of trait 6, namely to be pained by other’s misery, which is also disvaluable.
Let’s now turn to the three categories of situations or scenarios and the prevalence of disvaluable acts and traits in them.
3.1 Situations with competition and the like in which beings harm others, for example, on Earth nowadays
Of course, humans harm humans and other animals to a staggering extent (e.g., Cooper 2018, chap. 6; Benatar and Wasserman 2015, 78–112; Bourke 2018; Huemer 2019).[20] In addition, many humans plausibly have disvaluable attitudes, desires, dispositions, and feelings. For example, many people plausibly have the disposition or desire to harm if circumstances were different, for example, if it was socially accepted and legal (e.g., Huemer 2019). Or the disposition to like when someone else is harmed.
Harming others is very common among non-human animals on Earth partly because it is very common among animals in nature (again, see, e.g., Animal Ethics 2021a; 2021b; 2021c), and this harming will continue for the foreseeable future unless life in nature is drastically changed.[21] Nature on Earth is perhaps one of the most obvious examples of an environment where it is very common to harm others directly and severely. There are, of course, also plenty of indirect harms in nature, such as when a being eats some food or inhabits some territory in a circumstance that leads to someone else getting too little food or needing to inhabit a more dangerous territory where that being is harmed. But we should also consider other environments, locations, and origins.
If life spreads from Earth, there are reasons to believe that it would result in similar competitive and violent environments (e.g., G. D. O’Brien 2022, sec. 2.4). So, essentially, there is a similar potential for disvalue because of those beings harming one another. How about life beyond Earth (now or in the future) that did not originate from Earth? It seems reasonable to believe that where life arises, there are often conflicting interests and competition for scarce resources, survival, and reproduction, as there is and has been on Earth. As a result, such beings might also harm others.[22]
The competitive, harmful, and violent environments I have talked about so far in this section are mainly nature-like or evolution-like competitive environments. But we can think more generally about competitive environments, antagonism, conflict, or just indirect harms due to competition or conflicting interests. These factors seem relevant regardless of where a given group of beings originated, and even if the beings in question are technologically advanced or spacefaring, or if their situation is not like it is for non-human animals on Earth. For example, one can imagine a highly technological future population in which one group uses and harms another because it is useful to do so.
The main optimistic reply to what I have said in this subsection might be that future beings will be better, enhanced, or the like (and perhaps this can also be claimed for current aliens if there are any). They will cooperate instead of engaging in harmful competition or antagonism. They will not be in a struggle for survival and reproduction as animals are in nature. And so on. Instead, they will be technologically advanced and will have solved the widespread harmful practices that have always occurred among life on Earth. The next subsections function both as a reply to that optimistic reply and as an account of independent reasons for believing that disvaluable acts and traits will exist in the lead-up to and achievement of such a putatively more utopian future containing vast amounts of value.
3.2 The lead-up to an expansionist future with vast amounts of purported value
Let’s start with the lead-up to an expansionist future that would contain vast amounts of purported value. What acts and traits would beings tend to have in the lead-up to such a future? There are reasons to believe that disvaluable acts and traits of types 2–6 will occur, and perhaps acts and traits of type 1. The following is a list of the key reasons to believe that:
(1) Harming others. This includes causing harm partly to bring about the utopian future. To try to bring about an expansionist far future that would purportedly contain vast amounts of value is an ambitious and controversial endeavour. To bring about such a future, it is presumably useful to have power, influence, money, and the like. It is standard in society that such resources are not merely acquired and used in friendly and harmless ways. Rather, harmful means are often used to pursue one’s goals. We can already see how harm is done to try to bring about such a future (the means seem to be considered acceptable due to the potential value that could be brought about). It seems reasonable to hold that the pattern will persist partly since it seems unclear why it would stop and it is likely partly due to structural features about how it is optimal to be and behave to achieve that kind of goal.
(2) Subjecting others to risks of harm. Trying to bring about an expansionist extremely valuable future is plausibly a high-risk, high-reward endeavour from the perspective of its proponents. Creating or expanding the number of beings increases the risk of certain harm. One reason is that the more beings there are the more beings there are that could be harmed. Expansion in the universe in terms of increasing the number of beings and taking up more space and resources might also increase the risk of conflict if another population from another part of the universe is encountered. Regardless of such details, the simple point can be thought of as that if there are vast numbers of beings created, there is plausibly more risk that vast numbers of beings will be harmed compared to if the population in the future was, say, merely 10 billion beings. An expansion in the number of beings and the time the population exists might lead to an increase in ability which risks more severe harm, for example, if torture methods become more potent. All that seems to be disvaluable risk-taking.
(3) Enabling suffering to bring about purported goods. This topic overlaps with the first point about harming others. One can enable suffering both as means to try to bring about a very valuable future and as a foreseen consequence or ingredient in the future. Regarding a foreseen consequence or ingredient, an expansionist future might involve a part of the population suffering although another part of the population is very well of (so that the future is still thought to be of overall positive value).
(4) Ignoring harms to bring about purported goods. Assuming, as seems reasonable, that if an expansionist future with extreme amounts of purported value comes about, then there was work to bring it about. It did not end up like that by accident. Those who would bring about an expansionist future are presumably not preoccupied with alleviating or preventing harm. Instead, they try to bring about an expansionist future.
(5) Evaluative optimism. To bring about or even allow the bringing about of such a future seems to go hand-in-hand with optimism about the value of the future. Otherwise, one might not try to increase the number of beings and ensure existence for a very long time.
(6) Not being pained by others’ misery. Those trying to bring about the expansionist future would presumably not be especially bothered by others’ misery because if they were so bothered by others’ misery, they might try to prevent the misery instead and they might be less optimistic about the value of the future.
An optimist might reply that even if these acts and traits are disvaluable, which the optimist would likely hold that they are not, and even if they will be prevalent in the lead-up to expansionist futures, the value in the resulting future greatly outweighs that disvalue. A part of my reply would be that there is no positive value and, at any rate, no positive value that could counterbalance the disvalue of the acts and traits. Anyway, I’ll set that reasoning aside and let us instead turn to the resulting state with purportedly vast amounts of value. As will try to convey in the next subsection, it is not only the lead-up to the future in question that might contain disvaluable acts and traits but also the resulting future. Even if the resulting future is pictured to be very utopian, there are still reasons to believe that disvaluable acts or traits will exist.
3.3 Having reached an expansionist future with vast amounts of purported value
We have now moved past the lead-up to a future purportedly containing vast amounts of value and will consider the resulting future. What kind of future are we supposed to imagine? Drawing on Parfit’s and Tännsjö’s writings, we can imagine that in this population suffering has been eradicated and the beings are blissful (except perhaps being pained by others’ misery), and they live in peace and harmony with one another.[23] Which, if any, disvaluable acts and traits might exist or be prevalent in such a future? Of course, the answer will be speculative. The long time of existence of such a future often is thought important for the value of the future. So a feature of the future is to perpetuate and perhaps regenerate new beings or expand the population further, depending on what scenario we imagine. In this resulting utopian future, the beings can perhaps not be said to harm one another. Still, might they perhaps have a disvaluable disposition (of type 1) to harm others to preserve or expand the vast amounts of purported value if such a choice situation would occur? In addition, do they perform disvaluable acts of type 2, namely subjecting others to risks of harm? Seemingly, as essentially mentioned in the previous subsection, preserving and perhaps creating or expanding the number of beings increases the risk of harm. One reason is that the more beings there are the more beings there are that could be harmed, including extremely severely. And expansion in the universe might increase the risk of conflict with others in the universe (if there are any). Regarding the third type of acts and traits—enabling suffering to bring about purported goods—perhaps the beings are not directly enabling suffering. But they might have a disposition to be willing to do that.
The just-mentioned dispositions could result, for example, either from a general aim to preserve or expand the putative value in this future or as a legacy from predecessors who, in this scenario, successfully brought about this expansionist future.
It seems the beings might also carry out disvaluable acts or have disvaluable traits of type 4: ignoring harms to bring about purported goods. For example, insofar as the perpetuation or expansion of the purported vast amount of value has an opportunity cost in terms of reducing suffering or preventing harm. Perhaps resources, time, and the like that are spent on the perpetuation or expansion of value bearers could instead have been usefully spent on reducing suffering or harms (in expectation) in, say, other parts of the universe. The potential existence of such suffering and harm is then, in a sense, ignored to bring about purported goods. And, regardless, the beings might have the disposition to ignore harm to bring about purported goods for the reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Regarding acts and traits of type 5 (evaluative optimism), the beings are likely not pessimistic about the value of the future if they perpetuate the population and perhaps even expand it.
The prevalence of acts and traits of type 6 (not being pained by others’ misery) is a bit complicated. We have assumed that the beings in the population are blissful and not suffering (except perhaps being pained by others’ misery). So it might seem like there is no suffering to be bothered by. But there is plausibly always suffering that might exist to be bothered by. For example, even if the observed parts of the world are free from suffering, as far as these beings know, there might still be suffering in unobserved parts of the world (regardless of whether those parts of the world are accessible or not) or in, say, places that one is not sure exists such as other universes. The likelihood of suffering elsewhere (e.g., elsewhere in the universe or in other universes) might even be high given, for example, the enormous scales involved and the reasons to believe that there will be suffering wherever life arises (e.g., G. D. O’Brien 2022, sec. 2.4). The beings might not be able to do anything about that suffering if it exists, but, as O’Brien (2014, 32) notes, the need to be pained by other’s suffering doesn’t require that one can do something about it. One could debate whether there is also a need to be pained by suffering that might exist in the future or suffering that existed in the past. And perhaps the beings need to be pained by that others in their population are pained by others’ suffering. I don’t rely on that here though. Anyway, there will seemingly be suffering that might exist (or is even likely to exist) to be pained by, and if the blissful beings in this expansionist future are not pained by that, then that is a source of disvalue. And if they are pained, then that’s arguably a source of disvalue (e.g., because it is unpleasant to be pained).
That concludes our discussion of the prevalence of disvaluable acts and traits in the three categories of situations or scenarios that I focus on.
4 Replies to the objection about acts and traits thought to have positive final value
In this section, I reply to the objection that I mentioned in the introduction about acts and traits that one might think have positive final value.
This objection that has been raised against my reasoning is about “the positive analogues” and “the good analogues”.[24] An idea in the objection seems to be that welfare, the value of the world, or the value of the future depends on how good the presumed opposites are and their prevalence. The objection might be that I am only talking about one side; the negative side. And the objection says that there are positive analogues such as good acts and traits that are finally good and that improve welfare and the value of the world and the future. One might bring up purportedly good acts and traits such as kindness and helping others. And those speak in favour of optimism and against pessimism, so I have only mentioned a part of the picture, the objection might go.
My first and main reply is that on my account, it is not the case that some acts and traits are negative and some are positive and that one needs to balance them against one another to see if welfare and the value of the world and the future are negative or positive. Rather, on my account, there is an ideal way to act and be (but it does not make welfare, the world, or the future good, valuable or positive), and if one fails to act and be in this ideal way, then welfare and the value of the world and the future is lower than it would be if one were to act and be in the ideal way.[25]
My second reply is that even if there were some positive analogues such as benefiting others that are good, they cannot counterbalance the badness of at least some of the worst acts and traits.[26] For example, it seems plausible that the disvalue of the most monstrous occurring acts and traits cannot be counterbalanced by the purported final positive value of any acts and traits such as benevolence, helpful acts, or the like.[27] If that is granted, then when balancing bad and purportedly good acts and traits, we can conclude, based on merely the monstrous acts and traits that occur nowadays, that the overall contribution of the final positive and negative value of acts and traits to the overall welfare and the value of the world and the future is negative.
5 Conclusions
The broad, main conclusion of this paper is that welfare, the world, and the future seemingly are and will be worse than one would think if one would disregard the final (i.e., non-instrumental) disvalue of acts and traits.[28]
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Notes
[1] For some history, see van der Lugt (2021) and Beiser (2016). More recent examples include Hedenius (1955, 100–104), Bergström (1978; 2022), Mendola (2006, 269), Smilansky (2012), Benatar (2017, chap. 4), and Sittler (2018). Holm (2017) discusses the topic of whether a posthuman future is good.
[2] See, e.g., van der Lugt (2021), Tännsjö (2002, sec. IV; 2016). Philosophers who appear optimistic about the value of the future include Leslie (1996), Tännsjö (2016), Parfit (1986, 453–54; 2011, chap. 36; 2017, 436–37), Beckstead (2013, 11), and, at least to some extent, Smilansky (2012, sec. 7).
[3] See also Parfit (2011, 615) for the background question of whether the future might be very good and his commentary on that question.
[4] I take welfare to be the same as well-being and quality of life. In other words, when I speak of welfare, I am concerned with prudential value, value-for someone and how life is going for the one who lives it.
[5] Strictly speaking, I would use the comparative ‘worse’ instead of ‘bad’ or ‘negative’ so that pessimism about, say, the value of the future is the claim that the future is worse than an empty or valueless future, but we can set that detail aside (see, e.g., Broome 1993; Carlson 2016).
[6] New beings include, for example, posthumans, transhumans, artificial life, and beings resulting from seeding distant planets with microorganisms from Earth. On the latter topic, see, e.g., O’Brien (2022).
[7] See the statements by Parfit and Tännsjö above but especially Bostrom (2003; 2013) and Beckstead (2013, chap. 3).
[8] Thanks to Krister Bykvist for making this comment.
[9] We could strengthen the case for pessimism by appealing to other acts or traits that are plausibly bad, such as cruelty, cowardice, selfishness, and manipulativeness (e.g., Hurka 2001, chap. 4; 2011, 128, 130; Baron 2003; Kidd 2022). But I will set such acts or traits aside.
[10] Of course, it need not be the case that an individual either (a) has the bad trait of not being pained by others’ misery or (b) is pained by others’ misery. There might, for example, be no misery to be pained by. My point is that there are plenty of relevant situations in which one of these two bad states will hold.
[11] See also O’Brien (2014), Hurka (2001, 17, 19, 21), and Brady (2019).
[12] Rachels (2003, 10–12) lists arguing from intuition as one of nine ways to argue for or against that a given thing has intrinsic value. See also what Orsi (2012, 13) calls the “Why Bother” attitude in the history of ideal utilitarianism.
[13] Rachels (2003, 6–7) lists arguing from intrinsic properties (or appealing to intrinsic facts) as a way to argue about intrinsic value.
[14] As background, see, e.g., Gardner (2021) on what harming is.
[15] For an entry point to the literature on risk and wrongness, see Parr and Slavny (2019). There is a discussion about whether a risk of harm can be a harm (e.g., Rowe 2021), and we can, but need not, appeal to such ideas when arguing that subjecting others to risk of harm is disvaluable. I do not rely on that a risk of harm is a harm.
[16] Quoted by van der Lugt (2021, 347).
[17] For example, Hedenius (1955, 100–103), Pearce (1995, sec. 2.7), Wolf (1997), Tomasik (2015), Vinding (2020, chap. 4) and Knutsson (2021, 1013–14). See also Beiser (2016, 48) on Schopenhauer.
[18] Similarly to what O’Brien (2014, 32) says: “if someone is dying an awful death in my presence, I should be bothered whether I can do anything about it or not.”
[19] One could also argue that acts and traits of kinds 2–6 involve disvaluable epistemic or cognitive vices such as wishful thinking (cf. Vinding 2020, chap. 7) although I will not pursue that argument in this paper.
[20] We could easily add more damning observations about humans such as the following about the treatment of children: “Three quarters of children aged 2 to 4 worldwide – close to 300 million – are regularly subjected to violent discipline” (UNICEF 2017, 7).
[21] For example, unless nature is destroyed (Hanson 2009; Wiblin 2010) or predators are changed and so on (Pearce 2009; Paez 2020).
[22] For similar reasoning but about suffering instead of disvaluable acts and traits, see O’Brien (2022, sec. 2.4).
[23] See section 1.
[24] Again, thanks to Krister Bykvist for making this comment.
[25] For somewhat related ideas, see (Kupfer 2011): “The other attribute is that the virtue is more like the absence of something bad than the presence of an outright good. People who are grateful are not impaired by the negative condition that is ingratitude or is responsible for it. Corresponding to freedom from the relevant character defect, in the analogy with physical health, is freedom from affliction or injury.”
[26] In other words, some of the bad acts and traits in question are defeating values (c.f. Carlson 2007). See also the literature on value superiority (e.g., Arrhenius and Rabinowicz 2015).
[27] To reply to the objection about positive analogues, it is sufficient to talk about purportedly positive acts and traits. But a stronger and also reasonable claim works as a reply to more general objections of the kind that the bad acts and traits need to be weighed against purported goods such as pleasure, desire satisfaction, or love. The stronger claim is that some of the worst acts and traits cannot be counterbalanced by any purported goods. For example, the worst acts and traits make overall welfare and the value of the world and the future negative regardless of what else the world or the future would contain. Smuts (2014, 723) makes the somewhat related claim that “Moral repugnance is sufficient to sap a life of positive worth”.
[28] I am grateful to Gustaf Arrhenius, Gunnar Björnsson, Krister Bykvist, and Magnus Vinding for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.