Infinite promises

Suppose I promise x that I will do whatever I promise y, and I promised y that I will do whatever I promise x.  I then promise x to bring ice cream to the party.  In so doing, I have violated my promise to x to bring ice cream to the party.  My violating my promise to x to bring ice cream violated my promise to y to do whatever I promise x.  My violating my promise to y to do whatever I promise x then violated my promise to x to do whatever I promised to y.  And so on.

It looks like by the simple neglect of bringing ice cream to the party, I have violated three promises in infinitely many ways.

But this action doesn't seem to be infinitely wrong, or if it is infinitely wrong, it is such because of the offense against God implicit in the promise-breaking, and not because of the infinite sequence of violations.

But why isn't it infinitely wrong (at least bracketing the theological significance)?

Is it because it's just one action?  No: for a single action can be infinitely wrong, as when someone utters a spell to make infinitely many people miserable while believing that the spell will be efficacious (it doesn't matter whether the spell is efficacious and whether there are infinitely many people).

Is it because only a finite number of promises are broken?  No: for a single promise can be broken infinitely often (given an infinite future, or a future dense interval of events if that's possible) with the demerit adding up.  (Imagine that I promise never to do something, and then I do it daily for eternity.)

Maybe one will bite the bullet and say that the action is infinitely wrong.  What's the harm in saying that?  Answer: incorrect moral priorities.  Keeping oneself from infinitely wrong actions is a much higher priority than keeping oneself from finitely wrong actions.  But it doesn't seem that one should greatly, if at all, prioritize being the sort of person who brings ice cream to parties in the above circumstances over, say, refraining from finitely but seriously hurting people's feelings.

Puzzling, isn't it?

The above generated a puzzle by infinite reflection.  But one can generate puzzling cases without such reflection.  Suppose x loves y, and I harm y.  I therefore also harm x, since as we learn from Aristotle, Aquinas and Nozick, the interests of the beloved are interests of the lover.  Now suppose infinitely many people love y.  (If a simultaneous infinity is impossible, assume eternalism and imagine an infinite future sequence of people who love y.  Or just suppose I falsely believe that infinitely many people love y.)  It seems that by imposing a minor harm on y, I impose a minor (perhaps very minor) harm on each of infinitely many people, and thereby an infinite harm.  Now, suppose that I have a choice whether to impose a minor harm on y, who is loved by infinitely many persons, or a major harm on z, who is loved by only finitely many.  As long as the major harm is only finitely greater than the minor harm, it seems that it is infinitely worse to impose the minor harm on y than the major harm on z.  But that surely is mistaken (and isn't it particularly bad to harm those who have fewer friends?).

One might try to bring God in.  Everyone is loved by God, and God is infinite, and so the major harm to z goes against the interests of God, and God's interests count infinitely (not that God is worse off "internally"), so the major harm to z multiplied by the importance of God's interests will outweigh the minor harm to y, even if one takes into account the infinitely many people who love y, since divine infinity trumps all other infinities.  But this neglects the fact that God also loves all the infinitely many people who love y, and hence the harm to the infinitely many lovers of y also gets multiplied by a divine infinity.

Nor is infinity needed to generate the puzzle.  Suppose that N people love y and only ten people love z, and my choice is whether to impose one hour of pain on y or fifty years of pain on z.  No matter how little the badness of x's suffering to x's lovers, it seems that if you make N large enough, it seems it will overshadow the disvalue of the fifty years of pain to z.

I think the right answer to all this is that wrongs, benefits and harms can't be arithmetized in a very general way.  There is, perhaps, pervasive incommensurability, so that the harms to y's lovers are incommensurable with the harms to y.

But I don't know that incommensurability is the whole story.  It is a benefit to one if a non-evil project one identifies with is successful.  Now imagine two sport teams, one that has a million fans and the other of which has a thousand.  Is it really the case that members of the less popular team have a strong moral reason to bring it about that the other team wins because of the benefit to the greater number of fans, even if it is a moral reason overridden by their duties of integrity and special duties to their fans?  (Likewise, is it really the case that the interests of Americans qua Americans morally count for about ten times as much as the interests of Canadians qua Canadians?)

Yet some harms and benefits do arithmetize fairly well.  It does seem about equally bad to impose two hours of suffering on ten people as one hour of suffering on twenty.

So whatever function combines values and disvalues is very complicated, and depends on the kind of values and disvalues being combined.  The only way a simple additivity can be assured is if we close our eyes to the vast universe of types of values, say restricting ourselves to pleasure and suffering as hedonistic utilitarians do.

A false principle concerning desire

I am not the first to discover this particular fallacy—in fact, part of this post is based on ideas I got in conversion from somebody who got them from something he read. But the ideas are no less fun for being mainly not mine.

Consider the following argument for psychological hedonism, the doctrine that the only thing we pursue is pleasure:

1. Whenever we pursue something other than pleasure, we pursue it because it gives us pleasure. (Premise)
2. Therefore, what we really pursue is the pleasure it affords to us.

Not only is (1) false, but (2) does not follow from it. The following inference is invalid:

3. We pursue x because it gives us y.
4. Therefore, what we really pursue is y.

In fact, taken literally, (4) contradicts (3), since if "what we really pursue" is y, and y is not x, then we are not pursuing x (to pursue is the same as to really pursue). But even if we weaken (4) to:

5. Therefore, we pursue y

the inference is still invalid. If I am trying to find a woman who offers water to my camels (cf. Genesis 24), it does not follow that what I am really pursuing is water for my camels. Perhaps I just want the kind of woman who gives water to my camels. Likewise, one might want a particular fig tree in the garden because it yields figs, not because one wants the figs, but because yielding figs is largely constitutive of the health of a tree, and one wants only healthy trees in the garden.

Perhaps the inference works better if we replace (1) by:

6. Whenever we pursue something other than pleasure, we pursue it only because it gives us pleasure.

It's easier to see how (2) might be thought to follow, but (6) now begs the question against the non-hedonist. In any case, the inference is still logically invalid.

In fact, it is even incorrect to conclude from the claim that I seek x solely because it yields y that I want y at all. Suppose that, whimsically, I desire a magical hat that yields rabbits. I only want the hat because it yields rabbits—my whim is that I want to have rabbits pop into existence out of a hat. I can want such a hat for such a reason without having any desire for the rabbits. The rabbits themselves are a nuisance, and I would have no interest at all in rabbits that come into existence in any way other than out of a hat.

It might be objected that then I don't want the hat just because it yields rabbits, but I want the hat because it is a hat that yields rabbits, and so this isn't a counterexample to the inference type. But if so, then the non-hedonist need only say that she doesn't want x just because it yields pleasure, but she wants an x because it is an x that yields pleasure.

The fallacy here also occurs in the Lysis in the argument that if I am friends with x because x yields y, then what I am really friends with is y.

Hedonistic utilitarianism

George is 20 years old and Jake is 50. Neither has friends, or is very likely to make a significant contribution to the pleasure of others, in George's case because of anti-social tendencies, and in Jake's because of severe disability. George hates Jake and pushes him overboard. As Jake flies overboard, George loses his balance and falls in, too. Both call to us for help. We can only pull out one. What should be done?

Here is a hedonist utilitarian answer (it makes a lot of assumptions, but the assumptions are not crazy). We should pull out George, and have him tried and convicted of murder. Then we should publicly sentence him to a lifetime of pain. We then need to hook him to electrodes in a cell, for the rest of his life. But unbeknownst to the public, the electrodes will deliver intense pleasure for the rest of his life. George will never tell anyone this, because he will be enjoying the pleasure too much. We need to tell George about this before he is sentenced to the lifetime of pain, so that he doesn't get too scared of the sentence.

On hedonist utilitarian grounds shouldn't pull out Jake, because (a) Jake is probably not going to agree to being hooked up to the pleasure-machine, and (b) even if he did, he wouldn't have as long left to live, and hence as much pleasure to experience, as George would, since George is younger. To satisfy the public, we might need to lie that we couldn't pull out Jake. George will support us in that lie. Since contortions of pleasure don't look too different from contortions of pain, we can exhibit George to the public, and this will have a significant deterrent effect on murder.

Yes, I know that hedonist utilitarians will cavil at this and at that in the story. But of course the real reason the story is all wrong is that it is surely wrong to save the life of the murderer while letting his victim drown (unless maybe the victim requests that we save the life of the murderer instead—for instance, if the victim is the murderer's parent).

Hedonism

Here is an argument:

1. A character trait aimed at producing what is always intrinsically good is not a vice. (Premise)
2. A tendency to Schadenfreude is a character trait aimed at producing pleasure (at the sufferings of others). (Premise)
3. A tendency to Schadenfreude is a vice. (Premise)
4. Therefore, pleasure is not always intrinsically good.

An argument against hedonism

Hedonism is the claim that how well off one is is a function of pleasure. Suppose you experienced the greatest pleasure of your life between times t₀ and t₁. For the ensuing, I will assume that the mental supervenes locally on the physical, but even if that is not true (and I doubt it is true), we can modify the description.
If hedonism is true, then the following life is better than yours. Fred begins his existence a day before a time t₀*, in the neural state you were in a day before t₀. During this day he has the same experiences as you had over the day before t₀. He then undergoes the pleasurable experience you had between t₀ and t₁. As soon as that is over, his neural state is reset to the state it had at t₀*. Then he re-experiences the pleasure you had between t₀ and t₁. Then his memory is reset again. Then he re-experiences that pleasure. And so on, for two hundred years.
Let's say the most pleasant experience of your life was the first time you managed to ride a bicycle without training wheels. Then Fred has that experience, over and over, each time feeling and thinking it's the first time.
Unless the experience you had between t₀ and t₁ was some kind of supernatural experience like that of union with God, and it is not that kind of pleasure that typical hedonists are talking about, I think Fred's life is horrible. It is a nightmare, but Fred of course thinks it is just great.
But hedonism claims Fred is better off than you are, which is absurd.
Note: One might have personal identity worries about Fred's persistence. However, a bout of amnesia during which one loses memory of a period of time does not destroy personal identity, as long as there are earlier memories. That was why I posited that Fred spends a day sharing the experiences you had for the day before t₀, so that the memory of these experiences will anchor his identity through the two hundred years of recurrence.