Magnus Vinding - Suffering-Focused Ethics: Defense and Implications

Ratio Ethica, Copenhagen.

Copyright 2020 Magnus Vinding

Parts of this book have previously been published elsewhere by the author.

ISBN: 9798624910911

Introduction

The problem of suffering is the greatest problem of all. This is my conviction, and why I have set out to write this book, in which I will explore the why and how of reducing suffering.

The core motivation that animates this book derives from a set of related questions widely considered among the deepest, most profound questions we can ask ourselves:

What matters?

What is most valuable in the world?

What is the highest purpose we can pursue?

I have long been obsessed with these questions, and contemplated the many answers people have provided, including the pursuit of happiness, meaning, knowledge, and love. Virtually all such common answers resonate deeply with me, as I suspect they do with most people. Yet ultimately, after a long and resistant process of examination, I have come to view one answer as standing high above all others: the reduction of extreme suffering.

This was very much not the answer I wanted. Yet it is, most sincerely, what I have found. And I suspect most people would in fact, if not agree, then at least strongly sympathize with this view when confronted with real-world cases of extreme suffering. For we can indeed easily fall into the trap of approaching questions concerning value and purpose from a position of abstract philosophizing, quite detached from the reality of extreme suffering. Yet, as philosopher David Pearce notes: An adequate theory of value should be as true in the gas chambers of Auschwitz as in the philosophers study. And when we make an effort to consider what it would in fact be like to encounter extreme suffering, it becomes difficult to deny its immense significance and urgency.

If, for instance, we found ourselves walking past a house in which a person is enduring torturous suffering, and if we were in a position to alleviate this suffering at no risk to ourselves, would we not then be hard-pressed to consider anything else more important? Indeed, would saving this person from torment not likely be among the most important things we could ever do? To choose to walk by and pursue other aims instead would seem as ethically wrong as could be. And if we then further imagine a similar situation where we ourselves happen to be the one in a state of extreme suffering, the case for considering the alleviation of such suffering an overriding ethical priority seems even more compelling.

Yet, in our best attempt to derive a rational theory of value and ethics, should it really matter who is enduring the suffering, or how close to us the suffering occurs? Should suffering not be equally worth preventing no matter who is experiencing it and where? If the reduction of extreme suffering is of supreme importance sometimes, such as when we are confronted with it directly, then why not always? After all, we live in a world in which there are always countless beings experiencing unbearable suffering, and in which we can always do much to alleviate such suffering.

0.1 A Demanding Obligation Obscured by Omission Bias?

Pointing to something that can justify creating a world with more rather than less extreme suffering is indeed not easy. For this very reason, it is also not easy to defend not making a considerable effort to reduce such suffering. Imagine, for instance, if we were offered some gain a hundred dollars, say at the price that a person will be tortured in the worst imaginable ways for a full hour. Few of us would consider it defensible to accept this deal. Next, imagine a similar case, except now we are asked to give away a hundred dollars to prevent a full hour of torture that would otherwise happen.

Intuitively, the latter case seems fundamentally different, and yet the possible outcomes in these two cases are practically identical. Either we are a hundred dollars richer at the price of allowing more extreme suffering in the world, or we are a hundred dollars poorer for the gain of creating a world with less extreme suffering. So if we cannot defend receiving goods to make extreme suffering happen, how can we defend not giving up goods to reduce it when the outcome is virtually the same?

This tendency to view harms caused by acts of omission much more leniently than harms caused by acts of commission has been referred to as the omission bias.

One may, of course, object that it is not realistic to think that we could prevent so much suffering by giving away a mere hundred dollars. Two things can be said in response. First, the main point here is not about the exact amount of extreme suffering prevented, but rather that there is a deep asymmetry in how we view acts of omission and commission respectively. This asymmetry suggests that we are intuitively underestimating how important it is to take action to reduce extreme suffering, and by extension, that we underestimate our obligation to do so. Second, while it is not clear how much extreme suffering a hundred dollars can be expected to reduce if spent optimally, it is by no means unthinkable that such a donation could reduce far more than a single hour of torturous suffering. This is a deeply humbling proposition.

0.2 The Stakes Are Astronomical

We appear to be living in a unique time in the history of Earth-originating sentient life the last moments in which such life is bound to a single planet. Provided that technological progress continues at roughly the rate we have seen over the last couple of centuries, human civilization is bound to move into the rest of the solar system within a few centuries. Consequently, the future could contain an astronomical number of sentient beings.

Philosopher Nick Bostrom puts the lower bound of the number of biological human life-years [that can be sustained] in the future accessible universe at 10, and given that human consciousness can be emulated in different substrates, he estimates that the future accessible universe could sustain 10 such life-years. These astronomical numbers are almost impossible to appreciate. The scale of events that have hitherto only taken place on Earth including extreme suffering could soon be multiplied by many orders of magnitude.

This renders it critical that we start considering which future outcomes are worth steering toward. For example, can creating extremely happy lives for, say, 99.999999 percent of a population of 10 people justify the creation of lives full of extreme suffering for the rest, i.e. 10 people?

As this question hints, the potentially vast size of a future cosmic population implies that even if we require what may seem a very large amount of happiness to outweigh a given amount of extreme suffering, such a high happiness-to-suffering ratio could still justify the creation of extreme suffering on a scale far greater than what is physically possible on our planet torture chambers and Holocausts on a scale many orders of magnitude larger than what Earth could sustain even if it were covered in such horrors. We have to ask ourselves: Can anything justify the creation of extreme suffering on such an enormous scale?

If we think so, we would seem to face the problem of evil 2.0. Where the original problem of evil asked why a benevolent being would create so much suffering on Earth, the problem of evil 2.0 would be to answer why a benevolent agent, or set of agents, would allow the creation of so much more suffering (in absolute terms). A problem we should contemplate deeply now, before we create such a future.

The importance of thinking these things through is further highlighted by arguments that suggest that space expansion outcomes as happy as the one described above, with a vast majority of beings living very happy lives, are most likely overoptimistic. Political scientist Daniel Deudney and author Phil Torres have argued that such a cosmic population is likely to end up in a state of continual cosmic war. As Phil Torres sums up his analysis: