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Perplexed comments on Non-personal preferences of never-existed people - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (69)
I would advocate the ethical principle that we should effectively take into account the values of non-existent people only to the extent that we can expect them to effectively take our own interests into account.
So, for example, as a recent retiree, I should take into account the preferences of people to be born next year to the extent that I expect them to keep Social Security solvent. On the other hand, I have a much lower obligation to people to be born next century, since I don't expect them to contribute much to me.
As for my obligations to counter-factual people - those flow through counterparts. I have obligations to the Downs-syndrome child next-door because his healthy, but counterfactual, counterpart would have had some obligations to me and to my counterfactual Downs-syndrome counterpart. But neither of us has particularly strong obligations to (nor claims on) some poor peasant in Kerala, because of the length of the chain of counterfactual assumptions and common acquaintances that connect us.
If I understand correctly, you're saying that if you had Down Syndrome and your neighbor were healthy then you would want your neighbor to help you; so therefore in reality you are healthy and help your neighbor who has Down Syndrome; and this constitutes your obligation to them.
Is this correct?
Yes. Roughly speaking, a Nash bargain could-have/should-have been made to that effect in the "Original Position" when we were both operating under Rawls's "Veil of Ignorance". I don't completely buy Rawls's "Theory of Justice", but it makes a lot more sense to me than straight utilitarianism.