It seems like it would not matter in itself that these distant aliens have dramatically different welfare to humans, although our intuitions on this question are weak and not especially decisive. Assuming that it wouldn’t matter, this suggests that equality is not of intrinsic impersonal value – but, we cannot rule out deontic egalitarian positions on the basis of this thought-experiment. In this essay, I explore intuitions pulling in both directions about the moral importance of the distant aliens, constructing three alien-discovery cases to identify the relevant features of each scenario. Then, I distinguish between views that ascribe intrinsic as opposed to instrumental significance to equality, and in the first group further distinguish between telic and deontic views. Finally, I argue that our intuitions in the aliens case provide some weak evidence against telic views, but not against deontic ones, nor views which take equality to be of instrumental importance only.
On a first glance, it might seem self-evident that the existence of distant aliens with dramatically different welfare could not matter morally – if an expert authority were to tell you of such creatures, you might be surprised, shrug a little, but then simply continue on your way, with a largely-unchanged view of the moral value of the universe. However, we should be careful with our intuitions in this case: it is a situation far outside the realms of ordinary human experience, and therefore one we might not be well-equipped to reason about. In particular, humans are well-known to exhibit scope insensitivity and proximity bias, both of which might lead us to underestimate the importance of the existence of these aliens.
To help reason about this case, and isolate the equality-relevant features of it, it’s helpful to distinguish between two negative claims:
(1) It would not matter at all that such aliens existed. Our assessment of the moral value of the universe would be unchanged after learning for certain that some such aliens exist, with (for concreteness) dramatically higher welfare than humans.
(2) It would not matter that these aliens have dramatically higher welfare than humans. Our assessment of the moral value of the universe might change upon learning about these aliens, but for reasons other than the relative amount of their welfare and humans'.
After reflection, an initial reaction of indifference along the lines of claim (1) should seem highly dubious. Given the question’s presupposition that these aliens would indeed have welfare, the fact of their existing and their welfare being high seems like clearly a good thing, ceteris paribus. The stipulation that we would never interact with the aliens does not change the fact that some part of the universe will have much higher welfare than it would have done had they not existed, and any plausible assessment of global moral value will concede that it is increased by that fact.
On the other hand, claim (2) is more defensible. When I reflect on why the aliens’ existence matters morally, I have the intuition that it is in virtue of their welfare alone, and not how it compares to humans. Here are two cases in support of this intuition:
Glorious Earth: Suppose the welfare of each human on Earth is 100. It becomes known that there are aliens in a distant galaxy each with welfare 200.
Grim Earth: Suppose the welfare of each human on Earth is 1. It becomes known that there are aliens in a distant galaxy each with welfare 200.
Intuitively, the discovery in Grim Earth is no less good news than the discovery in Glorious Earth – in either case, we would update positively on the moral value of the universe (contrary to claim (1)), but the posterior assessment does not depend on the amount by which the aliens’ welfare exceeds humans. This bears directly on the significance of equality: if the only morally-relevant feature of the discovery of such aliens is their level of welfare, this seems to falsify egalitarian views which claim that equality matters in itself.
This is not an indefeasible intuition, though. It’s intuitively obvious that Glorious Earth is a better world to be in than Grim Earth, but it is difficult to separate out two differences between them: (i) that the former Pareto-dominates the latter, and (ii) that it is more equal. It would seem wrong to all-things-considered prefer an outcome
Grim Universe: The welfare of each human on Earth is 1, and there are additionally aliens in a distant galaxy each with welfare 1.
to Grim Earth, since nobody is better-off in Grim Universe and some people (the aliens) are worse-off. But conversely, as defenders of egalitarianism against the Levelling Down Objection hold, we might perfectly reasonably have the intuition that there is a respect in which Grim Universe is better than Grim Earth – namely, in respect of equality – even if it is worse overall. This intuition counts against claim (2), because it demonstrates that the quantity of the aliens’ welfare relative to humans’ does matter at least in a respect.
Overall, I think the balance of intuitions favours accepting claim (2), but only weakly so. In any case, let us now examine the what the implications for the significance of equality would be if claim (2) is true.
Following Parfit, we can distinguish between three positions on the value of equality:
(i) Instrumental view: equality is morally significant only insofar as it contributes to other, intrinsic goods.
(ii) Deontic egalitarianism: we have intrinsic reasons to promote equality, and intrinsic reasons against increasing inequality.
(iii) Telic egalitarianism: the existence of inequality is intrinsically bad (perhaps in proportion to the amount of inequality).
There are many commonsense reasons to hold at least (i): my own welfare might be negatively affected if I know about people dramatically better- or worse-off than myself; if there is diminishing marginal value from physical resources, more equal allocations will tend to produce greater aggregate welfare; and so on. Claim (2) is perfectly compatible with this weak account of the significance of equality, since – by stipulation – there are no interactions at all between the aliens and humans, so there’s no mechanism by which the inequality would affect other intrinsic goods.
Claim (2) is also compatible with (ii), if we assume that we not only will not, but moreover cannot, interact with the aliens in any way (for example, because they are outside of our lightcone). Under deontic egalitarianism, there is nothing bad about the existence of unavoidable inequality – so even given claim (2), we can still support views which ascribe intrinsic moral importance to equality, at least in the deontic sense.
It is only telic egalitarianism which is challenged by claim (2), because it is committed to the idea that states of inequality themselves are bad, which is exactly what we have in the aliens cases. In particular, the truth of claim (2) would allow us to reject the monist telic view (that the only source of value is equality), and also the strong pluralist telic view (that although there are sources of value other than equality, sometimes greater equality alone can make a Pareto-dominated outcome better than its dominating alternative). What we could not reject, however, is the moderate pluralist telic view, which holds that equality matters in a respect, yet is always defeated by considerations of wellbeing if one outcome Pareto-dominates the other. Indeed, this is exactly the position that someone who held the countervailing intuition against claim (1) might adopt.
So, to conclude, even if our verdict in the case of the aliens is that their existence matters only in respect of their isolated welfare, and not its relative quantity compared to humans’, we can still preserve egalitarian views which place moral significance on equality.
Post-Claude & examiner report notes
- Maybe it would’ve been good to mention more of the relevant literature & work in this area.
- Aliens is structurally very similar to Egyptology [I recognised this but just didn’t mention it].
- It’s also almost identical to Divided World, which motivates moderate pluralist telic egalitarianism.
- For the deontic view, Rawls is one specific thinker who supports it: “if a situation is unalterable, the question of justice doesn’t arise”.
- I could’ve demonstrated familiarity with Prioritarianism and Sufficientarianism, at least by mentioning them.
- E.g. Frankfurt’s view: “if everyone had enough, it would be of no moral consequence whether some had more than others”.
- And then the fact that, by Separability, Prioritarians are committed to rejecting (2).
- Claim (2) really leaves underdetermined which axiology to go for. So the intro (that equality is not of intrinsic impersonal value) is too strong compared to the conclusion I end up with!
- Moderate pluralist telic egalitarianism survives.
- In particular, the argument could’ve gone more precisely like: if you have the intuition that the gap in welfare doesn’t matter, this can be explained by a lot of theories: Prioritarian separability, sufficientarian indifference, deontic egalitarianism, instrumental egalitarianism, perhaps even moderate pluralist telic egalitarianism. At most, we’re able to rule out monist telic egalitarianism, and have some evidence against strong pluralist.
- Observe that the strong pluralist position seems compatible with claim (2) – they only claim that there exist circumstances where equality considerations outweigh Pareto; it could be in this case that they don’t think that equality filters through to the all-things-considered judgement.
- Obviously there are lots of different operationalisations of the aliens case, e.g. maybe they have lives below sufficiency threshold, or negative lives. Would be infeasible to run through them but maybe gesture at these.
Discussion in class
- One thing unspecified in the question is whether the aliens are above or below some threshold of welfare.