Klaus: Sometimes how well or badly off you are at time t1 depends on what happens at a later time t2. A particularly compelling case of this is when at t1 you performedan onerous action with the goal of producing some effect E at t2. How well off you were in performing the action depends on whether the action succeeded—which depends on whether E eventuates at t2. But now suppose the future is open. Then in a world with as much indeterminacy as ours, in many cases at t1 it will be contingent whether the event at t2 on which your well-being at t1 depends eventuates. And on open future views, at t1 there will then be no fact of the matter about your well-being. Hence, the future is not open.
Opie: In such cases, your well-being should be located at t2 rather than at t1. If you jump the crevasse, it is only when you land that you have the well-being of success.
Klaus: This does not work as well in cases where you are dead at t2. And yet our well-being does sometimes depend on what happens after we are dead. The action at t1 might be a heroic sacrifice of one’s life to save one’s friends—but whether one is a successful hero or a tragic hero depends on whether the friends will be saved, which may depend on what happens after one is already dead.
Opie: Thanks! You just gave me an argument for an afterlife. In cases like this, you are obviously better off if you manage to save your friends, but you aren’t better off in this life, so there must be life after death.
Klaus: But we also have the intuition that even if there were no afterlife, it would be better to be the successful hero than the tragic hero, and that posthumous fame is better than posthumous infamy.
Opie: There is an afterlife. You’ve convinced me. And moral intuitions about how things would be if our existence had a radically different shape from the one it in fact has are suspect. And, given that there is an afterlife, a scenario without an afterlife is a scenario where our existence has a radically different shape. Thus the intuition you cite is unreliable.
Klaus: That’s a good response. Let me try a different case. Suppose you perform an onerous action with a goal within this life, but then you change your mind about the goal and work to prevent that goal. This works best if both goals are morally acceptable, and switching goals is acceptable. For instance you initially worked to help the Niners train to win their baseball game against the Logicians, but then your allegiance shifted to the Logicians in a way that isn't morally questionable. And then suppose the Niners won. Your actions in favor of the Niners are successful, and you have well-being. But it is incorrect to locate that well-being at the time of the actual victory, since at that time you are working for the Logicians, not the Niners. So the well-being must be located at the time of your activity, and at that time it depends on future contingents.
Opie: Perhaps I should say that at the time Niners beat the Logicians, you are both well-off and badly-off, since one of your past goals is successful and the other is unsuccessful. But I agree that this doesn’t quite seem right. After all, if you are loyal to your current employer, you’re bummed out about the Logicians’ loss and you’re bummed out that you weren’t working for them from the beginning. So intuitively you're just badly off at this time, not both badly and well off. So, I admit, this is a little bit of evidence against open future views.
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I think there’s a typo+missing clause in Klaus’s last response. (You switch from working for the Niners to working for the Logicians, right?)
I don’t share Opie’s intuition that you’re *only* badly off at the time when the Logicians lose. Assuming that you switched employers for neutral reasons (you didn’t discover that the Niners were shady or something), you should be able to appreciate the Niners’ achievement regardless. If, in the interview after the game, you might say you wish you hadn’t worked for the Niners or taught their weakest player to bunt, but if you don’t have a twinkle in your eye to indicate that you are partly joking, I would think you were a sore loser. In fact, I don’t think talking about the loyalties ‘switching’ quite captures everything that is going on when you switch teams. You commit yourself to *working* for the new team (trying to benefit them) but I think you retain a certain sort of unity with your former team, which unity includes normative implications for what you ought to appreciate in them. Most sports fans seem to have ranked preferences: “I always root for the Browns unless they play the Broncos.” And they report feeling at least somewhat differently about cases when their second favorite team beats their favorite team.
(The lingering unity might also have normative implications for how you can benefit your new employer, and not just for appreciation. Think about the episode of TNG (S2E8) where Riker serves on a Klingon vessel. Riker says, if so ordered, he is obligated to fight and die in a battle against the Enterprise—even a battle he considers to be foolish—but he is simultaneously obligated not to give up secrets of the Enterprise. I’m not sure Riker was right about the details of his obligations in that case, but there is certainly logical space for this sort of thing.)
Thanks for the catch. Typo fixed.
I think you're right that there might be some leftover appreciation of the Niners' achievement. But it's not quite the wellbeing of success, and yet you do have the wellbeing of success whenever you perform a successful action, and you DID perform a successful action in training the Niners.
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