Max Khan Hayward (University of Sheffield): ‘Jam Tomorrow and the New Repugnant Conclusion: Puzzles for Longtermism’

Abstract: Longtermists think we should be impartial between the interests of those who live today and those who will live in the future. They also tend to endorse an act-utilitarian account of moral reasons (at least within the domain of long-term strategic planning). Such impartiality seems to require agents to accept deferring trade-offs, sacrificing the option to acquire smaller benefits in the present for the option to acquire greater future benefits. However, this principle may require us to perform an infinite series of deferring trade-offs, whereby no-one will ever come to enjoy the benefit. If we always choose more jam tomorrow over less jam today, we will never eat jam. This is the first version of the Jam Tomorrow paradox.

This might not seem like a real problem, since we are unlikely to have the opportunity to make an infinite series of deferring trade-offs. That would only eventuate if the future of sentient life were infinite, if opportunities for benefit were always increasing, and if future planners were always rational act-utilitarians. However, Longtermists should hope for these conditions, and strive to bring them about. Yet doing so would mean the re-emergence of the paradoxical dynamic, and no one would get to eat any jam. This is the second version of the Jam Tomorrow paradox.

We could deny that we always have reason to make deferring trade-offs by rejecting the act-utilitarian account of moral reasons. Or we could conclude that it would not be an inherently good thing if the future of sentient life continued forever. However, neither option is available to those who endorse totalist act-utilitarianism. Indeed, this view implies that we should accept lives worse than death in order to increase the chances that sentient life survives into the future. But continuing to accept this trade-off would bring about an outcome even worse than extinction. This is the New Repugnant Conclusion.

I conclude that considerations of the long-term are deeply troubling for act-utilitarianism, and especially for total utilitarianism.

Max Khan Hayward is a Senior Lecturer in Ethics and Political Philosophy at the University of Sheffield.

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