Do previous wants of dead people matter? How much?

[thebestofenergy]

The part of moral philosophy that I probably have the most doubts about, is the regard for 'wants' of people who have died (or are vegetables).

While it's clear that wants matter morally, it's not so obvious when it comes to post-mortem wants.

For example, let's take a panting that Joe did. Joe put a lot of effort into it, and cares about it a lot.
He really loves the painting, and doesn't want for it to ever be destroyed.
Joe then dies.

Would it be wrong to destroy the painting? If so, how much so, comparatively with when Joe was still alive?

While intuition leads me to believe breaking the painting would be wrong, I don't have much more than intuition.

If wants matter post-mortem, so would all the 'wants' accumulate.
If you value the painting, why not value all the wishes that people had in the past, cumulatively?

A certain action may be bad. But would it be even worse, considering people that have died in the past would've not wanted for that specific action not to happen?
i.e. Spreading Nazi ideology would be bad. But would it be even worse considering that millions of people that died wanted for it to never be spread again?

Does the harm accumulate, making the action magnitudes worse than what it would actually be? That wouldn't make much sense, but it would be a conclusion of valuing post-mortem wants, unless I'm missing something.
It can be stretched really far, to the point where it doesn't make sense anymore.
Killing a fly could be worse than killing a dog if enough sentient beings wanted the fly not to die in the past.

Which would also mean, actions would get increasingly worse the more time passes (with more and more people adding their wants).

Where is the line drawn? Would the moral relevancy of post-mortem wants decrease over time? Why?

You could argue a dead person simply doesn't have wants. Does that mean there's no reason to respect the wishes of dead people?
Would breaking the painting be as bad as not breaking it?

[Jebus]

I presume @brimstoneSalad will disagree with me on this but no, I don't think they do matter, as long as:

1 any third parties are not affected
2. the person fully believes his future rights will be respected while he is alive

[brimstoneSalad]

The part of moral philosophy that I probably have the most doubts about, is the regard for 'wants' of people who have died (or are vegetables).

It can also be a question of the wants of people who do not yet exist but will exist: such as the shame of your ancestors at being descended from a slave owner and wanting that it had been that you had not kept slaves (or not knowing and still wanting for that to be true).

The point is ultimately taking temporality out of the equation if it's not justified.

For example, let's take a panting that Joe did. Joe put a lot of effort into it, and cares about it a lot.
He really loves the painting, and doesn't want for it to ever be destroyed.
Joe then dies.

Would it be wrong to destroy the painting? If so, how much so, comparatively with when Joe was still alive?

It's probably wrong to about the same degree as destroying the painting while he's still alive and not telling him about it. The deed is done, the question is his experience or lack of experience of that deed.

While intuition leads me to believe breaking the painting would be wrong, I don't have much more than intuition.

The question isn't so much if it would be wrong, but why it would not be.
If interests are what's under consideration (and not just knowledge of the violation of those interests which results in suffering, IOW hedonism) then we would need to explain why an interest in the past (or future) is less important than one today. If the answer is only "I feel like it" that's not very compelling. So past interests being relevant is more the null hypothesis for lack of a reason they would not be.

If wants matter post-mortem, so would all the 'wants' accumulate.
If you value the painting, why not value all the wishes that people had in the past, cumulatively?

Wants tend to aggregate around the person's life, during it and relatively shortly after.
The painter is probably less concerned with the painting surviving a billion years than a thousand, and less concerned with it surviving a thousand than a hundred or ten.

Also, if you want something to last literally forever, attributing any non-infinitesimal value at all to that want at any given time would make your desires (all together) of infinite moral value. In some ways we can regard them that way, but only when comparing them to others' desires for things to last forever. I don't know how much math you've taken, but there's a thing to do with countable and uncountable infinites that is probably relevant here.

A desire, however small, for something in a finite period of time will always outweigh an eternal desire because the latter is stretched infinitely thin and can only be weighed against other infinitely thin desires.

A certain action may be bad. But would it be even worse, considering people that have died in the past would've not wanted for that specific action not to happen?
i.e. Spreading Nazi ideology would be bad. But would it be even worse considering that millions of people that died wanted for it to never be spread again?

Sure, and future interests (although these less often project back in time), but only a very very small amount in a way that can't necessarily even be measured against something trivial.

Killing a fly could be worse than killing a dog if enough sentient beings wanted the fly not to die in the past.

It's more plausible that sentient beings preferred the dog not to die (and will in the future).

Which would also mean, actions would get increasingly worse the more time passes (with more and more people adding their wants).

In physics there's a symmetry to time, there's no reason I know of for it to be inherently different in morality aside from people just thinking and wanting more about the future than the past.

Where is the line drawn? Would the moral relevancy of post-mortem wants decrease over time? Why?

Hope I explained that well enough. The tighter they're clustered, the more relevant they are.

[DaRock]

I would say the wishes of the dead matter as much as the people still living subjectively think they should. It might cause distress (suffering) to know that those who died before you did not have their death wishes respected. This would leave you to believe that your own wishes might not be respected. In that case it is much easier to simply respect their wishes to a subjectively decent degree, knowing your own wishes are more likely to be respected by others close to you for having respected your friend's wishes. If their wishes seem incredibly dumb or harmful (like nazi propaganda) you may not want to respect them, while also acknowledging that your own dumb/harmful wishes (if you die) are also unlikely to be respected if moral stances evolve after you die. When all else fails the golden rule and the Mengzian extension are good rules of thumb to consider.

[thebestofenergy]

It can also be a question of the wants of people who do not yet exist but will exist: such as the shame of your ancestors at being descended from a slave owner and wanting that it had been that you had not kept slaves (or not knowing and still wanting for that to be true).

That's true, I had not considered it in the same light as post-mortem, but prenatal wants would be in the same category, both of them not being 'active' in the present.

You could definitely calculate the chance of you having future generations, and them growing up to adulthood, then them discovering about your past, and finally them being disappointed X amount.

However, this fits into basic consequentialism by creating a better/less bad future for future generations, and reducing future suffering. That will have a direct, statistically calculable effect.

On the other side, the past is gone, so it would have to be consequentialism based on the fact that your actions will have negative/positive consequences based on breaking the interest of past sentient beings, that would have their interests/wants broken if you had done said actions in the future.

Which does make sense, I guess I'm just having to wrap my head around it.
In the same way as the prenatal wants/interests, the chance and the amount of suffering/disappointment is at least approximately calculable basing yourself on the information you have, and seeing how much the sentient being/s taken into consideration would have suffered/rejoiced, had they known/been aware you would have broken/fulfilled their interests/wants by taking X action.

If you value someone's interests, then, ultimately, it would only be consistent to value their interests post-mortem and before birth.

Whether the person is alive or not, by breaking their paintings and not letting them know in case they're alive, you wouldn't inflict any direct suffering.
In both cases, it's the suffering that would've been inflicted had they been made aware that their paintings would have been broken, during their life or after death.

So, if you value not breaking someone's interests when they're alive even if they're not made aware, based on the suffering that would've been inflicted had they been made aware that their interests/wants were broken, it would only make sense to use the same reasoning anywhere else as well, including post-mortem and pre-birth.

I'm not sure why current existence or non-existence would matter with it anymore, as it clearly doesn't with affecting the future either with basic consequentialism.

For example, let's take a panting that Joe did. Joe put a lot of effort into it, and cares about it a lot.
He really loves the painting, and doesn't want for it to ever be destroyed.
Joe then dies.

Would it be wrong to destroy the painting? If so, how much so, comparatively with when Joe was still alive?

It's probably wrong to about the same degree as destroying the painting while he's still alive and not telling him about it. The deed is done, the question is his experience or lack of experience of that deed.

Yeah, I can see how that would be the only consistent stance, and it's starting to make sense.

If wants matter post-mortem, so would all the 'wants' accumulate.
If you value the painting, why not value all the wishes that people had in the past, cumulatively?

Wants tend to aggregate around the person's life, during it and relatively shortly after.
The painter is probably less concerned with the painting surviving a billion years than a thousand, and less concerned with it surviving a thousand than a hundred or ten.

I agree, it's likely he's more concerned with a shorter time period and would become less concerned the longer the time periods taken into consideration become.
Which would also mean that stronger wants, would be more relevant for a longer period of time.

What about set values that people would put?

If someone was to specifically have in mind 100 years for the painting to survive, it wouldn't make sense for the value of that want to diminish much during those 100 years, right?
It would a bit, because breaking it in the first 10 years would be a bigger disappointment than the 99th year, but that heavily depends on how adamant the person's wants would be on the quantity of 100 hundred years and no less.

Also, if you want something to last literally forever, attributing any non-infinitesimal value at all to that want at any given time would make your desires (all together) of infinite moral value.

I understand that, it wouldn't make sense.

A certain action may be bad. But would it be even worse, considering people that have died in the past would've not wanted for that specific action not to happen?
i.e. Spreading Nazi ideology would be bad. But would it be even worse considering that millions of people that died wanted for it to never be spread again?

Sure, and future interests (although these less often project back in time), but only a very very small amount in a way that can't necessarily even be measured against something trivial.

How would you come to the conclusion of how they compare with current stuff?
That's what I'm struggling with. What makes you say that the post-mortem/pre-birth interests/wants would be so small they might not even be measurable against something trivial?

Killing a fly could be worse than killing a dog if enough sentient beings wanted the fly not to die in the past.

It's more plausible that sentient beings preferred the dog not to die (and will in the future).

That's true, but there are current examples in the real world of interests/wants that would be based on personal preference rather than a consistent moral philosophy, which would skew certain scenarios.

Take for example the love that people have for dogs, vs the apathy they have for pigs.
Could the people's love for dogs (and their interests for them to be in the best situation possible) put dogs on a higher moral relevance than pigs, simply because of the interests? That would be very dystopian, but I'm not sure how I would argue against it.

You could say that taking their interests at heart more than the unfairness of such a speciesist system would not be justified, with the unfairness creating situations that would increase suffering magnitudes more.

However, what happens when you take a scenario out of society?
You're in a island, somewhere, with nobody around. You can either kill a dog or a pig to survive (they would give the same amount of food and they would give the same amount of usefulness, just for this hypothesis).
Would there be merit in killing the pig because of the interests of people in having dogs be well?
It seems like it would be incredibly unfair.

Or do you think you'd then have to put the interests of people in having dogs be well, against the interests of people in having pigs be well had they known how morally relevant pigs are as well?

Because that would be in their interests as well, to have all animals of a similar moral relevance of dogs be at a similar value.
It would effectively take out possibly extremely unfair situations.

Which would also mean, actions would get increasingly worse the more time passes (with more and more people adding their wants).

In physics there's a symmetry to time, there's no reason I know of for it to be inherently different in morality aside from people just thinking and wanting more about the future than the past.

Could you explain further what you mean?
I don't understand.

When all else fails the golden rule and the Mengzian extension are good rules of thumb to consider.

That's right, considering the golden rule is a good way of looking at it.
I wouldn't want my interests to be broken post-mortem just like someone that doesn't want to have their interests broken post-mortem wouldn't want to have their interests broken post-mortem.
However, it was more-so with my (and their) interests/wants not being there, active, anymore that I was debating with (after all, I, or they, wouldn't exist anymore).
But it was explained above - if someone's interests matter without their knowledge of them being respected/broken, whether they currently exist or not wouldn't null the value of the interests (that already matter without their awareness of them being respected/broken anyway).

[brimstoneSalad]

You could definitely calculate the chance of you having future generations, and them growing up to adulthood, then them discovering about your past, and finally them being disappointed X amount.

It's not just if they discover it, just the fact of it even without discovery.

If someone was to specifically have in mind 100 years for the painting to survive, it wouldn't make sense for the value of that want to diminish much during those 100 years, right?

It's probably prorated. However, if not, then it would not be wrong to destroy the painting immediately IF we knew it could not possibly survive 100 years (if 100 years or might as well be nothing is the desire there).

How would you come to the conclusion of how they compare with current stuff?
That's what I'm struggling with. What makes you say that the post-mortem/pre-birth interests/wants would be so small they might not even be measurable against something trivial?

IF they are for all time. A divide by infinity issue.

That's true, but there are current examples in the real world of interests/wants that would be based on personal preference rather than a consistent moral philosophy, which would skew certain scenarios.

Unlikely in aggregate. Keep in mind averaging across all cultures and for all of time, even other worlds (we would prefer factory farming not be happening in another star system).

Or do you think you'd then have to put the interests of people in having dogs be well, against the interests of people in having pigs be well had they known how morally relevant pigs are as well?

You can account for idealized interests, but only to a certain point because people and their interests can be irrational.
E.g. a devoted Muslim or Evangelical isn't necessarily even interested in knowing that his or her religion is not true, and thus the effect on that information may be irrelevant to beliefs around those conservative values that would be (to a small degree) relevant.

Could you explain further what you mean?
I don't understand.

Despite time being symmetrical, people are not necessarily so: they think more about the future and thus are more interested in the future than the past.

[NickNack]

I would say there is a big difference between respecting someone's wishes who are alive (or will become alive) versus who are dead. The reason its wrong to not respect someone's wishes when they are alive is because you are likely to negatively effect their wellbeing in the future by doing so, but if they are dead, there is no wellbeing to effect besides others. So then its only a matter of how it effects everyone who is currently alive or who will become alive. So you have to simply ask, "does the wellbeing of not following thru with the wish hurt more then it helps everyone in the present and the future?"