Friday, October 9, 2009
Defining 'Improvement'
The idea of improvement of the human condition seems obviously desirable. However, I have heard some people question the legitimacy of "improvement" in such a way as to suggest that any conception of 'improvement' is arbitrary. I propose that any physical or cognitive advantage for the individual is an improvement in the sense that I am suggesting. What will constitute an advantage will vary depending on changing environmental conditions; however, our environmental conditions seem stable enough to fix this idea to the extent necessary. The idea is to give individuals capabilities which they do not currently have.
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Is the idea to give them any capability that they do not currently have? Or should it be restricted to capabilities that make the individual better?
ReplyDeleteThen we need to define 'better'...and anyway, doesn't it seem good to have any additional capabilites, assuming there are no contingent negative trade-offs?
ReplyDeleteWhy not just define 'better'? How about we give a scientific definition of 'better'? I think your worry is that we have to give a definition that would be acceptable to philosophers, and we might have to, but to get things started let's try this
ReplyDelete"The addition of a capability is an improvement if and only if the capability allows the individual to function in his/her enviroment more efficiently (or more freely) than before the addition of the capability."
This definition is only meant to be preliminary, and I am sure that you and every other philosopher who looks at it will want to improve upon it (no pun intended) or else get rid of it and replace it with a better definition.
Okay. I have an impovement to the definition that I gave.
ReplyDelete"The addition of a capability is an improvement to an individual if and only if the capability allows the individual to function in his/her enviroment more efficiently (or more freely) than before the addition of the capability."
We could focus on the increase of choices given to an individual.
ReplyDeleteSo:"The addition of a capability is an improvement to an individual if and only if the capability allows the individual to have more open choices in a given environmental context than before the addition of the capability."
What about Jon Jone's old worry that too many choices leads to bad consequences (i.e. indecision).
ReplyDeleteThat would be a contingent trade-off.
ReplyDeletePlus one type of improvement would be the ability to handle higher amounts of information in our decision making process.
Good point.
ReplyDeleteIt's not merely that more options leads to indecision. It's also that, as one examines options, one builds an Ideal Option which combines the best parts of each option. The more options one examines, the more features this Ideal Option has, and the farther any actual option is from the Ideal Option. When one chooses an option, one thing that happens is a comparison with the Ideal Option. Thus, the more options one has, the less satisfied one will be with any particular option.
ReplyDeleteFor example, if I am choosing between two trucks, the main difference might be that one is more attractive, while the other has more storage capacity. Then I start looking into smaller vehicles, and I discover another nice feature of such vehicles: they get a lot of miles per gallon. Suppose, after deliberation, I decide that one of the trucks has the best overall features. Still, I will be disappointed about its mileage, which I may not have even considered if I had never looked into smaller vehicles.
Welcome Jon! Glad you could break away from that Dissertation to join us.
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