On your last point about positive and negative affect, I’d also add that we don’t have good reason to believe they’re measurable cardinally, either. If we try to use people’s intuitive preferred tradeoffs, then there’s really no one size fits all. Maybe we could ask people to judge relative intensities.
I also think trying to balance affect won’t lead to a prior existence view, since that’s too fragile. Just a little higher, and then we’re positive; and just a little lower, and then we’re negative. Also, it will depend on the population distribution and other morally irrelevant factors to the question of how they should be balanced, some of which we manipulate, e.g. improving quality of life.
Just to flag: I’ve nearly finished another paper where I explore whether measures of subjective states are cardinally and conclude they probably are (at least, on average). Stay tuned.
There are many parts to this topic and I’m not sure whether you’re denying (1) that subjective states are experienced in cardinal units or (2) that they are experienced in cardinal units but that our measures are (for one reason or another) not cardinal. I think you mean the former. But we do think of affect as being experienced in cardinal units, otherwise we wouldn’t say things like “this will hurt you as much as it hurts me”. Asking people to state their preferences doesn’t solve the problem: what we are inquiring about are the intensities of sensations, not what you would choose, so asking about the latter doesn’t address the former.
But we do think of affect as being experienced in cardinal units, otherwise we wouldn’t say things like “this will hurt you as much as it hurts me”
I think this is merely a statement of ordinal ranking (of course compatible with cardinal ranking). The issue is with statements like “X was 2x more intense than Y”. I’m skeptical that these can be grounded. We could take people’s intuitive judgements of relative intensities, but it’s not clear these are reliable and valid/get at anything fundamental.
And even if they are reliable, they may well end up conflicting with most people’s (and animals’) intuitions about what kinds of tradeoffs they’d prefer to make in their own lives. Should moral value be exactly equal to the signed intensity? I guess we have more reason for this on an internalist account (I remember you recommended Hedonism Reconsidered to me).
If we look at brain activity, there won’t be any obviously correct cardinal measure to come out of it, since brain functions are very nonlinear. We can count how many neurons are firing in some region, but there’s no reason to believe intensity scales linearly with the number, rather than the square or square root or anything else.
I will try a slightly different claim that links neuropsychology to moral philosophy then. If you think maximizing well-being is the key aim of morality, and you do this with some balance of positive and negative affect, then I predict your balance of positive and negative affect at least as an empirical matter will change your ideal number of people to populate the Earth and other environments with in the total view.
Maybe it’s too obvious: if we’re totally insensitive to negative affect, then adding any number of people who experience any level of positive affect is helpful. If we’re insensitive to positive affect then total view would lead to advocating the extinction of conscious life (would Schopenhauer almost have found himself endorsing that view if it was put to him?). And there would be points all along the range in the middle that would lead to varying conclusions about optimal population. It might go some way to making total view seem less counterintuitive.
On your last point about positive and negative affect, I’d also add that we don’t have good reason to believe they’re measurable cardinally, either. If we try to use people’s intuitive preferred tradeoffs, then there’s really no one size fits all. Maybe we could ask people to judge relative intensities.
I also think trying to balance affect won’t lead to a prior existence view, since that’s too fragile. Just a little higher, and then we’re positive; and just a little lower, and then we’re negative. Also, it will depend on the population distribution and other morally irrelevant factors to the question of how they should be balanced, some of which we manipulate, e.g. improving quality of life.
Just to flag: I’ve nearly finished another paper where I explore whether measures of subjective states are cardinally and conclude they probably are (at least, on average). Stay tuned.
There are many parts to this topic and I’m not sure whether you’re denying (1) that subjective states are experienced in cardinal units or (2) that they are experienced in cardinal units but that our measures are (for one reason or another) not cardinal. I think you mean the former. But we do think of affect as being experienced in cardinal units, otherwise we wouldn’t say things like “this will hurt you as much as it hurts me”. Asking people to state their preferences doesn’t solve the problem: what we are inquiring about are the intensities of sensations, not what you would choose, so asking about the latter doesn’t address the former.
I think this is merely a statement of ordinal ranking (of course compatible with cardinal ranking). The issue is with statements like “X was 2x more intense than Y”. I’m skeptical that these can be grounded. We could take people’s intuitive judgements of relative intensities, but it’s not clear these are reliable and valid/get at anything fundamental.
And even if they are reliable, they may well end up conflicting with most people’s (and animals’) intuitions about what kinds of tradeoffs they’d prefer to make in their own lives. Should moral value be exactly equal to the signed intensity? I guess we have more reason for this on an internalist account (I remember you recommended Hedonism Reconsidered to me).
If we look at brain activity, there won’t be any obviously correct cardinal measure to come out of it, since brain functions are very nonlinear. We can count how many neurons are firing in some region, but there’s no reason to believe intensity scales linearly with the number, rather than the square or square root or anything else.
Looking forward to your next paper! :)
Yes you’re right.
I will try a slightly different claim that links neuropsychology to moral philosophy then. If you think maximizing well-being is the key aim of morality, and you do this with some balance of positive and negative affect, then I predict your balance of positive and negative affect at least as an empirical matter will change your ideal number of people to populate the Earth and other environments with in the total view.
Maybe it’s too obvious: if we’re totally insensitive to negative affect, then adding any number of people who experience any level of positive affect is helpful. If we’re insensitive to positive affect then total view would lead to advocating the extinction of conscious life (would Schopenhauer almost have found himself endorsing that view if it was put to him?). And there would be points all along the range in the middle that would lead to varying conclusions about optimal population. It might go some way to making total view seem less counterintuitive.