But we do think of affect as being experienced in cardinal units, otherwise we wouldnāt say things like āthis will hurt you as much as it hurts meā
I think this is merely a statement of ordinal ranking (of course compatible with cardinal ranking). The issue is with statements like āX was 2x more intense than Yā. Iām skeptical that these can be grounded. We could take peopleās intuitive judgements of relative intensities, but itās not clear these are reliable and valid/āget at anything fundamental.
And even if they are reliable, they may well end up conflicting with most peopleās (and animalsā) intuitions about what kinds of tradeoffs theyād 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 wonāt 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 thereās no reason to believe intensity scales linearly with the number, rather than the square or square root or anything else.
I think this is merely a statement of ordinal ranking (of course compatible with cardinal ranking). The issue is with statements like āX was 2x more intense than Yā. Iām skeptical that these can be grounded. We could take peopleās intuitive judgements of relative intensities, but itās not clear these are reliable and valid/āget at anything fundamental.
And even if they are reliable, they may well end up conflicting with most peopleās (and animalsā) intuitions about what kinds of tradeoffs theyād 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 wonāt 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 thereās 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! :)