If welfare is a unified concept and if welfare is a morally significant category across species, it seems as if invariabilism is the better option. Invariabilism is the simpler view, and it avoids the explanatory pitfalls of variabilism at little intuitive cost. While we should certainly leave open the possibility that variabilism is the correct view, in what follows I will assume invariabilism.
These also seems like reasons to reject objective list theories and higher and lower pleasures in favour of simpler hedonistic or desire-fulfilment theories of welfare.
“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides”
But what if the human or Socrates disagrees that their pleasures are higher? It seems like we’d be overriding preferences to claim that certain kinds of pleasures are higher pleasures, and if some people who experience both don’t recognize any pleasures as higher, we’d have to explain why they’re wrong, and it would also seem to follow that most people are making pretty bad tradeoffs in their lives by not prioritizing higher pleasures enough.
These also seems like reasons to reject objective list theories and higher and lower pleasures in favour of simpler hedonistic or desire-fulfilment theories of welfare.
But what if the human or Socrates disagrees that their pleasures are higher? It seems like we’d be overriding preferences to claim that certain kinds of pleasures are higher pleasures, and if some people who experience both don’t recognize any pleasures as higher, we’d have to explain why they’re wrong, and it would also seem to follow that most people are making pretty bad tradeoffs in their lives by not prioritizing higher pleasures enough.