It sounds like part of what youâre saying is that itâs hard to say what counts as a âsuffering-focused ethical viewâ if we include views that are pluralistic (rather than only caring about suffering), and that part of the reason for this is that itâs hard to know what âcommon unitâ we could use for both suffering and other things.
I agree with those things. But I still think the concept of âsuffering-focused ethicsâ is useful. See the posts cited in my other reply for some discussion of these points (I imagine youâve already read them and just think that they donât fully resolve the issue, and I think youâd be right about that).
What would count as weakly suffering-focused to you? Giving 2x more weight to suffering than you would want to in your personal tradeoffs? 2x more weight to suffering than pleasure at the same âobjective intensityâ? Even less than 2x?
I think this question isnât quite framed rightâit seems to assume that the only suffering-focused view we have in mind is some form of negative utilitarianism, and seems to ignore population ethics issues. (Iâm not saying you actually think that SFE is just about NU or that population ethics isnât relevant, just that that text seems to imply that.)
E.g., an SFE view might prioritise suffering-reduction not exactly because it gives more weight to suffering than pleasure in normal decision situations, but rather because it endorses âthe asymmetryâ.
But basically, I guess Iâd count a view as weakly suffering-focused if, in a substantial number of decision situations I care a lot about (e.g., career choice), it places noticeably âmoreâ importance on reducing suffering by some amount than on achieving other goals âto a similar amountâ. (Maybe âto a similar amountâ could be defined from the perspective of classical utilitarianism.) This is of course vague, and that definition is just one Iâve written now rather than this being something Iâve focused a lot of time on. But it still seems a useful concept to have.
It sounds like part of what youâre saying is that itâs hard to say what counts as a âsuffering-focused ethical viewâ if we include views that are pluralistic (rather than only caring about suffering), and that part of the reason for this is that itâs hard to know what âcommon unitâ we could use for both suffering and other things.
I agree with those things. But I still think the concept of âsuffering-focused ethicsâ is useful. See the posts cited in my other reply for some discussion of these points (I imagine youâve already read them and just think that they donât fully resolve the issue, and I think youâd be right about that).
I think this question isnât quite framed rightâit seems to assume that the only suffering-focused view we have in mind is some form of negative utilitarianism, and seems to ignore population ethics issues. (Iâm not saying you actually think that SFE is just about NU or that population ethics isnât relevant, just that that text seems to imply that.)
E.g., an SFE view might prioritise suffering-reduction not exactly because it gives more weight to suffering than pleasure in normal decision situations, but rather because it endorses âthe asymmetryâ.
But basically, I guess Iâd count a view as weakly suffering-focused if, in a substantial number of decision situations I care a lot about (e.g., career choice), it places noticeably âmoreâ importance on reducing suffering by some amount than on achieving other goals âto a similar amountâ. (Maybe âto a similar amountâ could be defined from the perspective of classical utilitarianism.) This is of course vague, and that definition is just one Iâve written now rather than this being something Iâve focused a lot of time on. But it still seems a useful concept to have.