It sounds like part of what you’re saying is that it’s hard to say what counts as a “suffering-focused ethical view” if we include views that are pluralistic (rather than only caring about suffering), and that part of the reason for this is that it’s hard to know what “common unit” we could use for both suffering and other things.
I agree with those things. But I still think the concept of “suffering-focused ethics” is useful. See the posts cited in my other reply for some discussion of these points (I imagine you’ve already read them and just think that they don’t fully resolve the issue, and I think you’d 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 “objective intensity”? Even less than 2x?
I think this question isn’t quite framed right—it 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. (I’m not saying you actually think that SFE is just about NU or that population ethics isn’t 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 “the asymmetry”.
But basically, I guess I’d 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 “more” importance on reducing suffering by some amount than on achieving other goals “to a similar amount”. (Maybe “to a similar amount” could be defined from the perspective of classical utilitarianism.) This is of course vague, and that definition is just one I’ve written now rather than this being something I’ve focused a lot of time on. But it still seems a useful concept to have.
It sounds like part of what you’re saying is that it’s hard to say what counts as a “suffering-focused ethical view” if we include views that are pluralistic (rather than only caring about suffering), and that part of the reason for this is that it’s hard to know what “common unit” we could use for both suffering and other things.
I agree with those things. But I still think the concept of “suffering-focused ethics” is useful. See the posts cited in my other reply for some discussion of these points (I imagine you’ve already read them and just think that they don’t fully resolve the issue, and I think you’d be right about that).
I think this question isn’t quite framed right—it 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. (I’m not saying you actually think that SFE is just about NU or that population ethics isn’t 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 “the asymmetry”.
But basically, I guess I’d 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 “more” importance on reducing suffering by some amount than on achieving other goals “to a similar amount”. (Maybe “to a similar amount” could be defined from the perspective of classical utilitarianism.) This is of course vague, and that definition is just one I’ve written now rather than this being something I’ve focused a lot of time on. But it still seems a useful concept to have.