You’re right that communication on this topic hasn’t always been the most clear. :)
This section of my reply to Michael Plant helps explain my view on those questions. I think assessments of the intensities of pain and pleasure necessarily involve significant normative judgment calls, unless you define pain and pleasure in a sufficiently concrete way that it becomes a factual matter. (But that begs the question of what concrete definition is the right one to choose.)
I guess most people who aim to quantify pleasure and pain don’t choose numbers such that unbearable suffering outweighs any amount of pleasure, so the statement you quoted could be said to be mainly about my negative-utilitarian values (though I would say that a view that pleasure can outweigh unbearable suffering is ultimately a statement about someone’s non-negative-utilitarian values).
You’re right that communication on this topic hasn’t always been the most clear. :)
This section of my reply to Michael Plant helps explain my view on those questions. I think assessments of the intensities of pain and pleasure necessarily involve significant normative judgment calls, unless you define pain and pleasure in a sufficiently concrete way that it becomes a factual matter. (But that begs the question of what concrete definition is the right one to choose.)
I guess most people who aim to quantify pleasure and pain don’t choose numbers such that unbearable suffering outweighs any amount of pleasure, so the statement you quoted could be said to be mainly about my negative-utilitarian values (though I would say that a view that pleasure can outweigh unbearable suffering is ultimately a statement about someone’s non-negative-utilitarian values).