The “cardinal hedonist” might object that X (e.g. introspective judgement of intensity) could be identical to our hedonistic experiences, or does track their cardinality closely enough.
I think, as a matter of fact, X will necessarily involve extra (neural) machinery that can distort our judgements, as I illustrate with the reinforcement learning case. It could be that our judgements are still approximately correct despite this, though.
Most importantly, the accuracy of our judgements depends on there being something fundamental that they’re tracking in the first place, so I think hedonists who use cardinal judgements of intensity owe us a good explanation for where this supposed cardinality comes from, which I expect is not possible with our current understanding of neuroscience, and I’m skeptical that it will ever be possible. I think there’s a great deal of unavoidable arbitrariness in our understanding of consciousness.
The “cardinal hedonist” might object that X (e.g. introspective judgement of intensity) could be identical to our hedonistic experiences, or does track their cardinality closely enough.
I think, as a matter of fact, X will necessarily involve extra (neural) machinery that can distort our judgements, as I illustrate with the reinforcement learning case. It could be that our judgements are still approximately correct despite this, though.
Most importantly, the accuracy of our judgements depends on there being something fundamental that they’re tracking in the first place, so I think hedonists who use cardinal judgements of intensity owe us a good explanation for where this supposed cardinality comes from, which I expect is not possible with our current understanding of neuroscience, and I’m skeptical that it will ever be possible. I think there’s a great deal of unavoidable arbitrariness in our understanding of consciousness.