[The Equality Result:] chickens and humans can realize roughly the same amount of welfare at any given time.
Do your arguments really support this? Or just the weaker S-Equality Result, that chickens and humans have roughly the same capacity to suffer negative welfare?
fwiw, only that weaker claim seems plausible to me, since the hedonic contribution to welfare strikes me as plausibly asymmetric: suffering is very bad, but mere pleasure is only mildly good. I think the vast majority of positive well-being comes from non-hedonic sources. So I don’t think chickens or wireheading humans can realize much positive well-being at all—like, orders of magnitude less than a well-lived human life (featuring love, genuine accomplishments, etc.).
Thanks for this question, Richard. You’re right that I don’t focus on positive affective states in the post, though I think most of the arguments would port over. In any case, since the MWP assumes hedonism, the result that chickens and wireheaded humans can realize the same amount of welfare is still pretty significant. Indeed, even the weaker S-Equality Result is significant if your asymmetry hypothesis is correct, as S-Equality would get you most of the way toward (plain old) Equality.
Separately, and as you might guess, I’m skeptical of the view that humans who are maxed out hedonically are still realizing orders of magnitude less welfare than humans who are flourishing by more conventional standards. I think the intuitions that support that view boil down to humans preferring the human way of life—a preference that doesn’t strike me as having much evidential value. But I suppose that’s a conversation for another time!
Do your arguments really support this? Or just the weaker S-Equality Result, that chickens and humans have roughly the same capacity to suffer negative welfare?
fwiw, only that weaker claim seems plausible to me, since the hedonic contribution to welfare strikes me as plausibly asymmetric: suffering is very bad, but mere pleasure is only mildly good. I think the vast majority of positive well-being comes from non-hedonic sources. So I don’t think chickens or wireheading humans can realize much positive well-being at all—like, orders of magnitude less than a well-lived human life (featuring love, genuine accomplishments, etc.).
Thanks for this question, Richard. You’re right that I don’t focus on positive affective states in the post, though I think most of the arguments would port over. In any case, since the MWP assumes hedonism, the result that chickens and wireheaded humans can realize the same amount of welfare is still pretty significant. Indeed, even the weaker S-Equality Result is significant if your asymmetry hypothesis is correct, as S-Equality would get you most of the way toward (plain old) Equality.
Separately, and as you might guess, I’m skeptical of the view that humans who are maxed out hedonically are still realizing orders of magnitude less welfare than humans who are flourishing by more conventional standards. I think the intuitions that support that view boil down to humans preferring the human way of life—a preference that doesn’t strike me as having much evidential value. But I suppose that’s a conversation for another time!