We should fix and normalize relative to the moral value of human welfare, because our understanding of the value of welfare is based on our own experiences of welfare
I used to think this for exactly the same reason, but I now no longer do. The basic reason I changed my mind is the idea that uncertainty in the amount of welfare humans (or chickens) experience is naturally scale invariant. This scale invariance means that observing any particular absolute amount of welfare (by experiencing it directly) shouldnât update you as to the relative amount of welfare under different theories.
The following is a fairly âheuristicâ version of the argument, I spent some time trying to formalise it better but got stuck on the maths, so Iâm giving the version that was in my head before I tried that. Iâm quite convinced itâs basically true though.
The argument
Consider only theories that allow the most aggregation-friendly version of hedonistic utilitarianism[1]. Under this constraint, the total amount of utility experienced by one or more moral patients is some real quantity that can be expressed in objective units (âhedonsâ), and this quantity is comparable across the theories that we are allowing. You might imagine that you could consult God as to the utility of various world states and He could say truthfully âah, stubbing your toe is â1 hedonâ. In your post you also suppose that you can measure this amount yourself through direct experience, which I find reasonable.
From the perspective of someone who is unable to experience utility themselves, there is a natural scale invariance to this quantity. This is clearest when considering the âoughtâ side of the theory: the recommendations of utilitarianism are unchanged if you scale utility up and down by any amount as it doesnât affect the rank ordering of world states.
Another way to get this intuition is to imagine an unfeeling robot that derives the concept of utility from some combination of interviewing moral patients and constructing a first principles theory[2]. It could even get the correct theory, and derive that e.g. breaking your arm is 10 times as bad as stubbing your toe. It would still be in the dark about how bad these things are in absolute terms though. If God told it that stubbing your toe was â1 hedons that wouldnât mean anything to the robot. God could play a prank on the robot and tell it stubbing your toe was instead â1 millihedons, or even temporarily imbue the robot with the ability to feel pain and expose it to â1 millihedons and say âthatâs what stubbing your toe feels likeâ. This should be equally unsurprising to the robot as being told/âexperiencing â1 hedon.
My claim is that the epistemic position of all the different theories of welfare are effectively that of this robot. And as a result of this, observing any absolute amount of welfare (utility) under theory A shouldnât update you as to what the amount would be under theory B, because both theories were consistent with any absolute amount of welfare to begin with. In fact they were âmaximally uncertainâ about the absolute amount, no amount should be any more or less of a surprise under either theory.
If you had a prior reason to think theory B gives say 5 times the welfare to humans as theory A (importantly in relative terms), then you should still think this after observing the absolute amount yourself, and this is what generates the thorny version of the two envelopes problem. I think there are sensible prior reasons to think there is such a relative difference for various pairs of theories.
For instance, suppose both A and B are essentially âneuron countâ theories and agree on some threshold brain complexity for sentience, but then A says âamount of sentienceâ scales linearly with neuron count whereas B says it scales quadratically. Itâs reasonable to think that the amount of welfare in humans is much higher under B, maybe (n/nthreshold)2(n/nthreshold)=nnthreshold times higher.
Other examples where arguments like this can be made are:
A and B are predicting chicken welfare rather than human, and A says they are sentient whereas B says they are not. Clearly B predicts 0 times the welfare of A (equivalently A predicts infinity times the welfare of B)
Putting this in two envelopes terms
If we say we have two theories, 1 and 2, which you might imagine are a human centric (C1/H1=10â10, p1=0.9)[4] and an animal-inclusive (C2/H2=0.01, p2=0.1) view, then we have:
E(CH)=p1C1H1+p2C2H2â0.001
And
E(HC)=p1H1C1+p2H2C2â9Ă109â 1/E(CH)
As we are used to seeing.
But as you point out in your post, the quantities H1 and H2 are not necessarily the same (though you argue they should be treated as such) which makes this a nonsensical average of dimensionless numbers. E.g.H1 could be 0.00001 hedons and H2 could be 10 hedons, which would mean we are massively overcounting theory 1. The quantities we actually care about are E(C) and E(H) (dimension-ed numbers in units of hedons), or their ratio E(C)/E(H). We can write these as:
This may seem like a roundabout way of writing these down, but remember that what we have from our welfare range estimates are values for Ci/Hi, so these canât be cancelled further and the His are the minimum number of parameters we can add to pin down the equations. The ratio E(C)/E(H) is then:
E(C)/E(H)=p1H1ÂŻH(C1H1)+p2H2ÂŻH(C2H2)(3)
I find this easier to think about if the ratios are in terms of a specific theory, e.g. H1, so you are always comparing what the relative amount of welfare is in theory X vs some definite reference theory. We can rearrange (3) to support this by dividing all the fractions though by H1:
E(C)/E(H)=1^H(p1H1H1(C1H1)+p2H2H1(C2H2))(4)
Where
^H=ÂŻH/H1=p1H1H1+p2H2H1
Again, maybe this seems incredibly roundabout, but in this form it is more clear that we now only need the ratiosHi/H1 not their absolute values. This is good according to the previous claims I have made:
Because of scale invariance, itâs not possible to say anything about the absolute value of Hi
It is possible to reason about the relative welfare values between theories, represented by Hi/H1
So under this framing the âsolution to the two envelopes problem for moral weightsâ is that you need to estimate the inter-theoretic welfare ratios for humans (or any reference moral patient), as well as the intra-theoretic ratios between moral patients. I.e. you have to estimate Hi/H1 as well as Ci/Hi and pi for each theory.
I think this is still quite a big problem because of the potential for arguing that some theories have combinatorially higher welfare than others, thus causing them to dominate even if you put a very low probability on them. The neuron count example above is like this, you could make it even worse by supposing a theory where welfare is exponential in neuron count.
Returning to the human-centric vs animal inclusive toy example
If we say we have two theories, 1 and 2, which you might imagine are a human centric (C1/H1=10â10, p1=0.9)[4] and a animal-inclusive (C2/H2=0.01, p2=0.1) view
Adding these Hi/H1 numbers into this example we now have:
E(C)/E(H)=1^H(0.9(10â10)+0.1H2H1(0.01))(4)
What should the value of H2/H1 be? Well in this case I think itâs reasonable to suppose H1 and H2 are in fact equal, as we donât have any principled reason not to, so this still comes out to ~0.001. As in the original version we can flip this around to see if we get a wildly different answer if we make the inter-theoretic comparison be between chickens:
E(H)/E(C)=1^C(0.9(1010)+0.1C2C1(100))(4)
Now what should C2/C1 be, recalling that theory 1 says chickens are worth very little compared to humans? I think itâs reasonable say that C1 is also very little compared to C2, since the point of theory 1 is basically to suppose chickens arenât (or are barely) sentient, and not to say anything about humans. Supposing that none of the difference is explained by humans, we get C2/C1=108, this also gives ^Câ107, so E(H)/E(C) comes out to ~1000. This is the inverse of E(C)/E(H) as we expect.
Clearly this is just rearranging the same numbers to get the same result, but hopefully it illustrates how explicitly including these Hi/H1 ratios makes the two envelope problem that you get by naively inverting the ratios less spooky, because by doing so you are effectively wildly changing the estimates of Hi/H1.
I agree with you that there are many cases where for the specific theories under consideration it is right to assume that H1 and H2 are equal (because we have no principled reason not to), but that this is not because we are able to observe welfare directly (even if we suppose that this is possible). And for many pairs of theories we might think H1 and H2 are very different.
(Apologies for switching back and forth between âwelfareâ and âutilityâ, Iâm basically treating them both like âutilityâ)
I think itâs right to start with this case, because it should be the easiest. So if something breaks in this case it is likely to also break once we start trying to include things like non-welfare moral reasons
Thereâs a lot here, so Iâll respond to what seems to be most cruxy to me.
Another way to get this intuition is to imagine an unfeeling robot that derives the concept of utility from some combination of interviewing moral patients and constructing a first principles theory[2]. It could even get the correct theory, and derive that e.g. breaking your arm is 10 times as bad as stubbing your toe. It would still be in the dark about how bad these things are in absolute terms though.
I agree with this, but I donât think this is our epistemic position, because we can understand all value relative to our own experiences. (See also a thread about an unfeeling moral agent here.)
My claim is that the epistemic position of all the different theories of welfare are effectively that of this robot. And as a result of this, observing any absolute amount of welfare (utility) under theory A shouldnât update you as to what the amount would be under theory B, because both theories were consistent with any absolute amount of welfare to begin with. In fact they were âmaximally uncertainâ about the absolute amount, no amount should be any more or less of a surprise under either theory.
I agree that directly observing the value of a toe stub, say, under hedonism might not tell you much or anything about its absolute value under non-hedonistic theories of welfare.[1]
However, I think we can say more under variants of closer precise theories. I think you can fix the badness of a specific toe stub across many precise theories. But then also separately fix the badness of a papercut and many other things under the same theories. This is because some theories are meant to explain the same things, and itâs those things to which weâre assigning value, not directly to the theories themselves. See this section of my post. And those things in practice are human welfare (or yours specifically), and so we can just take the (accessed) human-relative stances.
You illustrate with neuron count theories, and I would in fact say we should fix human welfare across those theories (under hedonism, say, and perhaps separately for different reference point welfare states), so evidence about absolute value under one hedonistic neuron count theory would be evidence about absolute value under other hedonistic theories.
I suspect conscious subsystems donât necessarily generate a two envelopes problem; you just need to calculate the expected number of subsystems and their expected aggregate welfare relative to accessed human welfare. But it might depend on which versions of conscious subsystems weâre considering.
For predictions of chicken sentience, Iâd say to take expectations relative to human welfare (separately with different reference point welfare states).
Iâd add a caveat that evidence about relative value under one theory can be evidence under another. If you find out that a toe stub is less bad than expected relative to other things under hedonism, then the same evidence would typically support that itâs less bad for desires and belief-like preferences than you expected relative to the same other things, too.
Iâm still trying to work through the maths on this so I wonât respond in much detail until Iâve got further with that, I may end up writing a separate post. I did start off at your position so thereâs some chance I will end up there, I find this very confusing to think about.
Some brief comments on a couple of things:
I agree with this, but I donât think this is our epistemic position, because we can understand all value relative to our own experiences.
I think relative is the operative word here. That is, you experience that a toe stub is 10 times worse than a papercut, and this motivates the development of moral theories that are consistent with this, and rules out ones that are not (e.g. ones that say they are equally bad). But there is an additional bit of parameter fixing that has to happen to get from the theory predicting this relative difference to predicting the absolute amount.
My claim is that at least generally speaking, and I think actually always, theories that are under consideration only predict these relative differences and not the absolute amounts. E.g. if a theory supposes that a certain pain receptor causes suffering when activated, then it might suppose that 10 receptors being activated causes 10 times as much suffering, but it doesnât say anything about the absolute amount. This is also true of more fundamental theories (e.g. more information processing â more sentience). I have some ideas about why this is[1], but mainly I canât think of any examples where this is not the case. If you can think of any then please tell me as that would at least partially invalidate this scale invariance thing (which would be good).
I think you would also say that theories donât need to predict this overall scale parameter because we can always fix it based on our observations of absolute utility⊠this is the bit of maths that Iâm not clear on yet, but I do currently think this is not true (i.e. the scale parameter does matter still, especially when you have a prior reason to think there would be a difference between the theories).
I agree that directly observing the value of a toe stub, say, under hedonism might not tell you much or anything about its absolute value under non-hedonistic theories of welfare.⊠However, I think we can say more under variants of closer precise theories.
I was intending to restrict to only theories that fall under hedonism, because I think this is the case where this kind of cross theory aggregation should work the best. And given that I think this scale invariance problem arises there then it would be even worse when considering more dissimilar theories.
So I was considering only theories where the welfare relevant states are things that feel pretty close to pleasure and pain, and you can be uncertain about how good or bad different states are for common sense reasons[2], but youâre able to tell at least roughly how good/âbad at least some states are.
Mentioned in the previous comment. One is that the prescriptions of utilitarianism have this scale invariance (only distinguish between better/âworse), as do the behaviours associated with pleasure/âpain (e.g. you can only communicate that something is more/âless painful, or [for animals] show an aversion to a more painful thing in favour of a less painful thing).
E.g. you might not remember them, you might struggle to factor in duration, the states might come along with some non-welfare-relevant experience which biases your recollection (e.g. a painfully bright red light vs a painfully bright green light)
My claim is that at least generally speaking, and I think actually always, theories that are under consideration only predict these relative differences and not the absolute amounts.
(...)
I have some ideas about why this is[1], but mainly I canât think of any examples where this is not the case. If you can think of any then please tell me as that would at least partially invalidate this scale invariance thing (which would be good).
I think what matters here is less whether they predict absolute amounts, but which ones can be put on common scales. If everything could be put on the same common scale, then we would predict values relative to that common scale, and could treat the common scale like an absolute one. But scale invariance would still depend on you using that scale in a scale-invariant way with your moral theory.
I do doubt all theories can be put on one common scale together this way, but I suspect we can find common scales across some subsets of theories at a time. I think there usually is no foundational common scale between any pair of theories, but Iâm open to the possibility in some cases, e.g. across approaches for counting conscious subsystems, causal vs evidential decision theory (MacAskill et al., 2019), in some pairs of person-affecting vs total utilitarian views (Riedener, 2019, also discussed inmy section here). This is because the theories seem to recognize the same central and foundational reasons, but just find that they apply differently or in different numbers. You can still value those reasons identically across theories. So, it seems like theyâre using the same scale (all else equal), but differently.
Iâm not sure, though. And maybe there are multiple plausible common scales for a given set of theories, but this could mean two envelopes problem between those common scales, not between the specific theories themselves.
And I agree that there probably isnât a shared foundational common scale across all theories of consciousness, welfare and moral weights (as I discuss here).
I think you would also say that theories donât need to predict this overall scale parameter because we can always fix it based on our observations of absolute utility
this is the bit of maths that Iâm not clear on yet, but I do currently think this is not true (i.e. the scale parameter does matter still, especially when you have a prior reason to think there would be a difference between the theories).
Do you think we generally have the same problem for other phenomena, like how much water there is across theories of the nature of water or the strength of gravity as we moved from the Newtonian picture to general relativity? So, we shouldnât treat theories of water as using a common scale, or theories of gravity as using a common scale? Again, maybe you end up with multiple common scales for water, and multiple for gravity, but the point is that we still can make some intertheoretic comparisons, even if vague/âunderdetermined, based on the observations the theories are meant to explain, rather than say nothing about how they relate.
In these cases, including consciousness, water and gravity, it seems like we first care about the observations, and then we theorize about them, or else we wouldnât bother theorizing about them at all. So we do some (fairly) theory-neutral valuing.
I used to think this for exactly the same reason, but I now no longer do. The basic reason I changed my mind is the idea that uncertainty in the amount of welfare humans (or chickens) experience is naturally scale invariant. This scale invariance means that observing any particular absolute amount of welfare (by experiencing it directly) shouldnât update you as to the relative amount of welfare under different theories.
The following is a fairly âheuristicâ version of the argument, I spent some time trying to formalise it better but got stuck on the maths, so Iâm giving the version that was in my head before I tried that. Iâm quite convinced itâs basically true though.
The argument
Consider only theories that allow the most aggregation-friendly version of hedonistic utilitarianism[1]. Under this constraint, the total amount of utility experienced by one or more moral patients is some real quantity that can be expressed in objective units (âhedonsâ), and this quantity is comparable across the theories that we are allowing. You might imagine that you could consult God as to the utility of various world states and He could say truthfully âah, stubbing your toe is â1 hedonâ. In your post you also suppose that you can measure this amount yourself through direct experience, which I find reasonable.
From the perspective of someone who is unable to experience utility themselves, there is a natural scale invariance to this quantity. This is clearest when considering the âoughtâ side of the theory: the recommendations of utilitarianism are unchanged if you scale utility up and down by any amount as it doesnât affect the rank ordering of world states.
Another way to get this intuition is to imagine an unfeeling robot that derives the concept of utility from some combination of interviewing moral patients and constructing a first principles theory[2]. It could even get the correct theory, and derive that e.g. breaking your arm is 10 times as bad as stubbing your toe. It would still be in the dark about how bad these things are in absolute terms though. If God told it that stubbing your toe was â1 hedons that wouldnât mean anything to the robot. God could play a prank on the robot and tell it stubbing your toe was instead â1 millihedons, or even temporarily imbue the robot with the ability to feel pain and expose it to â1 millihedons and say âthatâs what stubbing your toe feels likeâ. This should be equally unsurprising to the robot as being told/âexperiencing â1 hedon.
My claim is that the epistemic position of all the different theories of welfare are effectively that of this robot. And as a result of this, observing any absolute amount of welfare (utility) under theory A shouldnât update you as to what the amount would be under theory B, because both theories were consistent with any absolute amount of welfare to begin with. In fact they were âmaximally uncertainâ about the absolute amount, no amount should be any more or less of a surprise under either theory.
If you had a prior reason to think theory B gives say 5 times the welfare to humans as theory A (importantly in relative terms), then you should still think this after observing the absolute amount yourself, and this is what generates the thorny version of the two envelopes problem. I think there are sensible prior reasons to think there is such a relative difference for various pairs of theories.
For instance, suppose both A and B are essentially âneuron countâ theories and agree on some threshold brain complexity for sentience, but then A says âamount of sentienceâ scales linearly with neuron count whereas B says it scales quadratically. Itâs reasonable to think that the amount of welfare in humans is much higher under B, maybe (n/nthreshold)2(n/nthreshold)=nnthreshold times higher.
Other examples where arguments like this can be made are:
A and B are the same except B has multiple conscious subsystems
A and B are predicting chicken welfare rather than human, and A says they are sentient whereas B says they are not. Clearly B predicts 0 times the welfare of A (equivalently A predicts infinity times the welfare of B)
Putting this in two envelopes terms
If we say we have two theories, 1 and 2, which you might imagine are a human centric (C1/H1=10â10, p1=0.9)[4] and an animal-inclusive (C2/H2=0.01, p2=0.1) view, then we have:
E(CH)=p1C1H1+p2C2H2â0.001And
E(HC)=p1H1C1+p2H2C2â9Ă109â 1/E(CH)As we are used to seeing.
But as you point out in your post, the quantities H1 and H2 are not necessarily the same (though you argue they should be treated as such) which makes this a nonsensical average of dimensionless numbers. E.g.H1 could be 0.00001 hedons and H2 could be 10 hedons, which would mean we are massively overcounting theory 1. The quantities we actually care about are E(C) and E(H) (dimension-ed numbers in units of hedons), or their ratio E(C)/E(H). We can write these as:
E(C)=p1H1(C1H1)+p2H2(C2H2)(1)E(H)=p1H1+p2H2=ÂŻH(2)This may seem like a roundabout way of writing these down, but remember that what we have from our welfare range estimates are values for Ci/Hi, so these canât be cancelled further and the His are the minimum number of parameters we can add to pin down the equations. The ratio E(C)/E(H) is then:
E(C)/E(H)=p1H1ÂŻH(C1H1)+p2H2ÂŻH(C2H2)(3)I find this easier to think about if the ratios are in terms of a specific theory, e.g. H1, so you are always comparing what the relative amount of welfare is in theory X vs some definite reference theory. We can rearrange (3) to support this by dividing all the fractions though by H1:
E(C)/E(H)=1^H(p1H1H1(C1H1)+p2H2H1(C2H2))(4)Where
^H=ÂŻH/H1=p1H1H1+p2H2H1Again, maybe this seems incredibly roundabout, but in this form it is more clear that we now only need the ratios Hi/H1 not their absolute values. This is good according to the previous claims I have made:
Because of scale invariance, itâs not possible to say anything about the absolute value of Hi
It is possible to reason about the relative welfare values between theories, represented by Hi/H1
So under this framing the âsolution to the two envelopes problem for moral weightsâ is that you need to estimate the inter-theoretic welfare ratios for humans (or any reference moral patient), as well as the intra-theoretic ratios between moral patients. I.e. you have to estimate Hi/H1 as well as Ci/Hi and pi for each theory.
I think this is still quite a big problem because of the potential for arguing that some theories have combinatorially higher welfare than others, thus causing them to dominate even if you put a very low probability on them. The neuron count example above is like this, you could make it even worse by supposing a theory where welfare is exponential in neuron count.
Returning to the human-centric vs animal inclusive toy example
Adding these Hi/H1 numbers into this example we now have:
E(C)/E(H)=1^H(0.9(10â10)+0.1H2H1(0.01))(4)What should the value of H2/H1 be? Well in this case I think itâs reasonable to suppose H1 and H2 are in fact equal, as we donât have any principled reason not to, so this still comes out to ~0.001. As in the original version we can flip this around to see if we get a wildly different answer if we make the inter-theoretic comparison be between chickens:
E(H)/E(C)=1^C(0.9(1010)+0.1C2C1(100))(4)Now what should C2/C1 be, recalling that theory 1 says chickens are worth very little compared to humans? I think itâs reasonable say that C1 is also very little compared to C2, since the point of theory 1 is basically to suppose chickens arenât (or are barely) sentient, and not to say anything about humans. Supposing that none of the difference is explained by humans, we get C2/C1=108, this also gives ^Câ107, so E(H)/E(C) comes out to ~1000. This is the inverse of E(C)/E(H) as we expect.
Clearly this is just rearranging the same numbers to get the same result, but hopefully it illustrates how explicitly including these Hi/H1 ratios makes the two envelope problem that you get by naively inverting the ratios less spooky, because by doing so you are effectively wildly changing the estimates of Hi/H1.
I agree with you that there are many cases where for the specific theories under consideration it is right to assume that H1 and H2 are equal (because we have no principled reason not to), but that this is not because we are able to observe welfare directly (even if we suppose that this is possible). And for many pairs of theories we might think H1 and H2 are very different.
(Apologies for switching back and forth between âwelfareâ and âutilityâ, Iâm basically treating them both like âutilityâ)
I think itâs right to start with this case, because it should be the easiest. So if something breaks in this case it is likely to also break once we start trying to include things like non-welfare moral reasons
âIâve met a few of thoseâ
We can label the âtrueâ theory as A, because we only get the chance to experience the true theory (we just donât know which one it is)
You could make this actually zero, but I think adding infinity in makes the argument more confusing
Thereâs a lot here, so Iâll respond to what seems to be most cruxy to me.
I agree with this, but I donât think this is our epistemic position, because we can understand all value relative to our own experiences. (See also a thread about an unfeeling moral agent here.)
I agree that directly observing the value of a toe stub, say, under hedonism might not tell you much or anything about its absolute value under non-hedonistic theories of welfare.[1]
However, I think we can say more under variants of closer precise theories. I think you can fix the badness of a specific toe stub across many precise theories. But then also separately fix the badness of a papercut and many other things under the same theories. This is because some theories are meant to explain the same things, and itâs those things to which weâre assigning value, not directly to the theories themselves. See this section of my post. And those things in practice are human welfare (or yours specifically), and so we can just take the (accessed) human-relative stances.
You illustrate with neuron count theories, and I would in fact say we should fix human welfare across those theories (under hedonism, say, and perhaps separately for different reference point welfare states), so evidence about absolute value under one hedonistic neuron count theory would be evidence about absolute value under other hedonistic theories.
I suspect conscious subsystems donât necessarily generate a two envelopes problem; you just need to calculate the expected number of subsystems and their expected aggregate welfare relative to accessed human welfare. But it might depend on which versions of conscious subsystems weâre considering.
For predictions of chicken sentience, Iâd say to take expectations relative to human welfare (separately with different reference point welfare states).
Iâd add a caveat that evidence about relative value under one theory can be evidence under another. If you find out that a toe stub is less bad than expected relative to other things under hedonism, then the same evidence would typically support that itâs less bad for desires and belief-like preferences than you expected relative to the same other things, too.
Iâm still trying to work through the maths on this so I wonât respond in much detail until Iâve got further with that, I may end up writing a separate post. I did start off at your position so thereâs some chance I will end up there, I find this very confusing to think about.
Some brief comments on a couple of things:
I think relative is the operative word here. That is, you experience that a toe stub is 10 times worse than a papercut, and this motivates the development of moral theories that are consistent with this, and rules out ones that are not (e.g. ones that say they are equally bad). But there is an additional bit of parameter fixing that has to happen to get from the theory predicting this relative difference to predicting the absolute amount.
My claim is that at least generally speaking, and I think actually always, theories that are under consideration only predict these relative differences and not the absolute amounts. E.g. if a theory supposes that a certain pain receptor causes suffering when activated, then it might suppose that 10 receptors being activated causes 10 times as much suffering, but it doesnât say anything about the absolute amount. This is also true of more fundamental theories (e.g. more information processing â more sentience). I have some ideas about why this is[1], but mainly I canât think of any examples where this is not the case. If you can think of any then please tell me as that would at least partially invalidate this scale invariance thing (which would be good).
I think you would also say that theories donât need to predict this overall scale parameter because we can always fix it based on our observations of absolute utility⊠this is the bit of maths that Iâm not clear on yet, but I do currently think this is not true (i.e. the scale parameter does matter still, especially when you have a prior reason to think there would be a difference between the theories).
I was intending to restrict to only theories that fall under hedonism, because I think this is the case where this kind of cross theory aggregation should work the best. And given that I think this scale invariance problem arises there then it would be even worse when considering more dissimilar theories.
So I was considering only theories where the welfare relevant states are things that feel pretty close to pleasure and pain, and you can be uncertain about how good or bad different states are for common sense reasons[2], but youâre able to tell at least roughly how good/âbad at least some states are.
Mentioned in the previous comment. One is that the prescriptions of utilitarianism have this scale invariance (only distinguish between better/âworse), as do the behaviours associated with pleasure/âpain (e.g. you can only communicate that something is more/âless painful, or [for animals] show an aversion to a more painful thing in favour of a less painful thing).
E.g. you might not remember them, you might struggle to factor in duration, the states might come along with some non-welfare-relevant experience which biases your recollection (e.g. a painfully bright red light vs a painfully bright green light)
I think what matters here is less whether they predict absolute amounts, but which ones can be put on common scales. If everything could be put on the same common scale, then we would predict values relative to that common scale, and could treat the common scale like an absolute one. But scale invariance would still depend on you using that scale in a scale-invariant way with your moral theory.
I do doubt all theories can be put on one common scale together this way, but I suspect we can find common scales across some subsets of theories at a time. I think there usually is no foundational common scale between any pair of theories, but Iâm open to the possibility in some cases, e.g. across approaches for counting conscious subsystems, causal vs evidential decision theory (MacAskill et al., 2019), in some pairs of person-affecting vs total utilitarian views (Riedener, 2019, also discussed in my section here). This is because the theories seem to recognize the same central and foundational reasons, but just find that they apply differently or in different numbers. You can still value those reasons identically across theories. So, it seems like theyâre using the same scale (all else equal), but differently.
Iâm not sure, though. And maybe there are multiple plausible common scales for a given set of theories, but this could mean two envelopes problem between those common scales, not between the specific theories themselves.
And I agree that there probably isnât a shared foundational common scale across all theories of consciousness, welfare and moral weights (as I discuss here).
Ya, thatâs roughly my position, and more precisely that we can construct common scales based on our first-person observations of utility, although with the caveat that in fact these observations donât uniquely determine the scale, so we still end up with multiple first-person observation-based common scales.
Do you think we generally have the same problem for other phenomena, like how much water there is across theories of the nature of water or the strength of gravity as we moved from the Newtonian picture to general relativity? So, we shouldnât treat theories of water as using a common scale, or theories of gravity as using a common scale? Again, maybe you end up with multiple common scales for water, and multiple for gravity, but the point is that we still can make some intertheoretic comparisons, even if vague/âunderdetermined, based on the observations the theories are meant to explain, rather than say nothing about how they relate.
In these cases, including consciousness, water and gravity, it seems like we first care about the observations, and then we theorize about them, or else we wouldnât bother theorizing about them at all. So we do some (fairly) theory-neutral valuing.