Thereās a lot here, so Iāll 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 donāt 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 shouldnāt 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 āmaximally uncertainā 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 itās those things to which weāre 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 donāt 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 weāre considering.
For predictions of chicken sentience, Iād say to take expectations relative to human welfare (separately with different reference point welfare states).
Iād 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 itās less bad for desires and belief-like preferences than you expected relative to the same other things, too.
Iām still trying to work through the maths on this so I wonāt respond in much detail until Iāve got further with that, I may end up writing a separate post. I did start off at your position so thereās 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 donāt 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 doesnāt say anything about the absolute amount. This is also true of more fundamental theories (e.g. more information processing ā more sentience). I have some ideas about why this is[1], but mainly I canāt 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 donāt need to predict this overall scale parameter because we can always fix it based on our observations of absolute utilityā¦ this is the bit of maths that Iām 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.ā¦ 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 youāre able to tell at least roughly how good/ābad 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/āworse), as do the behaviours associated with pleasure/āpain (e.g. you can only communicate that something is more/āless 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 canāt 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 Iām 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 theyāre using the same scale (all else equal), but differently.
Iām 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 isnāt 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 donāt 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 Iām 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 shouldnāt 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/āunderdetermined, 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 wouldnāt bother theorizing about them at all. So we do some (fairly) theory-neutral valuing.
Thereās a lot here, so Iāll respond to what seems to be most cruxy to me.
I agree with this, but I donāt 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 itās those things to which weāre 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 donāt 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 weāre considering.
For predictions of chicken sentience, Iād say to take expectations relative to human welfare (separately with different reference point welfare states).
Iād 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 itās less bad for desires and belief-like preferences than you expected relative to the same other things, too.
Iām still trying to work through the maths on this so I wonāt respond in much detail until Iāve got further with that, I may end up writing a separate post. I did start off at your position so thereās 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 doesnāt say anything about the absolute amount. This is also true of more fundamental theories (e.g. more information processing ā more sentience). I have some ideas about why this is[1], but mainly I canāt 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 donāt need to predict this overall scale parameter because we can always fix it based on our observations of absolute utilityā¦ this is the bit of maths that Iām 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 youāre able to tell at least roughly how good/ābad 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/āworse), as do the behaviours associated with pleasure/āpain (e.g. you can only communicate that something is more/āless 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 Iām 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 theyāre using the same scale (all else equal), but differently.
Iām 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 isnāt a shared foundational common scale across all theories of consciousness, welfare and moral weights (as I discuss here).
Ya, thatās 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 donāt 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 shouldnāt 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/āunderdetermined, 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 wouldnāt bother theorizing about them at all. So we do some (fairly) theory-neutral valuing.