Fair, but there are degrees here, right? Some hypotheses are fairly tightly tied to empirical evidence while others involve many more speculative premises.
But as I said, totally makes sense to want an all-in estimate. I’ve been thinking about how to do that and hope to have something concrete to say eventually.
Makes sense, thanks. I think I just want to highlight that hypotheses that are “tightly tied to empirical evidence” still do sneak in some non-empirical premises, mostly about how to do induction, though of course some such premises can be more controversial than others. (Related post.)
If what you mean to say is something like the following, I’m sympathetic: Conscious Subsystems is more speculative in the sense that it violates Occam’s razor — we’re positing lots of extra minds we can never verify. Whereas, a principle like “if two animals’ pain-related brain regions have the same neuron-firing rate, we should expect the intensity of their suffering to be the same all else equal” seems privileged by Occam, even if we can’t empirically verify this either.
((ETA: Feel free to ignore if the above misses your point, I don’t mean to put words in your mouth!) I might quibble about how we cash out “all else equal.” In practice, I’d think we don’t have nearly fine-grained enough neurobiological evidence to apply that principle. So I’d worry that many of our inferences about comparisons of suffering intensity hinge on somewhat arbitrary judgment calls.)
Fair, but there are degrees here, right? Some hypotheses are fairly tightly tied to empirical evidence while others involve many more speculative premises.
But as I said, totally makes sense to want an all-in estimate. I’ve been thinking about how to do that and hope to have something concrete to say eventually.
Makes sense, thanks. I think I just want to highlight that hypotheses that are “tightly tied to empirical evidence” still do sneak in some non-empirical premises, mostly about how to do induction, though of course some such premises can be more controversial than others. (Related post.)
If what you mean to say is something like the following, I’m sympathetic: Conscious Subsystems is more speculative in the sense that it violates Occam’s razor — we’re positing lots of extra minds we can never verify. Whereas, a principle like “if two animals’ pain-related brain regions have the same neuron-firing rate, we should expect the intensity of their suffering to be the same all else equal” seems privileged by Occam, even if we can’t empirically verify this either.
((ETA: Feel free to ignore if the above misses your point, I don’t mean to put words in your mouth!) I might quibble about how we cash out “all else equal.” In practice, I’d think we don’t have nearly fine-grained enough neurobiological evidence to apply that principle. So I’d worry that many of our inferences about comparisons of suffering intensity hinge on somewhat arbitrary judgment calls.)
Thanks for the productive exchange!