I wonder if your original description is compatible with āextraordinarily intense physical painā. Or, maybe it could still be extraordinary, but well within whatās bearable and far from torture. Could he carry on a conversation with his high school sweetheart if the pain were intense enough, or be excited to marry her, or think about his promise to his grandfather? When pain reaches a certain level of intensity, I expect it to be very difficult to focus attention on other things. And, to the extent that he is focusing his attention on other things and away from the pain, the painās hedonic intensity is reduced.
Imagine heās also or instead having a panic attack. Or, instead of the trip, heās undergoing waterboarding as a cultural rite of passage (with all the same goods, similar ones or greater ones from your original description). How long could the average person be voluntarly waterboarded for any purpose? (EDIT: Or for some personal positive good in particular? I can imagine a sense of duty, e.g. to prevent greater harm to others or harm to loved ones in particular, allowing someone to last a long time, and those may figure into welfare range, but I probably wouldnāt describe these in terms of positive goods, or maybe even bads, so that they canāt be put on a ratio scale, only an interval scale at most.) These seem intense enough to consume attention. (I honestly donāt have much intuitive sense of how painful frostbite can be.)
(I also donāt expect added hunger to make much difference to his hedonic welfare in the moment, because heāll be focusing on the much more intense pain. Less sure about financial costs, although those would probably not really affect his welfare during the trip itself.)
I worry a bit we might be introducing some confusion here. As far as I am aware, there is disagreement about whether welfare is constuted only by things you can experience (e.g. happiness, pain, pride, excitement, the-feeling-of-being-in-love) or whether it can also include things that you are not directly aware of (e.g. your welfare is reduced by infidelity, even if you are unaware).
If we believe that welfare is only determined by things you can experience, then I agree with you that when the pain is sufficient that he canāt direct his attention to the good things, his overall welfare is going to tank. But then Iām not sure itās the pain outweighing the other things; rather, I think itās the pain having a indirect negative effect on his welfare by reducing the goods as well as the direct negative effect. So really now weāre comparing a large hedonic value to a smaller non-hedonic value, and hence canāt draw any conclusions about the maximum possible size of the two things. Only a scenario in which both are able to be experienced to their greatest extent can allow for such a comparison.
And if welfare is not only determined by things we directly experience? Well, to the extent that things youāre not aware of can increase your welfare, I think I would just bite the bullet and say his welfare is indeed high, even if he has trouble focusing on that.
Iām not convinced by this response, but I think this is my best guess.
Seems right, Larks. But I donāt set things up this way in the postāor didnāt mean to, anyway. I grant that he can have all the non-hedonic goods while being tortured for exactly the reason you mention. But then I still want to say: those non-hedonic goods donāt make him net positive.
FWIW, Iāve given this thought experiment to hard-core objective list theorists and they just bite the bullet, insisting that his life is well worth living even while being tortured. Clearly, then, we arenāt going to get agreement based on this thought experiment alone. However, I canāt help but think that theyāre confusing meaningfulness with prudential goodness. I concede that a life could be meaningful in the face of tortureāor even precisely because of it in some circumstances. But many meaningful lives are bad for the people who live them, which is partly why theyāre heroic for continuing them.
If the pain is so strong he canāt focus on and appreciate some good he otherwise would without the pain, isnāt this his brain itself deciding the pain is more important? I think this is the cognitive process of motivational salience, which integrates both positive (incentives, pleasure, desire) and negative (aversion, unpleasantness). If (actual or hypothetical/āidealized) motivational salience determines importance, then measures of attention during joint exposure experiments are plausibly more reliable for ranking importance than peopleās statements, because the latter can be subject to additional biases, e.g. believing your commitments, especially to others, are more important than your pain serves your self-image as a good person, partner, friend, child or parent.
You could use more direct measures of motivational salience, including while separately exposed to the good or the pain and this is plausibly closer to what we want to actually measure to determine the scale, but Iād expect the same rankings from measuring attention during joint exposure, all else equal. Similarly if you used some measure of felt (hedonic, desire) intensity directly when separately exposed, although Iām less sure positive and negative would even be commensurable with such a measure. I have read attention disruption is one of the functions of pain, so maybe joint exposure experiments would be negatively biased.
However, if reflective preferences are what matter or are part of it, then for those we would probably use peopleās (and other animalās) statements or choices. Weād still have to worry about some of the same biases in people, though, but then intense pain may especially interfere with reflection. Itās also not clear to me how we would construct an absolute scale to use across even humans, let alone across all animals or possible conscious beings. Even if there isnāt one, that doesnāt rule reflective preferences out, but then the implications seem much less clear. We might get incomparability between beings or even for the same being over time.
(Actual or hypothetical/āidealized) motivational salience, felt intensity and reflective preferences could be different kinds of welfare, possibly incommensurable, if theyāre determined by very different kinds of valuing systems.
I did have in mind that non-experientialist goods could count, but as you suggest, experientialist goods (or goods that depend on their acknowledgement to count, including non-hedonic ones, so other than pleasure) would probably be weakened during torture, so that could introduce a confounder. The comparison now would be mostly be between hedonic bads and non-experientialist goods.
Another issue is how to determine the weight of non-experientialist goods, especially if we donāt want to be paternalistic or alienating. If we do so by subjective appreciation, then it seems like weāre basically just turning them back into experientialist goods. If we do so via subjective weights (even if someone canāt appreciate a good at the time, they might still insist itās very important and we could infer how good it is for them), its subjective weight could also be significantly reduced during torture. So we still wouldnāt necessarily be comparing the disvalue of torture to the maximum value of non-experientialist goods using Timās judgement while being tortured.
Instead, if we do still want to use subjective weights, we might consider the torture and non-hedonic goods happening at different times (and in different orders?), for equal durations, and ask Tim during the torture, during the non-hedonic goods and at other times whether the non-hedonic goods make up for the torture. If the answers agree, then great. But if they disagree, this could be hard to resolve, because Timās answer could be biased in each situation: he underweights non-hedonic goods during torture and otherwise while not focusing on them, and he underweights torture while not being tortured.
EDIT: On the other hand, if I tried to come up with a cognitively plausible objective cardinal account of subjective weights and value, Iād expect torture to be able to reach the max or get close to it, and that would be enough to say that negative hedonic welfare can be at least about as bad as goods can be good (in aggregate, in a moment).
I wonder if your original description is compatible with āextraordinarily intense physical painā. Or, maybe it could still be extraordinary, but well within whatās bearable and far from torture. Could he carry on a conversation with his high school sweetheart if the pain were intense enough, or be excited to marry her, or think about his promise to his grandfather? When pain reaches a certain level of intensity, I expect it to be very difficult to focus attention on other things. And, to the extent that he is focusing his attention on other things and away from the pain, the painās hedonic intensity is reduced.
Imagine heās also or instead having a panic attack. Or, instead of the trip, heās undergoing waterboarding as a cultural rite of passage (with all the same goods, similar ones or greater ones from your original description). How long could the average person be voluntarly waterboarded for any purpose? (EDIT: Or for some personal positive good in particular? I can imagine a sense of duty, e.g. to prevent greater harm to others or harm to loved ones in particular, allowing someone to last a long time, and those may figure into welfare range, but I probably wouldnāt describe these in terms of positive goods, or maybe even bads, so that they canāt be put on a ratio scale, only an interval scale at most.) These seem intense enough to consume attention. (I honestly donāt have much intuitive sense of how painful frostbite can be.)
(I also donāt expect added hunger to make much difference to his hedonic welfare in the moment, because heāll be focusing on the much more intense pain. Less sure about financial costs, although those would probably not really affect his welfare during the trip itself.)
Interesting point, thanks for raising.
I worry a bit we might be introducing some confusion here. As far as I am aware, there is disagreement about whether welfare is constuted only by things you can experience (e.g. happiness, pain, pride, excitement, the-feeling-of-being-in-love) or whether it can also include things that you are not directly aware of (e.g. your welfare is reduced by infidelity, even if you are unaware).
If we believe that welfare is only determined by things you can experience, then I agree with you that when the pain is sufficient that he canāt direct his attention to the good things, his overall welfare is going to tank. But then Iām not sure itās the pain outweighing the other things; rather, I think itās the pain having a indirect negative effect on his welfare by reducing the goods as well as the direct negative effect. So really now weāre comparing a large hedonic value to a smaller non-hedonic value, and hence canāt draw any conclusions about the maximum possible size of the two things. Only a scenario in which both are able to be experienced to their greatest extent can allow for such a comparison.
And if welfare is not only determined by things we directly experience? Well, to the extent that things youāre not aware of can increase your welfare, I think I would just bite the bullet and say his welfare is indeed high, even if he has trouble focusing on that.
Iām not convinced by this response, but I think this is my best guess.
Seems right, Larks. But I donāt set things up this way in the postāor didnāt mean to, anyway. I grant that he can have all the non-hedonic goods while being tortured for exactly the reason you mention. But then I still want to say: those non-hedonic goods donāt make him net positive.
FWIW, Iāve given this thought experiment to hard-core objective list theorists and they just bite the bullet, insisting that his life is well worth living even while being tortured. Clearly, then, we arenāt going to get agreement based on this thought experiment alone. However, I canāt help but think that theyāre confusing meaningfulness with prudential goodness. I concede that a life could be meaningful in the face of tortureāor even precisely because of it in some circumstances. But many meaningful lives are bad for the people who live them, which is partly why theyāre heroic for continuing them.
Anyway, hard issues!
As one example, I think Richard Yetter Chappell, an objective list theorist, would say torture with maximal non-hedonic goods at the same time would be bad overall per moment: https://āārychappell.substack.com/āāp/āāa-multiplicative-model-of-value-pluralism
If the pain is so strong he canāt focus on and appreciate some good he otherwise would without the pain, isnāt this his brain itself deciding the pain is more important? I think this is the cognitive process of motivational salience, which integrates both positive (incentives, pleasure, desire) and negative (aversion, unpleasantness). If (actual or hypothetical/āidealized) motivational salience determines importance, then measures of attention during joint exposure experiments are plausibly more reliable for ranking importance than peopleās statements, because the latter can be subject to additional biases, e.g. believing your commitments, especially to others, are more important than your pain serves your self-image as a good person, partner, friend, child or parent.
You could use more direct measures of motivational salience, including while separately exposed to the good or the pain and this is plausibly closer to what we want to actually measure to determine the scale, but Iād expect the same rankings from measuring attention during joint exposure, all else equal. Similarly if you used some measure of felt (hedonic, desire) intensity directly when separately exposed, although Iām less sure positive and negative would even be commensurable with such a measure. I have read attention disruption is one of the functions of pain, so maybe joint exposure experiments would be negatively biased.
However, if reflective preferences are what matter or are part of it, then for those we would probably use peopleās (and other animalās) statements or choices. Weād still have to worry about some of the same biases in people, though, but then intense pain may especially interfere with reflection. Itās also not clear to me how we would construct an absolute scale to use across even humans, let alone across all animals or possible conscious beings. Even if there isnāt one, that doesnāt rule reflective preferences out, but then the implications seem much less clear. We might get incomparability between beings or even for the same being over time.
(Actual or hypothetical/āidealized) motivational salience, felt intensity and reflective preferences could be different kinds of welfare, possibly incommensurable, if theyāre determined by very different kinds of valuing systems.
I did have in mind that non-experientialist goods could count, but as you suggest, experientialist goods (or goods that depend on their acknowledgement to count, including non-hedonic ones, so other than pleasure) would probably be weakened during torture, so that could introduce a confounder. The comparison now would be mostly be between hedonic bads and non-experientialist goods.
Another issue is how to determine the weight of non-experientialist goods, especially if we donāt want to be paternalistic or alienating. If we do so by subjective appreciation, then it seems like weāre basically just turning them back into experientialist goods. If we do so via subjective weights (even if someone canāt appreciate a good at the time, they might still insist itās very important and we could infer how good it is for them), its subjective weight could also be significantly reduced during torture. So we still wouldnāt necessarily be comparing the disvalue of torture to the maximum value of non-experientialist goods using Timās judgement while being tortured.
Instead, if we do still want to use subjective weights, we might consider the torture and non-hedonic goods happening at different times (and in different orders?), for equal durations, and ask Tim during the torture, during the non-hedonic goods and at other times whether the non-hedonic goods make up for the torture. If the answers agree, then great. But if they disagree, this could be hard to resolve, because Timās answer could be biased in each situation: he underweights non-hedonic goods during torture and otherwise while not focusing on them, and he underweights torture while not being tortured.
EDIT: On the other hand, if I tried to come up with a cognitively plausible objective cardinal account of subjective weights and value, Iād expect torture to be able to reach the max or get close to it, and that would be enough to say that negative hedonic welfare can be at least about as bad as goods can be good (in aggregate, in a moment).