It seems to me that a full defense of cardinality and comparability across humans should mention neuroscience, too. For example, we know that brain sizes differ (in total and in regions involved in hedonic experiences) in certain systematic ways, e.g. across ages and between genders. However, these differences are mostly small (brain size is pretty stable after adolescence, although there are still major changes up until 25-30 years old), and we might assume that differences in intensity of experience scale at most roughly 1:1 with size/connectivity and number of neurons firing (in the relevant regions), and while I think this is more likely to be true than not, I’m still not confident in such an assumption.
However, we might also expect some brains to just be more sensitive than others, without expressed behaviour and reports matching this. For example, if two people say they’re having 7⁄10 pains (to an experience with the same physical intensity, e.g. touching something very cold, at the same temperature), but one person’s brain regions involved in the (negative) affective experience of pain is far more active, then I would guess that person is having a more negative experience. It would be worth checking research on this. I guess this might be relevant, although it apparently doesn’t track the affective component of pain.
Ah, that’s a nice point. I discuss in 5.5 in the paper. Quote:
The final condition is whether different individuals use the same endpoints at a time [. There are two types of concern here.
The first is whether there are what Nozick (1974, 41) called ‘utility monsters’, individuals who can and do experience much greater magnitudes of happiness (or any other sort of subjective state), than others.
I won’t dwell on this as it seems unlikely there would be substantial differences in humans’ capacities for subjective experiences. Presumably there are evolutionary pressures for each species to have range of sensitivity that is optimal for survival. To return to an example noted earlier, being immune to pain is an extremely problematic condition that would put someone at an evolutionary disadvantage. Further, even if there are differences, we would expect these to be randomly distributed, in which case they would wash out in large samples
So to generate a serious worry that there’s a problem at the level of group averages (which is the relevant level for most relevant decision-making) you’d have to argue for and explain the existence of non-trivial difference between groups. It’s tricky to think of real life cases outside people who have genetic conditions. But this wouldn’t motivate us thinking, say, members of two nations have different capacities.
It seems to me that a full defense of cardinality and comparability across humans should mention neuroscience, too. For example, we know that brain sizes differ (in total and in regions involved in hedonic experiences) in certain systematic ways, e.g. across ages and between genders. However, these differences are mostly small (brain size is pretty stable after adolescence, although there are still major changes up until 25-30 years old), and we might assume that differences in intensity of experience scale at most roughly 1:1 with size/connectivity and number of neurons firing (in the relevant regions), and while I think this is more likely to be true than not, I’m still not confident in such an assumption.
However, we might also expect some brains to just be more sensitive than others, without expressed behaviour and reports matching this. For example, if two people say they’re having 7⁄10 pains (to an experience with the same physical intensity, e.g. touching something very cold, at the same temperature), but one person’s brain regions involved in the (negative) affective experience of pain is far more active, then I would guess that person is having a more negative experience. It would be worth checking research on this. I guess this might be relevant, although it apparently doesn’t track the affective component of pain.
Ah, that’s a nice point. I discuss in 5.5 in the paper. Quote:
So to generate a serious worry that there’s a problem at the level of group averages (which is the relevant level for most relevant decision-making) you’d have to argue for and explain the existence of non-trivial difference between groups. It’s tricky to think of real life cases outside people who have genetic conditions. But this wouldn’t motivate us thinking, say, members of two nations have different capacities.