It’s worth distinguishing different attentional mechanisms, like motivational salience from stimulus-driven attention. The flinch might be stimulus-driven. Being unable to stop thinking about something, like being madly in love or grieving, is motivational salience. And then there’s top-down/voluntary/endogenous attention, the executive function you use to intentionally focus on things.
We could pick any of these and measure their effects on attention. Motivational salience and top-down attention seem morally relevant, but stimulus-driven attention doesn’t.
I don’t mean to discount preferences if interpersonal comparisons can’t be grounded. I mean that if animals have such preferences, you can’t say they’re less important (there’s no fact of the matter either way), as I said in my top-level comment.
It’s worth distinguishing different attentional mechanisms, like motivational salience from stimulus-driven attention. The flinch might be stimulus-driven. Being unable to stop thinking about something, like being madly in love or grieving, is motivational salience. And then there’s top-down/voluntary/endogenous attention, the executive function you use to intentionally focus on things.
We could pick any of these and measure their effects on attention. Motivational salience and top-down attention seem morally relevant, but stimulus-driven attention doesn’t.
I don’t mean to discount preferences if interpersonal comparisons can’t be grounded. I mean that if animals have such preferences, you can’t say they’re less important (there’s no fact of the matter either way), as I said in my top-level comment.