“If an animal can already experience excruciating pain, presumably near the extreme of their welfare range, what do humans have that would make excruciating pain far worse for us in general, or otherwise give us far wider welfare ranges? And why?”
We have a far more advanced consciousness and self awareness, that may make our experience of pain orders of magnitude worse (or at least different) than for many animals—or not.
I think there is far more uncertainty in this question than many ackhnowledge—RP acknowledge the uncertainty but I don’t think present it as clearly as they could. Extreme pain for humans could be a wildly different experience than it is for animals, or it could be quite similar. Even if we assume hedonism (which I don’t), we can oversimplify the concepts of “Sentience” and “welfare ranges” to feel like we have more certainty over these numbers than we do.
We have a far more advanced consciousness and self awareness, that may make our experience of pain orders of magnitude worse (or at least different) than for many animals—or not.
I agree that that’s possible and worth including under uncertainty, but it doesn’t answer the “why”, so it’s hard to justify giving it much or disproportionate weight (relative to other accounts) without further argument. Why would self-awareness, say, make being in intense pain orders of magnitude worse?
And are we even much more self-aware than other animals when we are in intense pain? One of the functions of pain is to take our attention, and it does so more the more intense the pain. That might limit the use of our capacities for self-awareness: we’d be too focused on and distracted by the pain. Or, maybe our self-awareness or other advanced capacities distract us from the pain, making it less intense than in other animals.
(My own best guess is that at the extremes of excruciating pain, sophisticated self-awareness makes little difference to the intensity of suffering.)
“If an animal can already experience excruciating pain, presumably near the extreme of their welfare range, what do humans have that would make excruciating pain far worse for us in general, or otherwise give us far wider welfare ranges? And why?”
We have a far more advanced consciousness and self awareness, that may make our experience of pain orders of magnitude worse (or at least different) than for many animals—or not.
I think there is far more uncertainty in this question than many ackhnowledge—RP acknowledge the uncertainty but I don’t think present it as clearly as they could. Extreme pain for humans could be a wildly different experience than it is for animals, or it could be quite similar. Even if we assume hedonism (which I don’t), we can oversimplify the concepts of “Sentience” and “welfare ranges” to feel like we have more certainty over these numbers than we do.
I agree that that’s possible and worth including under uncertainty, but it doesn’t answer the “why”, so it’s hard to justify giving it much or disproportionate weight (relative to other accounts) without further argument. Why would self-awareness, say, make being in intense pain orders of magnitude worse?
And are we even much more self-aware than other animals when we are in intense pain? One of the functions of pain is to take our attention, and it does so more the more intense the pain. That might limit the use of our capacities for self-awareness: we’d be too focused on and distracted by the pain. Or, maybe our self-awareness or other advanced capacities distract us from the pain, making it less intense than in other animals.
(My own best guess is that at the extremes of excruciating pain, sophisticated self-awareness makes little difference to the intensity of suffering.)