Thanks for the response to my reply. :) It ends the debate in the immediate sense, but there remain many things to talk about and research further. For example, we can propose different concrete measures of welfare (such as neuronal firings in hedonic hotspots) and discuss how morally compelling they seem to us. We can also do further research to understand what kinds of behaviors and brain processes wild animals exhibit in various circumstances.
Presumably a classical utilitarian says that 1 unit of happiness is as morally good as 1 unit of unhappiness is bad.
Fair enough. :) My point would then be that we need to include a footnote to say how happiness and suffering are being defined. A classical utilitarian according to definition X might be a negative utilitarian according to definition Y.
whilst also remarking that he was an anti-realist (it would have been helpful if he’d said what he meant by that).
I think I agree. There’s a sense in which your choice of definition of happiness might be motivated by thoughts on morality, but once you’ve picked a definition, then we’re trying to make factual judgements. I don’t recall if you offer a definition in your orignal article.
I guess I don’t discuss how happiness is to measured, although I do say what it is. I think you need to get happiness from self reports, asking somehow how good-bad they feel right now. As happiness is ultimately a subjective state, this has to be the place to start. From there, you might able to correlate that with brain activity, although I’m somewhat uncertain of how much that would really tell us.
I think you need to get happiness from self reports, asking somehow how good-bad they feel right now.
How do you handle the problem of inconsistent self-reported welfare over time, such as in this example?
And there’s also the standard issue of interpersonal comparisons. For instance, how do you handle a person who would not accept 1 second of torture for any amount of happiness? If that person is tortured, what welfare score does she get? Perhaps she would want to say “negative infinity”, although you could prevent that by setting a lower bound on how negative her self-reported welfare could go. That arbitrary lower bound would then strongly influence the degree of weight given to suffering vs. happiness in utilitarian calculations.
WTA determined like this per species averaged over many individuals with transparency about the variance of the samples seems at least better to me than our current state of knowledge.
Definitely. :) More such studies should be done. That said, they don’t resolve the fundamental issues of interpersonal comparisons and intrapersonal comparisons over time.
Thanks for the response to my reply. :) It ends the debate in the immediate sense, but there remain many things to talk about and research further. For example, we can propose different concrete measures of welfare (such as neuronal firings in hedonic hotspots) and discuss how morally compelling they seem to us. We can also do further research to understand what kinds of behaviors and brain processes wild animals exhibit in various circumstances.
Fair enough. :) My point would then be that we need to include a footnote to say how happiness and suffering are being defined. A classical utilitarian according to definition X might be a negative utilitarian according to definition Y.
Sorry. :P Here is one explanation.
I think I agree. There’s a sense in which your choice of definition of happiness might be motivated by thoughts on morality, but once you’ve picked a definition, then we’re trying to make factual judgements. I don’t recall if you offer a definition in your orignal article.
I guess I don’t discuss how happiness is to measured, although I do say what it is. I think you need to get happiness from self reports, asking somehow how good-bad they feel right now. As happiness is ultimately a subjective state, this has to be the place to start. From there, you might able to correlate that with brain activity, although I’m somewhat uncertain of how much that would really tell us.
Cool. :)
How do you handle the problem of inconsistent self-reported welfare over time, such as in this example?
And there’s also the standard issue of interpersonal comparisons. For instance, how do you handle a person who would not accept 1 second of torture for any amount of happiness? If that person is tortured, what welfare score does she get? Perhaps she would want to say “negative infinity”, although you could prevent that by setting a lower bound on how negative her self-reported welfare could go. That arbitrary lower bound would then strongly influence the degree of weight given to suffering vs. happiness in utilitarian calculations.
WTA determined like this per species averaged over many individuals with transparency about the variance of the samples seems at least better to me than our current state of knowledge.
Definitely. :) More such studies should be done. That said, they don’t resolve the fundamental issues of interpersonal comparisons and intrapersonal comparisons over time.