What do you think of the concept that suffering and pleasure are the same phenomenon, except “sign-flipped”, i.e. the same neurological/computational principle gives valence to both suffering and pleasure? If so, you could “reduce intense suffering” by creating intense pleasure. This is probably not your goal, but is there a principled philosophical or neuroscientific reason against this view?
Empirically, I think it’s pretty clear that most people are willing to trade off pleasure and pain for themselves. (They also want things other than pleasure-seeking and pain-avoidance.)
The question why people don’t discuss values has perhaps a cynical answer. Most people don’t have coherent, formal values, they just want to look good, show group affiliations and feel good about themselves. This creates an additional burden for suffering-focused views because they focus on a negative, which puts a burden on people who want to look caring (if no one raises the issue of suffering, no one has to feel empathy or signal that they are compassionate by addressing it). Most people don’t want to suffer (much), but they care much less about the suffering of others, for obvious evolutionary reasons. It’s also hard to tell a positive success story about suffering, or to create positive motivational goals, because unless you count pleasure as “negative suffering”, the best win you can have is the absence of something, so you’re not doing better than dead people, intergalactic voids or lifeless asteroids. It’s hard to frame that into a motivational story about heroic victory.
Sections 1.4 and 8.5 in my book deal directly with the first issue you raise. Also see Chapter 3, “Creating Happiness at the Price of Suffering Is Wrong”, for various arguments against a moral symmetry between pleasure and suffering. But many chapters in the first part of the book deal with this.
Empirically, I think it’s pretty clear that most people are willing to trade off pleasure and pain for themselves.
I say a good deal about this in Chapter 2. I also discuss the moral relevance of such intrapersonal claims in section 3.2, “Intra- and Interpersonal Claims”.
What do you think of the concept that suffering and pleasure are the same phenomenon, except “sign-flipped”, i.e. the same neurological/computational principle gives valence to both suffering and pleasure? If so, you could “reduce intense suffering” by creating intense pleasure. This is probably not your goal, but is there a principled philosophical or neuroscientific reason against this view?
Empirically, I think it’s pretty clear that most people are willing to trade off pleasure and pain for themselves. (They also want things other than pleasure-seeking and pain-avoidance.)
The question why people don’t discuss values has perhaps a cynical answer. Most people don’t have coherent, formal values, they just want to look good, show group affiliations and feel good about themselves. This creates an additional burden for suffering-focused views because they focus on a negative, which puts a burden on people who want to look caring (if no one raises the issue of suffering, no one has to feel empathy or signal that they are compassionate by addressing it). Most people don’t want to suffer (much), but they care much less about the suffering of others, for obvious evolutionary reasons. It’s also hard to tell a positive success story about suffering, or to create positive motivational goals, because unless you count pleasure as “negative suffering”, the best win you can have is the absence of something, so you’re not doing better than dead people, intergalactic voids or lifeless asteroids. It’s hard to frame that into a motivational story about heroic victory.
Thanks for your comment, George.
Sections 1.4 and 8.5 in my book deal directly with the first issue you raise. Also see Chapter 3, “Creating Happiness at the Price of Suffering Is Wrong”, for various arguments against a moral symmetry between pleasure and suffering. But many chapters in the first part of the book deal with this.
I say a good deal about this in Chapter 2. I also discuss the moral relevance of such intrapersonal claims in section 3.2, “Intra- and Interpersonal Claims”.