the Welfare Footprint Framework is intentionally agnostic about correction values for interspecific scaling
In agreement with the above, I have been using your estimates for the time in pain as if they do not account for any considerations relevant for interspecies welfare comparisons.
In the Welfare Footprint framework, pain intensities are defined as absolute measures, meaning that one hour of Excruciating pain in humans is assumed to be hedonically equivalent to one hour of Excruciating pain in shrimps, if shrimps were capable of experiencing Excruciating pain.
This sentence made me think no adjustments were needed to compare your estimates for the time humans and shrimp spend in excruciating pain. So I mistakenly inferred you were accounting for considerations relevant for interspecies welfare comparisons. However, as you say in the same paragraph, you āhold this assumption as temporary until better evidence allows for a more accurate placement of each experience on an absolute scaleā.
Thanks for spelling this out, Vasco ā yes, thatās a fair clarification.
When we say that pain intensities are defined as āabsoluteā in WFF, this is meant in a conceptual and operational sense within a shared intensity vocabulary, not as a claim that no interspecific adjustments are needed in practice. The statement you quote is explicitly conditional (āif shrimps were capable of experiencing Excruciating painā) and is held as a temporary, simplifying assumption to allow measurement of time spent in different intensity categories, while recognizing that the true placement of experiences on an absolute scale across taxa remains an open scientific problem.
At a personal scientific level, I find it very implausible that the affective capacity of a shrimp and that of a human are comparable. However, because this remains an unresolved empirical question, the framework itself is intentionally agnostic and requires that any interspecific adjustments be made explicitly and post-quantification, rather than being implicitly embedded in the core estimates.
In agreement with the above, I have been using your estimates for the time in pain as if they do not account for any considerations relevant for interspecies welfare comparisons.
This sentence made me think no adjustments were needed to compare your estimates for the time humans and shrimp spend in excruciating pain. So I mistakenly inferred you were accounting for considerations relevant for interspecies welfare comparisons. However, as you say in the same paragraph, you āhold this assumption as temporary until better evidence allows for a more accurate placement of each experience on an absolute scaleā.
Thanks for spelling this out, Vasco ā yes, thatās a fair clarification.
When we say that pain intensities are defined as āabsoluteā in WFF, this is meant in a conceptual and operational sense within a shared intensity vocabulary, not as a claim that no interspecific adjustments are needed in practice. The statement you quote is explicitly conditional (āif shrimps were capable of experiencing Excruciating painā) and is held as a temporary, simplifying assumption to allow measurement of time spent in different intensity categories, while recognizing that the true placement of experiences on an absolute scale across taxa remains an open scientific problem.
At a personal scientific level, I find it very implausible that the affective capacity of a shrimp and that of a human are comparable. However, because this remains an unresolved empirical question, the framework itself is intentionally agnostic and requires that any interspecific adjustments be made explicitly and post-quantification, rather than being implicitly embedded in the core estimates.