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.
How do you account for the possibility of an experience being neutral in the Welfare Footprint Framework (WFF), including due to lack of sentience? I believe the probabilities assigned to annoying, hurtful, disabling, and excruciating pain, and satisfaction, joy, euphoria, and bliss should add up to 1 - “probability of the experience being neutral”, where “probability of the experience being neutral” >= “probability of sentience”.
You have entries for “no pain” and “no pleasure” under WFF, as represented below. Are you modelling a lower probability of sentience by increasing the probability of painful experiences involving “no pain”, and by increasing the probablity of pleasurable experiences involving “no pleasure”? If not, are your estimates for the time spent in time conditional on sentience? I think it would be better if you replaced the entries for “no pain” and “no pleasure” with a single entry for “no pain or pleasure (neutral experience)” such that the probabilities of all potential categories of experience add to 1.
In the Welfare Footprint Framework, pain and pleasure intensities are defined as absolute categories conditional on an experience being affective, and uncertainty about sentience is treated upstream as a separate epistemic issue rather than folded into intensity probabilities. The closest point of contact between these questions is affective capacity—since different organisms may plausibly reach different intensity ranges or resolutions, as discussed in our article—but probability of sentience is not part of the equation, because the definition of sentience we adopt is itself conditioned on the capacity to experience affective states.
Thanks, Wladimir. In that case, your estimates for the time spent in annoying, hurtful, disabling, and excruciating pain are conditional on sentience, right? If so, one has to multiply them by the probability of sentience to make interspecies comparisons.
Thanks, Vasco. We recognize that for most specific interspecies comparisons, affective capacity (not probability of sentience) is indeed crucial, but this remains an open scientific question. For that reason, the Welfare Footprint Framework is intentionally agnostic about correction values for interspecific scaling: welfare estimates are produced without such corrections, and any assumptions about differences in affective capacity must be applied explicitly and transparently as optional post-quantification adjustments when particular comparisons require them, rather than being implicitly folded into the core estimates.
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 “hold this assumption as temporary until better evidence allows for a more accurate placement of each experience on an absolute scale”.
Thanks for spelling this out, Vasco — yes, that’s a fair clarification.
When we say that pain intensities are defined as “absolute” 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 (“if shrimps were capable of experiencing Excruciating pain”) 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.
Hi Wladimir.
How do you account for the possibility of an experience being neutral in the Welfare Footprint Framework (WFF), including due to lack of sentience? I believe the probabilities assigned to annoying, hurtful, disabling, and excruciating pain, and satisfaction, joy, euphoria, and bliss should add up to 1 - “probability of the experience being neutral”, where “probability of the experience being neutral” >= “probability of sentience”.
You have entries for “no pain” and “no pleasure” under WFF, as represented below. Are you modelling a lower probability of sentience by increasing the probability of painful experiences involving “no pain”, and by increasing the probablity of pleasurable experiences involving “no pleasure”? If not, are your estimates for the time spent in time conditional on sentience? I think it would be better if you replaced the entries for “no pain” and “no pleasure” with a single entry for “no pain or pleasure (neutral experience)” such that the probabilities of all potential categories of experience add to 1.
Hi Vasco,
In the Welfare Footprint Framework, pain and pleasure intensities are defined as absolute categories conditional on an experience being affective, and uncertainty about sentience is treated upstream as a separate epistemic issue rather than folded into intensity probabilities. The closest point of contact between these questions is affective capacity—since different organisms may plausibly reach different intensity ranges or resolutions, as discussed in our article—but probability of sentience is not part of the equation, because the definition of sentience we adopt is itself conditioned on the capacity to experience affective states.
Thanks, Wladimir. In that case, your estimates for the time spent in annoying, hurtful, disabling, and excruciating pain are conditional on sentience, right? If so, one has to multiply them by the probability of sentience to make interspecies comparisons.
Thanks, Vasco. We recognize that for most specific interspecies comparisons, affective capacity (not probability of sentience) is indeed crucial, but this remains an open scientific question. For that reason, the Welfare Footprint Framework is intentionally agnostic about correction values for interspecific scaling: welfare estimates are produced without such corrections, and any assumptions about differences in affective capacity must be applied explicitly and transparently as optional post-quantification adjustments when particular comparisons require them, rather than being implicitly folded into 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 “hold this assumption as temporary until better evidence allows for a more accurate placement of each experience on an absolute scale”.
Thanks for spelling this out, Vasco — yes, that’s a fair clarification.
When we say that pain intensities are defined as “absolute” 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 (“if shrimps were capable of experiencing Excruciating pain”) 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.