Also, separately, I can imagine functionalist definitions of intensity, like Welfare Footprint Project’s, that allow at least ordinal interpersonal comparisons. At some intensity of pain (its affective component/suffering/negative valence), which they define as disabling, the pain doesn’t leave the individual’s attention (it’s “continually distressing”), presumably even if they try to direct their attention elsewhere. And then excruciating pain leads to risky or seemingly irrational behaviour, plausibly due to extreme temporal discounting. It’s not clear there should be anything further than excruciating that we can use to compare across minds, though, but maybe just higher and higher discount rates?
We could define pleasure intensities symmetrically, based on attention and induced temporal discounting.
On the other hand, maybe some beings only have all-or-nothing pain experiences, i.e. their pain always meets the definition of excruciating whenever they’re in pain, and this could happen in very simple minds, because they don’t weigh different interests smoothly, whether simultaneous interests, or current and future interests or different future interests. Maybe we wouldn’t think such minds are sentient at all, though.
Also, separately, I can imagine functionalist definitions of intensity, like Welfare Footprint Project’s, that allow at least ordinal interpersonal comparisons. At some intensity of pain (its affective component/suffering/negative valence), which they define as disabling, the pain doesn’t leave the individual’s attention (it’s “continually distressing”), presumably even if they try to direct their attention elsewhere. And then excruciating pain leads to risky or seemingly irrational behaviour, plausibly due to extreme temporal discounting. It’s not clear there should be anything further than excruciating that we can use to compare across minds, though, but maybe just higher and higher discount rates?
We could define pleasure intensities symmetrically, based on attention and induced temporal discounting.
On the other hand, maybe some beings only have all-or-nothing pain experiences, i.e. their pain always meets the definition of excruciating whenever they’re in pain, and this could happen in very simple minds, because they don’t weigh different interests smoothly, whether simultaneous interests, or current and future interests or different future interests. Maybe we wouldn’t think such minds are sentient at all, though.
https://reducing-suffering.org/is-brain-size-morally-relevant/#Reductio_against_equality_Binary_utility_function