I’m a long time committed axiological hedonist and have never believed that pleasure was objectively commensurable with suffering, and I also strongly suspect (but could be wrong) that pleasures are heterogenous and therefore not all pleasureable experiences are commensurable with each other (and the same with suffering). I find this makes it easier to explain clear cases of ambiguity in ethics, because I think ambiguity is baked into the axiological ground truth. I do believe that some things are objectively good and some things are objectively bad, but there is no universally accessible objective utility function by which you can rank all things from most to least desirable. Recognizing this clarifies weird edge cases where one form or another of utilitarianism seems to lead to a bad result, like symmetric utilitarianism leading to the repugnant conclusion or negative utilitarianism implying that we should destroy the world. These seem to be examples where maximizing hedonistic utility functions leads to bad things happening, because they are.
Axiological hedonism follows logically from materialist metaphysics and empiricist epistemology. Good and bad are qualities of experiences rather than external events or objects, hence why reasonable people may disagree whether or not a song was good. One person’s experience of listening to the song was good, while the other person’s experience was bad. Projecting qualities like “good” and “bad” onto things besides experiences is to mistake the map for the territory. And if anyone doubts that pleasure is good then they just haven’t experienced the pleasures I have.
We are mostly in agreement, though I don’t quite understand what you meant by:
These seem to be examples where maximizing hedonistic utility functions leads to bad things happening, because they are.
If suffering and pleasure are incommensurable, in what way are such outcomes bad?
I would also be interested in your response to the argument that suffering is inherently urgent, while pleasure does not have this quality. Imagine you are incapable of suffering, and you are currently experiencing pleasure. One could say that you would be indifferent to the pleasure being taken away from you (or being increased to a higher level). Now imagine that you are instead incapable of experiencing pleasure, and you are currently suffering. In this case it would arguably be very clear to you that reducing suffering is important.
I’m a long time committed axiological hedonist and have never believed that pleasure was objectively commensurable with suffering, and I also strongly suspect (but could be wrong) that pleasures are heterogenous and therefore not all pleasureable experiences are commensurable with each other (and the same with suffering). I find this makes it easier to explain clear cases of ambiguity in ethics, because I think ambiguity is baked into the axiological ground truth. I do believe that some things are objectively good and some things are objectively bad, but there is no universally accessible objective utility function by which you can rank all things from most to least desirable. Recognizing this clarifies weird edge cases where one form or another of utilitarianism seems to lead to a bad result, like symmetric utilitarianism leading to the repugnant conclusion or negative utilitarianism implying that we should destroy the world. These seem to be examples where maximizing hedonistic utility functions leads to bad things happening, because they are.
Axiological hedonism follows logically from materialist metaphysics and empiricist epistemology. Good and bad are qualities of experiences rather than external events or objects, hence why reasonable people may disagree whether or not a song was good. One person’s experience of listening to the song was good, while the other person’s experience was bad. Projecting qualities like “good” and “bad” onto things besides experiences is to mistake the map for the territory. And if anyone doubts that pleasure is good then they just haven’t experienced the pleasures I have.
We are mostly in agreement, though I don’t quite understand what you meant by:
If suffering and pleasure are incommensurable, in what way are such outcomes bad?
I would also be interested in your response to the argument that suffering is inherently urgent, while pleasure does not have this quality. Imagine you are incapable of suffering, and you are currently experiencing pleasure. One could say that you would be indifferent to the pleasure being taken away from you (or being increased to a higher level). Now imagine that you are instead incapable of experiencing pleasure, and you are currently suffering. In this case it would arguably be very clear to you that reducing suffering is important.