I didn’t directly respond to the other one because the principle is exactly the same. I’m puzzled that you think otherwise.
Removing their sadness at separation while leaving their desire to be together intact isn’t a clear Pareto improvement unless one already accepts that pain is what is bad.
I mean, in thought experiments like this all one can hope for is to probe intuitions that you either do or don’t have. It’s not question-begging on my part because my point is: Imagine that you can remove the cow’s suffering but leave everything else practically the same. (This, by definition, assesses the intrinsic value of relieving suffering.) How could that not be better? It’s a Pareto improvement because, contra the “drugged into happiness” image, the idea is not that you’ve relieved the suffering but thwarted the cow’s goal to be reunited with its child; the goals are exactly the same, but the suffering is gone, and it just seems pretty obvious to me that that’s a much better state of the world.
Sticking with the cow example, I agree with you that if we removed their pain at being separated while leaving the desire to be together intact, this seems like a Pareto improvement over not removing their pain.
A preferentist would insist here that the removal of pain is not what makes that situation better, but rather that pain is (probably) dis-prefered by the cows, so removing it gives them something they want.
But the negative hedonist (pain is bad, pleasure is neutral) is stuck with saying that the “drugged into happiness” image is as good as the “cows happily reunited” image. A preferentist by contrast can (I think intuitively) assert that reuniting the cows is better than just removing their pain, because reunification fulfills (1) the cows desire to be free of pain and (2) their desire to be together.
I didn’t directly respond to the other one because the principle is exactly the same. I’m puzzled that you think otherwise.
I mean, in thought experiments like this all one can hope for is to probe intuitions that you either do or don’t have. It’s not question-begging on my part because my point is: Imagine that you can remove the cow’s suffering but leave everything else practically the same. (This, by definition, assesses the intrinsic value of relieving suffering.) How could that not be better? It’s a Pareto improvement because, contra the “drugged into happiness” image, the idea is not that you’ve relieved the suffering but thwarted the cow’s goal to be reunited with its child; the goals are exactly the same, but the suffering is gone, and it just seems pretty obvious to me that that’s a much better state of the world.
I think my above reply missed the mark here.
Sticking with the cow example, I agree with you that if we removed their pain at being separated while leaving the desire to be together intact, this seems like a Pareto improvement over not removing their pain.
A preferentist would insist here that the removal of pain is not what makes that situation better, but rather that pain is (probably) dis-prefered by the cows, so removing it gives them something they want.
But the negative hedonist (pain is bad, pleasure is neutral) is stuck with saying that the “drugged into happiness” image is as good as the “cows happily reunited” image. A preferentist by contrast can (I think intuitively) assert that reuniting the cows is better than just removing their pain, because reunification fulfills (1) the cows desire to be free of pain and (2) their desire to be together.