Thanks for this post. However, I find myself disagreeing with the implicit hedonistic perspective here.
If you could choose, which would you prefer?
The excruciating, “maybe infinite” pain, for 1 hour (no long-term consequences)
The death of your child (permanent)
I’m not sure if there’s a single human alive that would choose (2) over (1). Even if you gave someone a 5-minute sample of the excruciating pain, they’d still choose the 1-hour version over the death of their child, guaranteed.
But children die all the time! That’s the point of the AMF and similar charities. If you prioritize animals, you may want to consider whether they care about the deaths of their offspring.
IIRC, Vinding used a similar example in his SFE book but framed it using ‘impartial’ terms.
For impartiality, choice (1) might be modified to ‘the excruciating, “maybe infinite” pain, for 1 hour (no long-term consequences) of one’s own child’. In that case, I think it’s plausible that humans would choose (2) over (1).
I think different humans would choose differently. According to various people in this comment section and elsewhere, childbirth is extremely painful and lasts on the order of an hour. Yet people still choose to have children, even though some of those children will grow up to experience childbirth. My own tentative answer is that I’d ask to experience the pain myself a bit first, and also want to get a clearer sense of what life would be like afterwards—if it’s a normal healthy late-20th-century middle class American life, I could see myself choosing 1, pending results from experiencing it myself for a bit.
Maybe I should follow in Ren’s footsteps and get a tattoo.
Yeah fair. It seems more accurate to say that some humans would choose (the modified, impartial form of) (2) over (1), and some other humans would choose (1) over modified (2).
It’s just my intuition that people wouldn’t want to subject their child to excruciating physical torture that could be ‘infinite’ in intensity, and although both options are bad, this would seem worse than the death of one’s child.
P.S. Not sure why people are downvoting this? Intuitions can serve as weak evidence.
First of all, I doubt it. People don’t even commit suicide to avoid 1 hour pain (usually the suicide-due-to-pain people are those who don’t anticipate ever getting better).
Second, even assuming you’re right, what happens in that world is that the emotional pain still trumps the actual pain. Like, if people prefer their own pain to their child’s death, then the death of a child is worse than the pain of a hermit (someone with no family). It’s not necessarily worse than the pain for a child… but only if that child has parents. Is that your model? It has important implications.
I mostly agree with what you’ve said, and I think that your view and my view are pretty much consistent. My main message isn’t really “physical pain is worse than other types of suffering”, rather: “I found even moderate physical pain to be really, really awful, which suggests that it’s probably really, really morally urgent to prevent both extreme physical pain and other types of extreme suffering”.
The hedonistic focus probably arose from the fact that I can subject myself to physical pain quite easily, but less so other types of suffering. I mention this in the limitations section.
It probably depends on whether one was given the choice in advance, while not being in the midst of the excruciating pain. The parent would probably precommit to enduring said pain for an hour to save their child. They may, however, choose differently if in the midst of the pain and offered the ability to kill their child to end that excruciating pain.
I have children, and I would precommit to enduring the pain without hesitation, but I don’t know what I would do in the middle of experiencing the pain. If pain is sufficiently intense, “I” am not in chatter any more, and whatever part of me is in charge, I don’t know very well how it would act
Oh, I didn’t mean for you to make the decision in the middle of pain!
The scenario is: first, you experience 5 minutes of pain. Then take a 1 hour break. Then decide: 1 hour pain, or dead child. No changing your mind once you’ve decided.
The possibility that pain may twist your brain into taking actions you do not endorse when not under duress is interesting, but not particularly morally relevant. We usually care about informed decisions not made under duress.
Thanks for this post. However, I find myself disagreeing with the implicit hedonistic perspective here.
If you could choose, which would you prefer?
The excruciating, “maybe infinite” pain, for 1 hour (no long-term consequences)
The death of your child (permanent)
I’m not sure if there’s a single human alive that would choose (2) over (1). Even if you gave someone a 5-minute sample of the excruciating pain, they’d still choose the 1-hour version over the death of their child, guaranteed.
But children die all the time! That’s the point of the AMF and similar charities. If you prioritize animals, you may want to consider whether they care about the deaths of their offspring.
IIRC, Vinding used a similar example in his SFE book but framed it using ‘impartial’ terms.
For impartiality, choice (1) might be modified to ‘the excruciating, “maybe infinite” pain, for 1 hour (no long-term consequences) of one’s own child’. In that case, I think it’s plausible that humans would choose (2) over (1).
I think different humans would choose differently. According to various people in this comment section and elsewhere, childbirth is extremely painful and lasts on the order of an hour. Yet people still choose to have children, even though some of those children will grow up to experience childbirth. My own tentative answer is that I’d ask to experience the pain myself a bit first, and also want to get a clearer sense of what life would be like afterwards—if it’s a normal healthy late-20th-century middle class American life, I could see myself choosing 1, pending results from experiencing it myself for a bit.
Maybe I should follow in Ren’s footsteps and get a tattoo.
Yeah fair. It seems more accurate to say that some humans would choose (the modified, impartial form of) (2) over (1), and some other humans would choose (1) over modified (2).
‘In that case, I think it’s plausible that humans would choose (2) over (1).’ What’s the evidence for this?
It’s just my intuition that people wouldn’t want to subject their child to excruciating physical torture that could be ‘infinite’ in intensity, and although both options are bad, this would seem worse than the death of one’s child.
P.S. Not sure why people are downvoting this? Intuitions can serve as weak evidence.
First of all, I doubt it. People don’t even commit suicide to avoid 1 hour pain (usually the suicide-due-to-pain people are those who don’t anticipate ever getting better).
Second, even assuming you’re right, what happens in that world is that the emotional pain still trumps the actual pain. Like, if people prefer their own pain to their child’s death, then the death of a child is worse than the pain of a hermit (someone with no family). It’s not necessarily worse than the pain for a child… but only if that child has parents. Is that your model? It has important implications.
I mostly agree with what you’ve said, and I think that your view and my view are pretty much consistent. My main message isn’t really “physical pain is worse than other types of suffering”, rather: “I found even moderate physical pain to be really, really awful, which suggests that it’s probably really, really morally urgent to prevent both extreme physical pain and other types of extreme suffering”.
The hedonistic focus probably arose from the fact that I can subject myself to physical pain quite easily, but less so other types of suffering. I mention this in the limitations section.
This seems very clearly not guaranteed for some arbitrarily large amount of pain.
It probably depends on whether one was given the choice in advance, while not being in the midst of the excruciating pain. The parent would probably precommit to enduring said pain for an hour to save their child. They may, however, choose differently if in the midst of the pain and offered the ability to kill their child to end that excruciating pain.
Do you have children?
I have children, and I would precommit to enduring the pain without hesitation, but I don’t know what I would do in the middle of experiencing the pain. If pain is sufficiently intense, “I” am not in chatter any more, and whatever part of me is in charge, I don’t know very well how it would act
Oh, I didn’t mean for you to make the decision in the middle of pain!
The scenario is: first, you experience 5 minutes of pain. Then take a 1 hour break. Then decide: 1 hour pain, or dead child. No changing your mind once you’ve decided.
The possibility that pain may twist your brain into taking actions you do not endorse when not under duress is interesting, but not particularly morally relevant. We usually care about informed decisions not made under duress.