I can’t speak for David (or, well, I can’t speak for that David), but for my own part, I’m willing to accept for the sake of argument that the happiness/suffering/whatever of individual minds is intersubjectively commensurable, just like I’m willing to accept for the sake of argument that people have “terminal values” which express what they really value, or that there exist “utilons” that are consistently evaluated across all situations, or a variety of other claims, despite having no evidence that any such things actually exist. I’m also willing to assume spherical cows, frictionless pulleys, and perfect vacuums for the sake of argument.
But the thing about accepting a claim for the sake of argument is that the argument I’m accepting it for the sake of has to have some payoff that makes accepting it worthwhile. As far as I can tell, the only payoff here is that it lets us conclude “hedonic utilitarianism is better than all other moral philosophies.” To me, that payoff doesn’t seem worth the bullet you’re biting by assuming the existence of intersubjectively commensurable hedons.
The self-reports correlate with the physical data.
If someone were to demonstrate a scanning device whose output could be used to calculate a “hedonic score” for a given brain across a wide range of real-world brains and brainstates without first being calibrated against that brain’s reference class, and that hedonic score could be used to reliably predict the self-reports of that brain’s happiness in a given moment, I would be surprised and would change my mind about both the degree of variation of cognitive experience and the viability of intersubjectively commensurable hedons.
If you’re claiming this has actually been demonstrated, I’d love to see the study; everything I’ve ever read about has been significantly narrower than that.
If you’re merely claiming that it’s in principle possible that we live in a world where this could be demonstrated, I agree that it’s in principle possible, but see no particular evidence to support the claim that we do.
If you’re merely claiming that it’s in principle possible that we live in a world where this could be demonstrated, I agree that it’s in principle possible, but see no particular evidence to support the claim that we do.
Well, yes. The main attraction of utilitarianism appears to be that it makes the calculation of what to do easier. But its assumptions appear ungrounded.
I can’t speak for David (or, well, I can’t speak for that David), but for my own part, I’m willing to accept for the sake of argument that the happiness/suffering/whatever of individual minds is intersubjectively commensurable, just like I’m willing to accept for the sake of argument that people have “terminal values” which express what they really value, or that there exist “utilons” that are consistently evaluated across all situations, or a variety of other claims, despite having no evidence that any such things actually exist. I’m also willing to assume spherical cows, frictionless pulleys, and perfect vacuums for the sake of argument.
But the thing about accepting a claim for the sake of argument is that the argument I’m accepting it for the sake of has to have some payoff that makes accepting it worthwhile. As far as I can tell, the only payoff here is that it lets us conclude “hedonic utilitarianism is better than all other moral philosophies.” To me, that payoff doesn’t seem worth the bullet you’re biting by assuming the existence of intersubjectively commensurable hedons.
If someone were to demonstrate a scanning device whose output could be used to calculate a “hedonic score” for a given brain across a wide range of real-world brains and brainstates without first being calibrated against that brain’s reference class, and that hedonic score could be used to reliably predict the self-reports of that brain’s happiness in a given moment, I would be surprised and would change my mind about both the degree of variation of cognitive experience and the viability of intersubjectively commensurable hedons.
If you’re claiming this has actually been demonstrated, I’d love to see the study; everything I’ve ever read about has been significantly narrower than that.
If you’re merely claiming that it’s in principle possible that we live in a world where this could be demonstrated, I agree that it’s in principle possible, but see no particular evidence to support the claim that we do.
Well, yes. The main attraction of utilitarianism appears to be that it makes the calculation of what to do easier. But its assumptions appear ungrounded.