From something like a functionalist perspective, where pleasure and pain exist because they have particular functions in the brain, I would not expect pleasure and pain to become more intense merely because the brain happens to have more neurons.
For clarity, my first reading of this was to consider the possible interpretation of a binary distinction: That either the whole entity can experience pain or not. And thus we’d have to count the entities as a measure of welfare.
I agree that weighing by neurons doesn’t seem appropriate when pain is not a result of individual neurons but their assembly. Weighing by neurons then is not much different from weighing by weight conditioned on having the required complexity. But why would a large being have a higher weight than a smaller one, everything considered equal? Wouldn’t that priviledge large animals (and even incentivise growth)?
For a comparison, consider the sharpness of our senses.
A comment on possible misinterpretations: You should rule out (if intended) that people think you equate sense resolution with pain sensation intensity. I think you don’t, but I’m not very sure.
What I think is the case is that more intelligent animals—especially more social animals—have more distinct sources of pleasure and pain (we can feel a broad range of social emotions, both good and bad, that solitary animals lack).
Yes, social animals often possess more elaborate ways to express pain, including facial expressions, vocalizations, and behavioral changes, which can serve communicative functions within their group. However, suppression of pain expression is also widespread, especially in species where showing pain could lower social rank or make an individual vulnerable to predation or aggression[1]. The question is what this expression tells us about the sensation. For example, assuming introversion is linked to this expression, does it imply that extroverts feel more pain? I agree that more complex processing is needed to detect (reflect) on pain. Pain expression can serve signalling functions such as alerting without reflection, but for more specific adaptation, such as familial care, require empathy, which arguably requires modeling other’s perceptions. Because expressing pain is suppressed in some species, we have to face this dichotomy: If the expression of pain informs about the amount or intensity of pain, then it follows that the same amount of injury can lead to very different amounts of pain, including none, even within a species. But if the expression of pain doesn’t tell us anything about the amount of pain, then the question is, what does?
Some thoughts.
For clarity, my first reading of this was to consider the possible interpretation of a binary distinction: That either the whole entity can experience pain or not. And thus we’d have to count the entities as a measure of welfare.
I agree that weighing by neurons doesn’t seem appropriate when pain is not a result of individual neurons but their assembly. Weighing by neurons then is not much different from weighing by weight conditioned on having the required complexity. But why would a large being have a higher weight than a smaller one, everything considered equal? Wouldn’t that priviledge large animals (and even incentivise growth)?
A comment on possible misinterpretations: You should rule out (if intended) that people think you equate sense resolution with pain sensation intensity. I think you don’t, but I’m not very sure.
Yes, social animals often possess more elaborate ways to express pain, including facial expressions, vocalizations, and behavioral changes, which can serve communicative functions within their group. However, suppression of pain expression is also widespread, especially in species where showing pain could lower social rank or make an individual vulnerable to predation or aggression[1]. The question is what this expression tells us about the sensation. For example, assuming introversion is linked to this expression, does it imply that extroverts feel more pain? I agree that more complex processing is needed to detect (reflect) on pain. Pain expression can serve signalling functions such as alerting without reflection, but for more specific adaptation, such as familial care, require empathy, which arguably requires modeling other’s perceptions. Because expressing pain is suppressed in some species, we have to face this dichotomy: If the expression of pain informs about the amount or intensity of pain, then it follows that the same amount of injury can lead to very different amounts of pain, including none, even within a species. But if the expression of pain doesn’t tell us anything about the amount of pain, then the question is, what does?
See Persistence of pain in humans and other mammals