(March 2, 2011 at 5:45 pm)The Omnissiunt One Wrote: What DvF says is right. It is nonsense to treat a thousand pinpricks as equivalent to, say, one third degree burn.
Only because they wouldn't be suffering equally in an individual sense, were we to take one person experiencing third degree burns who reaches pain threshold x and another suffering from multiple and consistent pinpricks, say 100,000 of them, who also reaches pain threshold x they would be suffering equally.
If we were to take the say, 100,000 pinpricks and divide them amongst 100,000 people have we quantitatively reduced the amount of suffering inflicted? Of course not.
The question is not "can we compare pain quantitatively and qualitatively?" because we clearly can, the question is "is this a moral evaluation?".
I don't think pleasure/happiness does make for a valid moral comparison, but what happens when we evaluate the same thing in terms of desires?
A pinprick is something that thwarts a desire, our desire not to feel pain, and to a negligible extent. Suffering from 100,000 pinpricks is something that thwarts very strongly our desire to not feel pain, as does third degree burns, they don't just thwart our desires not to feel pain, they thwart out desires to have a properly functioning body and our ability to fulfil our other desires - Pain aside, a person suffering third degree burns will have an impact on their ability to fulfil other desires long term, a single pinprick is one that does not have this long term impact on the function of one's body or their ability to fulfil other desires over time, thus, while the pain might be quantitatively equal amongst the 100,000 single pinpricks and the third degree burn victim, the qualitative pain suffered by the person experiencing third degree burns will be something that also thwarts his ability to fulfil other desires - This is a situation where 1) Pain and pleasure can be quantitatively measured and the comparison is completely legitimate, AND 2) It would not be morally good to make one person suffer 3rd degree burns in terms of the potential thwarting/fulfilling of their desires.
Quote:Assuming, however, that one action will bring a certain amount of pleasure/desire fulfillment to one person, and another action will do the same for two people, it's not incoherent to desire that the second action be done,
And it is also perfectly legitimate to say that the second action is the one that caused more pleasure, which was exactly my point.
Quote:as we can coherently wish for as many people's preferences to be fulfilled as possible, without aggregating those preferences, assuming that the preferences are of roughly equal importance for each person.
Assume the preferences for each person ARE equal, action x causes pleasure for Bill, action y causes pleasure for Tom and Fred, it is completely legitimate to say that y causes more pleasure - This "consciousness barrier" is complete bollocks, experience can be comparatively evaluated.
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