Ben and Mitchell: the problem is that “meaningless inconvenience” and “agony” do not seem to have a common boundary. But this is only because there could be many transitional stages such as “fairly inconvenient” and “seriously inconvenient,” and so on. But sooner or later, you must come to stages which have a common boundary. Then the problem I mentioned will arise: in order to maintain your position, you will be forced to maintain that pain of a certain degree, suffered by any number of people and for any length of time, is worse than a very slightly greater pain suffered by a single person for a very short time. This may not be logically incoherent but at least it is not very reasonable.
I say “a very slightly greater pain” because it is indeed evident that we experience pain as something like a continuum, where it is always possible for it to slowly increase or decrease. Even though it is possible for it to increase or decrease by a large amount suddenly, there is no necessity for this to happen.
Ben and Mitchell: the problem is that “meaningless inconvenience” and “agony” do not seem to have a common boundary. But this is only because there could be many transitional stages such as “fairly inconvenient” and “seriously inconvenient,” and so on. But sooner or later, you must come to stages which have a common boundary. Then the problem I mentioned will arise: in order to maintain your position, you will be forced to maintain that pain of a certain degree, suffered by any number of people and for any length of time, is worse than a very slightly greater pain suffered by a single person for a very short time. This may not be logically incoherent but at least it is not very reasonable.
I say “a very slightly greater pain” because it is indeed evident that we experience pain as something like a continuum, where it is always possible for it to slowly increase or decrease. Even though it is possible for it to increase or decrease by a large amount suddenly, there is no necessity for this to happen.