I’ve heard this referred to as “experience preference”, or sometimes “experiential utility”, in that they are things you want to experience, distinct from states you want the universe to be in. (skipping the rabbit hole of whether all experience is memory or whether this is a preference for having a memory vs having an experience).
It occurs a lot in the negative as well—things you don’t want to experience (or don’t want ANYONE to experience), regardless of the state of the universe afterward. Many torture-tradeoff discussions hinge on this point—to a lot of people, suffering is bad not because of consequences or because is reduces a hedonic sum, but is a dimension of bad in itself.
True. There are two distinctions (I think) you’re making from base utilitarianism (preferences over state of the universe in terms of agent-experienced utility):
1) This is about path, not state. You have an opinion about something to do/experience that’s independent of any difference in expected value of a future state. It’s also (I think) explicitly indexical—you care that it’s you having this experience, not that it’s experienced by more people.
2) This is about … something … which isn’t on the pain/pleasure axis. I’m less sure of this one, as I tend to experience identity-affirming things as somewhat pleasurable and I’m not sure that’s any less comparable on this dimension than any other pleasure or personal disappointment.
The torture example is similar on the first point, but misses the second. Is that roughly correct?
Basically yes. My take on 2) is that identity-affirming things can be somewhat pleasurable—but they’re unlikely to be the most pleasurable thing the human could do at that moment. So they can be valued for something else than pure pleasure.
And you can get other examples where someone, say, is truthful, even if that causes them more pain than a simple lie would.
I’ve heard this referred to as “experience preference”, or sometimes “experiential utility”, in that they are things you want to experience, distinct from states you want the universe to be in. (skipping the rabbit hole of whether all experience is memory or whether this is a preference for having a memory vs having an experience).
It occurs a lot in the negative as well—things you don’t want to experience (or don’t want ANYONE to experience), regardless of the state of the universe afterward. Many torture-tradeoff discussions hinge on this point—to a lot of people, suffering is bad not because of consequences or because is reduces a hedonic sum, but is a dimension of bad in itself.
Cool, thanks. I see the torture example as being closer to hedonism (or rather, anti-hedonism), though.
True. There are two distinctions (I think) you’re making from base utilitarianism (preferences over state of the universe in terms of agent-experienced utility):
1) This is about path, not state. You have an opinion about something to do/experience that’s independent of any difference in expected value of a future state. It’s also (I think) explicitly indexical—you care that it’s you having this experience, not that it’s experienced by more people.
2) This is about … something … which isn’t on the pain/pleasure axis. I’m less sure of this one, as I tend to experience identity-affirming things as somewhat pleasurable and I’m not sure that’s any less comparable on this dimension than any other pleasure or personal disappointment.
The torture example is similar on the first point, but misses the second. Is that roughly correct?
Basically yes. My take on 2) is that identity-affirming things can be somewhat pleasurable—but they’re unlikely to be the most pleasurable thing the human could do at that moment. So they can be valued for something else than pure pleasure.
And you can get other examples where someone, say, is truthful, even if that causes them more pain than a simple lie would.