I try to make space for people to recant old positions because I certainly need it.
You’re saying the points are implied by the first comment in the thread, and I don’t think they are. I see by your clarifications that I agree with you significantly about the issue itself but I think you are very wrong about the implications of “Pain...is bad, because it interferes with working towards what one values.”
For instance:
Consider someone whose only ambition is to collect every Pokemon in the world. Kpreid’s scenario suggests a dichotomy: either it is okay to cause this person pain, or the only reason not to cause this person pain is because it might prevent Pokemons from being collected.
If my goal is for people to not be in pain, pain to that collector is obviously bad. If my goal is for people who don’t want to be in pain not to be in pain, a consequentialist calculation probably indicates I should still work to minimize the pain of people who protest that they don’t care despite their statements.
I don’t disagree that “pain [can be] bad because it interferes with working toward what one values”, I only disagree that that is the only reason pain can possibly be bad.
Maybe the confusion here is translating between pain and utility. I view KPReid as making the claim:
“Pain in itself should not be considered disutility. Only failure to achieve a goal should be considered disutility, and pain should be counted as decreasing utility only insofar as it affects that.”
(where ‘goal’ here is an explicit goal like ‘collect Pokemon’ and not an implicit goal like ‘avoid pain’. If all kpreid was trying to say was that “avoid pain” can be considered a “goal”, I agree. In the Pokemon example, I’m assuming a neurotypical Pokemon collector who may have dedicated her life to collecting Pokemon, but still feels pain in the same way everyone else does and dislikes it—not a nonhuman Pokemon-maximizer)
I consider myself as making the different claim:
“Pain in itself can be disutility if the person involved does not want pain.”
Note that under my interpretation, it doesn’t matter whether or not the pain conveys information; information may be a counterbalancing factor that outweighs the disutility of the pain, but the pain is still bad. See my response to Silas.
I’m still not convinced we don’t mostly agree on this issue.
We pretty much agree on the issue itself. I don’t see why a person gets to “own” their pain, someone’s pain can be disutility for a second person who cares about it.
I agree with kpreid that you are wrong about what others are saying, that’s mostly it.
Nitpickery: I do not agree with “Pain in itself should not be considered disutility. Only failure to achieve a goal should be considered disutility [...]”, nor does kpreid_2009. On rereading the thread somewhat, I think that your comment “This seems like straightforward utilitarianism…” best describes what I was aiming at.
I think that pain in itself probably does become disutility (which is often offset by the information it carries), possibly through some intermediate stages. However, I don’t want to be more precise than that, as I think at the moment that this issue is inseperable from formalizing (I first wrote “turning into something like a utility function” but that may assume too much) the entirety of the godshatter.
Well, you’re usually right about everything, so this is quite a break in the pattern. ;-)
That’s the most confusing way of being disagreed with I’ve ever experienced :)
...you are aware that I’m attacking each of the bullet points in the comment above, not agreeing with them—right?
I try to make space for people to recant old positions because I certainly need it.
You’re saying the points are implied by the first comment in the thread, and I don’t think they are. I see by your clarifications that I agree with you significantly about the issue itself but I think you are very wrong about the implications of “Pain...is bad, because it interferes with working towards what one values.”
For instance:
If my goal is for people to not be in pain, pain to that collector is obviously bad. If my goal is for people who don’t want to be in pain not to be in pain, a consequentialist calculation probably indicates I should still work to minimize the pain of people who protest that they don’t care despite their statements.
I don’t disagree that “pain [can be] bad because it interferes with working toward what one values”, I only disagree that that is the only reason pain can possibly be bad.
Maybe the confusion here is translating between pain and utility. I view KPReid as making the claim:
“Pain in itself should not be considered disutility. Only failure to achieve a goal should be considered disutility, and pain should be counted as decreasing utility only insofar as it affects that.”
(where ‘goal’ here is an explicit goal like ‘collect Pokemon’ and not an implicit goal like ‘avoid pain’. If all kpreid was trying to say was that “avoid pain” can be considered a “goal”, I agree. In the Pokemon example, I’m assuming a neurotypical Pokemon collector who may have dedicated her life to collecting Pokemon, but still feels pain in the same way everyone else does and dislikes it—not a nonhuman Pokemon-maximizer)
I consider myself as making the different claim:
“Pain in itself can be disutility if the person involved does not want pain.”
Note that under my interpretation, it doesn’t matter whether or not the pain conveys information; information may be a counterbalancing factor that outweighs the disutility of the pain, but the pain is still bad. See my response to Silas.
I’m still not convinced we don’t mostly agree on this issue.
We pretty much agree on the issue itself. I don’t see why a person gets to “own” their pain, someone’s pain can be disutility for a second person who cares about it.
I agree with kpreid that you are wrong about what others are saying, that’s mostly it.
Okay, I assume it’s a misunderstanding on my part and sorry about that. (lays dead thread to rest)
Nitpickery: I do not agree with “Pain in itself should not be considered disutility. Only failure to achieve a goal should be considered disutility [...]”, nor does kpreid_2009. On rereading the thread somewhat, I think that your comment “This seems like straightforward utilitarianism…” best describes what I was aiming at.
I think that pain in itself probably does become disutility (which is often offset by the information it carries), possibly through some intermediate stages. However, I don’t want to be more precise than that, as I think at the moment that this issue is inseperable from formalizing (I first wrote “turning into something like a utility function” but that may assume too much) the entirety of the godshatter.