Preferring not to experience something is not the same thing as it being net negative. You are comparing it to a baseline of your normal life (because not experiencing it is simply continuing to experience your usual utility level).
I think what was meant is that they’d rather experience nothing at all for the same duration, so they’re comparing the concentration camp to non-experience/non-existence, not their average experience.
I don’t think that that follows either, though. Because in practice temporarily not experiencing anything basically just means skipping to the next time you are experiencing something. So you may well intuit that you’d rather that any time the quality of your experience dips a lot.
For example, if you have a fine but mostly quite boring job, but your life outside of work is exceptionally blissful, you may well choose to ‘skip’ the work parts, to not experience them and just regain consciousness when you clock off to go live your life of luxury unendingly. That certainly doesn’t mean your time at work has negative value- it’s just nowhere near as good as the rest, so you’d rather stick to the bliss.
So I would say that no, actually this intuition merely proves that those experiences you’d prefer not to experience are below average, rather than below zero.
I think what you’re saying is coherent and could in principle explain some comparisons people make, although I think people can imagine what an experience with very little affective value, negative or positive, feels like, and then compare other experiences to that. For example, the vast majority of my experiences seem near neutral to me. We can also tell if something feels good or bad in absolute terms (or we have such judgements).
I also think your argument can prove too much: people would choose to skip all but their peak experiences in their lives, which collectively might make up a few days of life. So, I don’t think people are actually thinking about these tradeoffs the way you suggest (although I don’t think it’s implausible, either, just likely not most of the time, imo).
We also know that positive and negative affect correspond to different neural patterns using different regions of the brain, and (I think) we can tell through imaging when negative affect is absent. And more intense affect in either direction takes more of our attention. So, animals (including humans) are not physically shift-invariant with respect to affect, either.
Someone could still coherently think none of this matters morally, and what only matters is the average welfare in a life, but I think that doesn’t capture judgements we make that I do care about.
MichaelStJules is right about what I meant. While it’s true that preferring not to experience something doesn’t necessarily imply that the thing is net-negative, it seems to me very strong evidence in that direction.
Hi, instead of clogging up the thread I just thought I’d alert you that I responded to MichaelStJules, which should function equally as a response to your comment.
Preferring not to experience something is not the same thing as it being net negative. You are comparing it to a baseline of your normal life (because not experiencing it is simply continuing to experience your usual utility level).
I think what was meant is that they’d rather experience nothing at all for the same duration, so they’re comparing the concentration camp to non-experience/non-existence, not their average experience.
In other words, the question is: Would you prefer to experience X, or spend the same amount of time in coma?
I don’t think that that follows either, though. Because in practice temporarily not experiencing anything basically just means skipping to the next time you are experiencing something. So you may well intuit that you’d rather that any time the quality of your experience dips a lot.
For example, if you have a fine but mostly quite boring job, but your life outside of work is exceptionally blissful, you may well choose to ‘skip’ the work parts, to not experience them and just regain consciousness when you clock off to go live your life of luxury unendingly. That certainly doesn’t mean your time at work has negative value- it’s just nowhere near as good as the rest, so you’d rather stick to the bliss.
So I would say that no, actually this intuition merely proves that those experiences you’d prefer not to experience are below average, rather than below zero.
I think what you’re saying is coherent and could in principle explain some comparisons people make, although I think people can imagine what an experience with very little affective value, negative or positive, feels like, and then compare other experiences to that. For example, the vast majority of my experiences seem near neutral to me. We can also tell if something feels good or bad in absolute terms (or we have such judgements).
I also think your argument can prove too much: people would choose to skip all but their peak experiences in their lives, which collectively might make up a few days of life. So, I don’t think people are actually thinking about these tradeoffs the way you suggest (although I don’t think it’s implausible, either, just likely not most of the time, imo).
We also know that positive and negative affect correspond to different neural patterns using different regions of the brain, and (I think) we can tell through imaging when negative affect is absent. And more intense affect in either direction takes more of our attention. So, animals (including humans) are not physically shift-invariant with respect to affect, either.
Someone could still coherently think none of this matters morally, and what only matters is the average welfare in a life, but I think that doesn’t capture judgements we make that I do care about.
MichaelStJules is right about what I meant. While it’s true that preferring not to experience something doesn’t necessarily imply that the thing is net-negative, it seems to me very strong evidence in that direction.
Hi, instead of clogging up the thread I just thought I’d alert you that I responded to MichaelStJules, which should function equally as a response to your comment.