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.
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.