An objection that is sometimes raised against suffering-focused ethics is that our intuitions about the relative value of suffering and happiness are skewed toward the negative for evolutionary reasons, and hence we cannot trust our intuition that says that the reduction of suffering is more valuable and more morally important than the creation of happiness. My aim in this post is to reply to this objection.
Stating the “evolutionary asymmetry objection” in brief
The argument I will respond to goes roughly as follows: For biologically evolved creatures such as humans, the reproductive costs of losses (e.g. deadly injury) are typically greater than the reproductive gains of successes (e.g. sex). This asymmetry is plausibly reflected in our experiences such that we tend to feel and value suffering (as an intrinsic negative) more strongly than we feel and value pleasure (as an intrinsic positive). Yet we should not expect such an asymmetry to be found at the level of possible states of suffering and pleasure. Instead, we should expect the best possible pleasure and the worst possible suffering to be equally intense, and we should therefore expect there to be an axiological and moral symmetry between them. Or at least we should expect our better informed selves to endorse such an axiological and moral symmetry (e.g. if we were fully acquainted with the utmost extremes of pleasure and suffering). [...]
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