by Magnus Vinding. First published in September 2022.
Some views hold that no amount of mild discomfort can be worse than a single instance of extreme suffering (i.e. they endorse value lexicality between extreme suffering and mild discomfort). An objection to such views is that they are biased by scope neglect — our tendency to disregard the number of affected beings in our evaluations of a problem. Since we cannot comprehend the badness of a vast amount of mild discomfort, the objection goes, we cannot trust our intuitive assessment that extreme suffering is worse than any amount of mild discomfort. My aim in this brief post is to reply to this objection.
Scope neglect vs. intensity neglect
A problem with the scope neglect objection is that we plausibly have biases in the opposite direction as well, and it is not clear whether those biases are any weaker than is our scope neglect in these evaluations. Indeed, one could argue that the biases in the opposite direction are much stronger overall.
In particular, we have an empathy gap that means that we are unable to understand just how intense and bad extreme suffering actually is, especially when we ourselves are experiencing a state of mind that is relatively untroubled (Vinding, 2020, sec. 7.4). And while large numbers can be difficult to comprehend, one could argue that we do at least have some rough understanding of what they are and how they work. Likewise, we understand what mild discomfort is like, and we know that states of mild discomfort feel quite bearable no matter how many of them there are.
In contrast, some people who have undergone extreme suffering report that the badness of such suffering is wholly beyond comprehension for those who are spared from it. As torture victim Jacobo Timerman said about the pain he experienced during torture: “It is a pain without points of reference, revelatory symbols, or clues to serve as indicators” (as quoted in Mayerfeld, 1999, p. 42; see also p. 38).
Hence, if one invokes scope neglect as an objection to value lexicality between mild discomfort and extreme suffering, it seems that one needs to explain why scope neglect is more of a distorting factor than is our empathy gap and the “intensity neglect” and “badness neglect” that it plausibly gives rise to.
Scope neglect applied beyond its limits?
Studies on scope neglect tend to show that the amount of money that people will donate to help a group of beings (who are all afflicted by the same ill) does not meaningfully increase as the number of afflicted beings increases, and in some cases the willingness to help even decreases (Desvousges et al., 1992; Kogut & Ritov, 2005; Cameron & Payne, 2011).
Such a donation pattern is in tension with the plausible moral premise that a greater number of beings afflicted by the same ill merit greater help than do fewer beings afflicted by the same ill. Yet note how this moral premise has limited relevance to the question of whether large amounts of mild discomfort can be added up to be worse than extreme suffering — i.e. comparisons that involve very different intensities of suffering, or different kinds of bads more generally. The psychological studies on scope neglect do not explore such comparisons, nor do they demonstrate that commonsense evaluations of tradeoffs between very different kinds of bads are implausible.
To be sure, the fact that we display a scope neglect in our evaluations of similar bads may be a reason to think that our evaluations of different kinds of bads might also be influenced by scope neglect. But again, even if we grant that scope neglect exerts a significant influence in such comparisons, it still does not follow that this distorting factor results in a judgment that overall underestimates the badness of many instances of mild discomfort compared to the badness of extreme suffering. And the points reviewed in this section suggest that scope neglect may be a weaker and less relevant factor than one might otherwise have expected, i.e. if one did not take its conceptual and empirical background properly into account.
Analogies to other lexical views
To further question the strength and relevance of scope neglect as an objection to value lexicality, it may be helpful to consider some other examples of lexical views.
For instance, consider an axiological view according to which extreme suffering is lexically worse than ugly art, even though ugly art is itself bad (according to that view). Such a view is not wholly fanciful, since some philosophers hold that art has final value (Stang, 2012, p. 271). And if art has final value (or disvalue), it seems plausible that its value is always eclipsed by the disvalue of extreme suffering (cf. Mayerfeld, 1999, p. 196; Vinding, 2020, p. 86).
We could likewise take an example that involves lexicality between different experiences. In particular, we could consider a version of the above-mentioned view in the experiential realm: one may hold that extreme suffering is lexically worse than any hedonically neutral experience of ugly art, even though hedonically neutral experiences of ugly art are themselves bad (according to that view).
Is scope neglect to blame?
If someone endorses one of these alternative lexical views, is it plausible to argue that they endorse lexicality because of scope neglect? Do they simply fail to appreciate the collective disvalue of very large amounts of ugly art or experiences of ugly art? A hypothetical proponent of these views may object that they do not. They may argue that there is a stark qualitative difference between the badness of (experiences of) ugly art and extreme suffering. And they may further argue that this qualitative difference is not changed or overridden by the addition of more (experiences of) ugly art. The latter can never gain a badness that is equivalent to the badness of unbearable suffering.
My point with these analogies is that proponents of value lexicality between extreme suffering and mild discomfort could make the same argument, in that they may contend that there is a similar qualitative difference between the badness of mild discomfort and the badness of extreme suffering.
In particular, one may argue that there is nothing implausible about thinking that states of mild discomfort are bad in a qualitatively different way than are states of extreme suffering, given that states of extreme suffering feel qualitatively different, and given that they are likely mediated by different or additional brain circuits. And just like in the case of (experiences of) ugly art, one can reasonably argue that the qualitative difference in badness between mild discomfort and extreme suffering cannot be overridden by simply adding more instances of mild discomfort. Such addition does not render the merely uncomfortable truly horrific at any point.
Theoretical evaluations vs. practical decisions: An important distinction
Finally, it is worth highlighting the difference between 1) the evaluations that we make in hypothetical thought experiments, and 2) the decisions that we would make in real-world scenarios involving empirical uncertainty. After all, one may give opposite answers to similar dilemmas depending on which of these two kinds of assessments we are concerned with.
Specifically, someone who endorses strong lexicality between extreme suffering and mild discomfort would say that no amount of mild discomfort could be worse than a single instance of extreme suffering in the purely hypothetical case. Yet in the practical case, where we introduce uncertainty regarding what other beings experience, a proponent of strong lexicality need not — and arguably should not — maintain that a single state that appears to involve extreme suffering is worse than any number of states that appear to merely involve mild discomfort. The reason, in short, is that the empirical uncertainty means that a large number of states that appear to only involve mild discomfort also involve some amount of extreme suffering in expectation. And hence for a sufficiently large number of states that appear to only involve mild discomfort, the expected amount of extreme suffering among those states will be larger than the expected amount of extreme suffering in a single state that appears to involve extreme suffering.
This point is important for a couple of reasons. First, it is important because it may distort our evaluations of the plausibility of value lexicality. In particular, if we fail to make it clear that we are considering a purely hypothetical thought experiment that involves absolutely no uncertainty, we may in turn fail to control for real-world intuitions that implicitly track uncertainty, and which intuit — with practical validity — that it would be highly risky to create inconceivably vast numbers of states that appear to only involve mild discomfort. Yet such intuitions about practical uncertainty should not distort our views in the purely theoretical case.
Second, the point is important because it illustrates how scope neglect plausibly is an important factor, albeit chiefly in the practical case. That is, if we were to make a real-world decision, it seems that scope neglect could well lead us to intuitively underestimate the expected amount of extreme suffering found among a vast number of states that appear to merely involve mild discomfort. Yet this perspective on the relevance of scope neglect in practice is wholly consistent with value lexicality between mild discomfort and extreme suffering at the theoretical level.
This is why we need to be careful to clarify whether we are talking about a hypothetical case involving no uncertainty versus a practical case that inevitably involves great uncertainty.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Winston Oswald-Drummond for bringing this objection to my attention.
References
Cameron, C. & Payne, B. (2011). Escaping affect: How motivated emotion regulation creates insensitivity to mass suffering. J Pers Soc Psychol, 100(1), pp. 1-15.
Desvousges, W. et al. (1992/2010). Measuring nonuse damages using contingent valuation: An experimental evaluation of accuracy. RTI Press. Ungated
Kogut, T. & Ritov, I. (2005). The singularity of identified victims in separate and joint evaluations. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 97, pp. 106-116.
Mayerfeld, J. (1999). Suffering and Moral Responsibility. Oxford University Press.
Stang, N. (2012). Artworks are not valuable for their own sake. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 70(3), pp. 271-280.
Vinding, M. (2020). Suffering-Focused Ethics: Defense and Implications. Ratio Ethica. Ungated