Contents

Clarifying lexical thresholds

by Magnus Vinding. First published in 2020.

Summary

Views that assign lexical disvalue to extreme suffering are often framed and discussed in ways that make such views seem implausible. For example, it may be claimed that lexical views imply that lexicality must abruptly “kick in” at some precise level of painful stimulus, such as when a scorching object reaches a certain temperature.

Yet this is not true. Not only can one defend lexical views without abrupt breaks, but it is also possible to formulate lexical views in terms of pain intensity or the overall disagreeableness of experiential states, as opposed to stimulus intensity. Lexical views are arguably best framed and discussed in terms of such mental states rather than external stimulus. Moreover, the rejection of lexical views can hardly be considered most plausible by default, even if lexical views appear to have counterintuitive implications, since alternative views may rest on premises and imply corollaries that are less plausible, all things considered.

Introduction

If some amount of a given bad is worse than any amount of some other bad, the former is said to be lexically worse than the latter, and there is said to be a value lexicality between the two bads.

Many have defended the view that certain bads, such as a full day of the most extreme suffering, are lexically worse than comparatively trivial bads, such as a mild headache (see e.g. Mayerfeld, 1999, pp. 178-179; Leighton, 2011, ch. 9; Tomasik, 2013; 2015a; Klocksiem, 2016; Gloor, 2016, sec. II; Vinding, 2020b, ch. 4-5).

This view is often countered with the challenge of explaining how this lexicality can emerge. For example, if we construct a sequence of bads that fall in between the two bads in question, at which point, if any, is the lexicality supposed to kick in?

One may outline such a sequence in the following way (inspired by Tomasik, 2013):

Say that the suffering of burning at 500 degrees Celsius for a full day is claimed to be worse than any amount of experience-moments of merely being uncomfortably hot at 50 degrees Celsius. We can then construct a sequence where the sufferer burns at 490 degrees for 10 days, 480 degrees for 100 days, 470 degrees for 1,000 days, and so on, until we reach 50 degrees for 1045 days.

If we grant that each step in this sequence is worse than the previous one (which is, of course, a big “if”), it might seem to follow that the value lexicality claimed at the outset cannot obtain.

But this is not necessarily the case. The example above is deceptive, as it is unclear whether it pertains primarily to experiences or to variations in a given stimulus. Confusion on this point can make lexical views appear needlessly implausible.

The pitfalls of focusing on stimulus

It is not difficult to see why it is tempting to speak in terms of changes in stimulus when discussing this issue. Such changes are palpable and concrete, and we can often measure them in precise, quantifiable terms.

Nonetheless, such a framing is ultimately misleading. What we care about, and what the lexical views we are here concerned with pertain to, is not really stimulus per se, but rather the experiences elicited by the stimulus in question. And the truth is that changes in external stimuli do not necessarily track changes in experiences all that well.

For example, it can be far worse to experience a moderately intense stimulus for a long duration (say, being burned by an iron rod of 100 degrees Celsius) than to be subject to a more intense stimulus for a tiny duration (e.g. being burned by a 200 degree hot object for a split second). Indeed, the latter may not even result in any suffering at all if the duration is sufficiently short.

This also illustrates why the sequence argument outlined in the previous section is problematic. It fails to clearly distinguish 1) innumerable instances of experience-moments that each feel “uncomfortably hot”, and 2) the experience of being burned at 50 degrees Celsius for a long duration. In the latter case, the resulting experience could — and all but surely would — eventually get a lot worse than merely “uncomfortably hot”.

It is thus wholly consistent to maintain that a small amount of intense suffering is worse than any amount of merely “uncomfortably hot” experiential states, yet to not consider a small amount of intense suffering worse than having to go through a very long duration of being exposed to, say, a temperature of 50 degrees Celsius. After all, the latter may eventually give rise to more than just a small amount of intense suffering.

The pitfalls outlined above can be avoided by framing discussions of this issue explicitly in terms of psychological states and evaluations rather than stimulus, and by being clear about the significance of this distinction.

Lexical views based on consent

An example of a view that entails value lexicality between extreme and mild suffering is the view that a single instance of unbearable suffering — i.e. suffering so intense that the sufferer is unable to consent to it — is worse than any amount of mild, bearable suffering (Tomasik, 2015a; Vinding, 2020b, ch. 4-5 and sec. 6.7).

This is a view that centers explicitly on a psychological evaluation. And note how such a view gives rather plausible replies to the sequence argument outlined above. On this view, there is no set point in terms of temperature or duration at which lexicality must kick in. It simply comes down to the psychological state of the sufferer, which in turn depends on many factors, such as the intensity and duration of the noxious stimuli, as well as the overall constitution of the sufferer. Such flexibility seems a desirable feature of a lexical view.

Note also that defenders of this view need not maintain that any sharp steps are found between “wholly bearable” and “wholly unbearable” suffering (although one can hold such a view, cf. Klocksiem, 2016). After all, psychological states and evaluations are commonly fuzzy and tend to manifest in varying degrees. And the same may well apply to evaluations of “unconsentability” and unbearableness in particular: they plausibly come in degrees.

Yet this need not prevent us from drawing a clear distinction between states of suffering that are perfectly bearable versus states that are completely unbearable (to think otherwise is to commit the continuum fallacy). Nor does it prevent us from considering a single instance of unbearable suffering worse than any amount of suffering or discomfort that is wholly bearable.

Consent is just one example of a psychological state or construct on which one can base a plausible suffering-focused lexical view. An alternative option is to phrase such views in terms of the intensity of pain (Klocksiem, 2016), or in terms of distinct experiential components of suffering (Vinding, 2020a). A consent-based view can differ from a view based on pain intensity in that one could hold that a constant pain intensity can be endurable for some time, yet become unbearable eventually (at the level of the sufferer’s overall psychological state), in which case lexicality would kick in after a certain duration despite the intensity of the pain, as an experiential component, being the same.

The rejection of lexicality is not plausible by default

Lexical views are often rejected on the grounds that they appear to have some strange and implausible implications. But this is not in itself a good reason to reject lexical views. For beyond the fact that some of the purported implications of such views need not actually follow (e.g. that one must accept some kind of abrupt break), it seems that alternative views are bound to have some highly counterintuitive implications of their own. For example, many people may find it even more implausible that a sufficiently large amount of mild discomfort could ever be worse than a full day of intense suffering (cf. Tomasik, 2015b).

The view that the disvalue of many states of mild discomfort can be represented with real numbers and added together such that they are worse than a full day of extreme suffering is itself a view that rests on highly non-obvious premises. For example, it assumes that the disvalue of different levels of discomfort and suffering can, in principle, be measured along a cardinal scale that has interpersonal validity, and further assumes that these value entities occupy the same dimension (so to speak) on this notional scale. These premises are “highly controversial and widely rejected” (Knutsson, 2016), and hence they, too, require elaborate justification.

References

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Gloor, L. (2016/2019). The Case for Suffering-Focused Ethics. Ungated

Klocksiem, J. (2016). How to Accept the Transitivity of Better Than. Philosophical Studies, 173(5), pp. 1309–1334.

Knutsson, S. (2016/2018). Measuring happiness and suffering. Ungated

Knutsson, S. (2021). Many-valued logic and sequence arguments in value theory. Synthese, 199, pp. 10793-10825. Ungated

Leighton, J. (2011). The Battle for Compassion: Ethics in an Apathetic Universe. Algora Pub.

Mayerfeld, J. (1999). Suffering and Moral Responsibility. Oxford University Press.

Tomasik, B. (2013/2019). Three Types of Negative Utilitarianism. Ungated

Tomasik, B. (2015a/2017). Are Happiness and Suffering Symmetric? Ungated

Tomasik, B. (2015b). A Small Mechanical Turk Survey on Ethics and Animal Welfare. Ungated

Vinding, M. (2020a). Lexical views without abrupt breaks. Ungated

Vinding, M. (2020b). Suffering-Focused Ethics: Defense and Implications. Ratio Ethica. Ungated