by Magnus Vinding. First published in 2020.
Summary
Many moral views hold that purported positive goods, such as pleasure, can morally “outweigh” or “cancel out” suffering. Yet this notion of outweighing is more problematic than is commonly recognized, since it is not obvious in what sense such outweighing is supposed to obtain, nor what justifies it. Clarifying and justifying this notion of “outweighing” is thus a problem facing the moral views that rely on it. In contrast, strongly suffering-focused views, and harm-focused views more generally, do not face this problem.
Introduction
The premise that suffering can always, at least in principle, be outweighed by pleasure is entailed by moral theories such as classical utilitarianism and some other positive consequentialist views. Yet defenders of these views rarely provide an elaborate defense of this premise. For example, as far as I can tell, little is said to justify this premise in seminal defenses of classical utilitarianism, such as Bentham, 1789; Mill, 1863; and Sidgwick, 1874, nor in more modern defenses, such as Hewitt, 2008 and Lazari-Radek & Singer, 2014.
This is quite a glaring omission, since many philosophers have argued against the premise that suffering can (always) be outweighed by pleasure, and have done so in different ways.
(Note that the adoption of a suffering-focused ethic is not predicated on the view that pleasure can never outweigh suffering; there are many other views and arguments that can support the view that suffering deserves special priority, Gloor, 2016; Vinding, 2020, part I.)
Views that reject outweighing
Happiness as an incommensurate good
Philosopher Clark Wolf defends the view that happiness and suffering have positive and negative value, respectively, but rejects the view that “pleasures and pains can cancel one another out in the way that classical utilitarians usually assume” (Wolf, 1997, sec. I). In Wolf’s view, pleasure is not a truly opposite counterpart to suffering, and hence it cannot “cancel out” or “make up for” suffering, even as he maintains that pleasure does have intrinsic positive value (Wolf, 1997).
Negating interpersonal compensation
A position with similar implications is the view that suffering can be outweighed by pleasure intrapersonally, but not interpersonally. This view is defended in Ryder, 2011, ch. 3; Harnad, 2016. Arguments that support the view that pleasure cannot outweigh suffering interpersonally can also be found in Vinding, 2020, ch. 3.
Epicurean and Buddhist axiologies
Views that hold that the value of happiness lies chiefly in its absence of negative features are another class of views that reject outweighing (Vinding, 2020, ch. 2; Ajantaival, 2021/2022). Such views have been endorsed by Epicurus, Arthur Schopenhauer, and William James in the West (Vinding, 2020, ch. 2), as well as by strands of Buddhism in the East (Breyer, 2015). Similar views been defended in recent times in Gloor, 2016; 2017; Sherman, 2017; Knutsson, 2019.
Unlike the interpersonal-only asymmetry defended by Ryder and Harnad, variations of this view also tend to imply an intrapersonal asymmetry. For example, Schopenhauer explicitly maintained that his “present well-being” could not “undo [his] previous sufferings” (Schopenhauer, 1819, vol II, p. 576). In Schopenhauer’s view,
it is quite superfluous to dispute whether there is more good or evil in the world; for the mere existence of evil decides the matter, since evil can never be wiped off, and consequently can never be balanced, by the good that exists along with or after it.
(Ibid.)
Ethics as being about problems
Schopenhauer’s view seems closely related to the view that ethics is about solving problems (see e.g. Gloor, 2016; Fehige, 1998). A way to justify this view may be to argue that only the existence of such problematic states imply genuine victims, while failures to create supposed positive goods (whose absence leaves nobody troubled) do not imply any real victims — such “failures” are mere victimless “crimes”.
According to this view, we cannot meaningfully “cancel out” or “undo” a problematic state found somewhere by creating some unproblematic state elsewhere. The problematic states in question need not be limited to suffering. Negative consequentialist views that see ethics as being about solving problems may be concerned about problematic states more generally, such as injustice, preference frustration, and premature death (cf. Animal Ethics, 2012).
Lexical views
Another class of views are those that maintain that the most extreme forms of suffering have greater moral importance than anything else (see e.g. Mayerfeld, 1999, pp. 178-179; Leighton, 2011, ch. 9; Tomasik, 2015; Gloor, 2016; Vinding, 2020, ch. 4-5). Such views can be compatible with views that say that suffering can sometimes be outweighed by pleasure, as well as with views that say that it never can. But in either case, these lexical views still contradict the premise that suffering can always be outweighed by pleasure, and they thus constitute another important set of views to contend with for those who defend that premise.
Problematic cases
The following problematic cases are worth considering in relation to the view that suffering can always be outweighed by pleasure.
Happy sadists
There are various versions of this thought experiment. One version is to consider torture in the Colosseum: one individual is tortured horrifically for the enjoyment of a large crowd. According to the premise of outweighing mentioned above, the torture can be justified if the resulting pleasure of the crowd is sufficiently large (cf. Scarre, 1996, p. 156).
Suffering deemed unbearable and irredeemable
A related case to consider is that of suffering that the sufferer, while experiencing it, considers unbearable and impossible to outweigh (Tomasik, 2015; Vinding, 2020, ch. 4).
Two issues to address
The cases above serve as a good starting point for understanding and discussing the two principal issues that face the notion that pleasure can always, at least in principle, outweigh suffering.
I. Clarification
In what sense is pleasure supposed to be able to outweigh suffering? (Some relevant considerations on this can be found in Knutsson, 2016.) In particular, in what sense is the pleasure of many people supposed to outweigh the torturous suffering of a single individual when that individual considers their own suffering to be unbearable and unoutweighable?
II. Justification
Relatedly, what justifies the notion that extreme suffering can be outweighed by pleasure?
These are anything but trivial questions. In fact, they require elaborate explanation. And, to echo a remark I have made elsewhere, the assumption that suffering can always (in principle) be outweighed by pleasure cannot simply be considered plausible by default, especially given its controversial status and the many arguments that have been made against it (for an overview of these, see Vinding, 2020, part I).
It is worth noting that strongly suffering-focused views — and strong negative consequentialist views more generally — do not entail this notion that some states of the world can “outweigh” or “cancel out” bad states elsewhere. To be sure, suffering-focused views do tend to hold that some states of suffering can be deemed worse, and hence more deserving of priority, than some other states of suffering. Yet this is a fundamentally different claim, as it does not involve any outweighing in the sense of thinking that suffering, including extreme suffering in particular, can be “cancelled out” or “made up for” by different states elsewhere.
There are, of course, also problems when it comes to judgments about which states are worst and most deserving of priority. But it is worth noting that, first, it is quite uncontroversial that we often can and should make such judgments. For example, everyone agrees that it makes sense to triage in a way that favors patients undergoing intense suffering over patients with relatively minor ailments.
Second, we should note that positive consequentialist views, including classical utilitarianism, all happen to share this problem, and actually do so on an additional level. For not only do such views agree that some suffering can be worse than some other suffering, but they further endorse a corresponding claim about pleasure: that some forms of pleasure are more morally important to bring about than others, and that it is morally important to realize greater forms of pleasure in the first place, even when there are no beings who desire these pleasures.
This latter contention about the importance of increasing pleasure is significantly more controversial than the claim that it is important to prevent (worse forms of) suffering. As Daniel Kahneman notes,
what can confidently be advanced is a reduction of suffering. The question of whether society should intervene so that people will be happier is very controversial, but whether society should strive for people to suffer less — that’s widely accepted.”
(Mandel, 2018; see also Vinding, 2020, sec. 1.5.)
The claim that it is morally important to bring about greater forms of pleasure is an additional premise that proponents of positive consequentialist views must defend, on top of the controversial premise that we have discussed in previous sections: that suffering can be measured against, and outweighed by, pleasure (more critical discussion of this latter premise can be found in Anonymous, 2015, sec. 2.2.12-2.2.13). Positive consequentialists thus need to defend two additional premises, both of which are more controversial than the premise that they share with negative consequentialists.
Common defenses of outweighing
The issues of clarification and justification that face the view that pleasure can always outweigh suffering are rarely addressed in much detail. So far, it seems that the most common way to defend this view has been to present thought experiments that are believed to render it plausible.
Bliss for many
The following thought experiment from Leuven & Visak’s critique of Richard Ryder’s painist view is an example:
imagine a population of beings that are all not particularly happy, but are neither suffering. There would be one way of significantly raising the level of welfare of the whole population except one, by causing a mild and brief suffering to the one person. After this brief period of mild suffering this person would continue on his usual welfare level, while the rest of the population would have a really blissful live [sic]. Ryder’s theory would dismiss this option, and rather require that everyone keeps muddling on with a more or less neutral level of welfare.
(Leuven & Visak, 2013, p. 416; Ryder has replied to Leuven and Visak’s critique in Ryder, 2015.)
There are many things to say in response to this thought experiment. First, one can argue that a problem with the thought experiment is that the beings who are supposedly free from suffering nonetheless can appear to be in a troubled or disturbed state given the description.
For example, when we read about beings who are “not particularly happy” and who keep “muddling on with a more or less neutral level of welfare”, we hardly get associations to beings who feel perfectly untroubled and whose conscious states feel entirely unproblematic. If we rephrase things in these terms, the thought experiment becomes significantly weaker. Compare the original formulation with: “Ryder’s theory would dismiss this option, and rather prescribe that everyone remains in a perfectly untroubled and entirely unproblematic state of consciousness so as to avoid the creation of suffering.” (For more replies along similar lines, see Anonymous, 2015, sec. 2.2.2; Gloor, 2017, sec. 4.2; Vinding, 2020, sec. 2.4.)
Another possible reply is to defend the moral premise that it is (indeed) always wrong to create pleasure for some beings at the price of suffering for others (this moral claim may be considered a natural implication of Epicurean axiologies, yet it is not predicated on such axiological views, cf. Vinding, 2020, 6.4). Defenses of this premise can be found in Ryder, 2001, ch. 2; Vinding, 2020, ch. 3.
Ryder supports his view that “it is always wrong to cause pain to A merely in order to increase the pleasure of B” with various thought experiments, yet his view also follows from some other moral “rules” that he defends (Ryder, 2001, p. 30). For example, “Rule 11”: our primary “moral concern should always be with the individual who is the maximum sufferer”, which implies that, in Leuven and Visak’s thought experiment, we should primarily be concerned with the worst-off person on whom suffering would be imposed (Ryder, 2001, p. 29). (A moral principle similar to this latter moral “rule” of Ryder’s has been defended by Joseph Mendola, who holds that our chief moral obligation is to “ameliorate the condition of the worst-off moment of phenomenal experience in the world”, Mendola, 1990, p. 86.)
Third, one may reply to the thought experiment from a negative consequentialist perspective concerned with other bads than just suffering. From such a perspective, one may, for example, argue that the beings who are “not particularly happy”, yet who also not undergoing any experiential suffering, nonetheless could be in a bad and harmed state. For even if they are not suffering, they may still have a frustrated preference, such as the preference for living a very blissful life. And a negative consequentialist may hold that this frustrated preference, or many such frustrated preferences, could be worse than a single instance of mild suffering, and hence more important to reduce. Note, however, that this response does not rely on any outweighing in the sense of “canceling out” or “making up for” the suffering in question. The mild suffering would still be an uncompensated bad on this view, a bad that is only allowed in order to ameliorate a supposedly greater bad.
World destruction
A related thought experiment sometimes raised in favor of the view that pleasure can outweigh suffering is one that involves world destruction. For example, we might imagine a paradise full of blissful people, and then wonder whether it could really be good to painlessly destroy such a paradise for the sake of preventing a single instance of mild suffering.
A significant problem with this thought experiment is that it brings other issues into play than just that of pleasure outweighing suffering, such as world destruction. Another problem is that it attacks an implication that people with suffering-focused views, and harm-focused views more generally, need not endorse.
Taking a step back, we may start by noting that we could consider a similar thought experiment in which no sentient being has yet been created, but where we may create a paradise for innumerable sentient beings by imposing suffering on a single being. When we phrase the thought experiment in this way, a way that helps us control for status quo bias among other things, it is not clear that we are doing anything wrong by choosing not to create suffering for the sake of creating pleasure. Again, one can argue that it is the opposite — imposing suffering to create pleasure — that would be wrong (Vinding, 2020, ch. 3).
Second, it is worth noting that all views that say that experiential ill- and well-being are the only things that matter morally, which includes views such as negative and classical utilitarianism, will imply that we should destroy the world in order to prevent a tiny amount of suffering, provided the “net balance” of ill- and well-being is exactly zero otherwise (Pearce, 2017, “The Pinprick Argument”). Thus, world-destruction objections of this kind arguably count more as an objection against purely welfarist views than against a moral asymmetry between pleasure and pain, or between good and bad things more generally. (For more discussion of world destruction arguments against utilitarian views, see Knutsson, 2021.)
As hinted above, there are many replies available to this world destruction argument that do not rely on the view that positive things can outweigh suffering or other bad things. For example, one can hold that world destruction would result in other bads that are also worth preventing, such as the frustration of preferences, premature death, rights violations, the loss of hard-won knowledge and artifacts, etc.
In this way, one can maintain that it would be wrong to destroy the world to prevent mild suffering without thinking that the mild suffering in question can be “canceled out” or “made up for” by other things. World destruction would, on such a view, be wrong because the alternative to allowing the mild suffering would be even worse. Such a view may also help explain why the case where no sentient being has yet come into existence seems different, since most, if not all, of these other bads would be removed from the equation in that case.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Tobias Baumann, Anthony DiGiovanni, and Michael St. Jules for helpful comments.
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