I'm having difficulty determining this and I don't know if I'll ever make up my mind for sure. One of the few things that I'm absolutely convinced about is that happiness is the only intrinsic good and that suffering is the only intrinsic bad but I have mixed feelings on whether or not happiness and suffering are symmetrical in value. If I were to employ completely impartial logic, I might argue that they are since saying that suffering is worse than happiness is good is akin to saying that hot water is more hot than cold water is cold. On the other hand, I don't see how experiencing happiness is necessary in the same way that avoiding harm is so I would argue that minimizing suffering rather than increasing happiness should be the primary objective of ethics. I don't know anyone who would be willing to risk experiencing extreme, unimaginable suffering (as much as is physiologically possible) for the rest of their lives if there was a 50/50 chance that they might experience an equivalent amount of happiness for the rest of their lives instead. But this would mean that it would be morally good for me to kill a relatively happy person in their sleep if doing so had no negative consequences for any living person (not including myself since I think 'ethics' applies to how your behavior affects other people) so as to prevent them from ever again experiencing any level of pain. If eliminating all distress takes priority over increasing any amount of happiness, I would not be justified in creating a sentient being who had a carbon footprint of 0, would not directly or indirectly cause any other being to suffer and would experience a life of constant and unimaginable joy if that being would experience a paper cut once a month (I'm not going to use the blowing up the world scenario because even classical utilitarianism could justify doing so if it could be shown that there was more suffering than happiness in the world). The only way out from either extreme, that I can think of, is to argue that no amount of happiness can make up for *intolerable* suffering but isn't it inconsistent of me to draw an arbitrary line between unbearable suffering and bearable pain?

Would you argue for or against the idea that happiness and suffering are symmetrical in value and why?

People are risk-averse. You can't draw conclusions from the fact that you wouldn't risk a lifetime of torment for a lifetime of euphoria.

People are change-averse. If it involves doing something that simply isn't human, lake being unimaginably happy for more than a few seconds, people will tend to be against it.

People aren't good with scaling. If something is bad enough, there's not enough lesser happiness to make it seem worth-while. And because people can feel pain at a greater rate than pleasure, this means that there is an imaginable amount of suffering that does not equate with any imaginable happiness.

I struggled with this for a few years too. Daniel's points here

People aren't good with scaling. If something is bad enough, there's not enough lesser happiness to make it seem worth-while. And because people can feel pain at a greater rate than pleasure, this means that there is an imaginable amount of suffering that does not equate with any imaginable happiness.

are important. You could also argue that if something is good enough, there's not enough lesser pain to make it seem worthwhile (e.g. creating your zero-carbon-footprint-person if it meant 1 000 000 people would get a paper cut).

A few more points. 1) We're influenced heavily by evolutionary ethics (or whatever it's actually called - I mean the basic quasi-ethical behaviour exhibited by animals), which focusses on not causing other people in your group harm, rather than actively doing good to them. This is because it maximises the survival ability of the group - it's usually far less of a sacrifice to yourself to not do harm than to do good.

2)

saying that suffering is worse than happiness is good is akin to saying that hot water is more hot than cold water is cold

Quite. I think the problem is that people aren't very good at valuing happiness and suffering - they tend to give suffering a less negative value than they should and give a higher value to happiness than they should. This probably has something to do with the fact that the extremes aren't symmetrical, so people think that the happiest experience they can think of should take the value of 100 and the worst experience they can think of should take the value of -100. Incidentally, the best way to value happiness/suffering is probably to ask people "What kind of happy experience would you need to balance out experience X of pain?" (bearing in mind that there is no equivalent for the greatest intensities of pain).

3)[quote]The only way out from either extreme, that I can think of, is to argue that no amount of happiness can make up for *intolerable* suffering [quote] This does have some sense to it though. Would you risk a 1% chance of torture for a day for a 99% chance of euphoria for a year? Hmm. Maybe you're just risk-aversive? Or maybe not, I'm not too sure now!

If something is bad enough, there's not enough lesser happiness to make it seem worth-while. And because people can feel pain at a greater rate than pleasure, this means that there is an imaginable amount of suffering that does not equate with any imaginable happiness.

This helps. Maybe the idea of causing someone unbearable suffering is as harsh as it is because I can't imagine a greater amount of happiness. It may be that few, if any, humans in the world have ever experienced happiness greater than the worst suffering I can imagine. If this is true, I think the difference between classical utilitarianism and negative utilitarians are exaggerated. Even CU could justify philanthropic anti-natalism or blowing up the world on the grounds that most people actually underestimate their felt quality of life or because there is more suffering in the world than happiness. I can't say I'm fully convinced when I think about spending the rest of my life in the maximum possible amount of suffering but I'm reluctantly flirting with the idea (of happiness/suffering being symmetrical in value).

they tend to give suffering a less negative value than they should and give a higher value to happiness than they should.

I agree. I think utilitarians should stress the equal importance of maximizing happiness/minimizing suffering and not just focus on maximizing happiness.

I think utilitarians should stress the equal importance of maximizing happiness/minimizing suffering and not just focus on maximizing happiness.

Good suggestion. Because generally when people hear "minimizing suffering" they feel a stronger moral duty to do something about it than "maximising happiness". We should make the effort more often not to shorthand the utilitarian law to "maximising happiness".

Even CU could justify philanthropic anti-natalism or blowing up the world on the grounds that most people actually underestimate their felt quality of life or because there is more suffering in the world than happiness.

This seems like such a plausible CU position that I wonder why so many utilitarians focus so much on reducing existential risk. If there's such a large chance that the general existence of humanity/sentient life on earth is a bad thing...why not focus your efforts on improving it rather than trying to make it endure longer? (E.g. by donating lot of money to SCI and doing the equivalent of improving someone's health from 50% to 100% for a year for about every pound you donate - check this out people if you haven't already! http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/resource ... rities.php)