Following on from my post, and Alan's reply...

"The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?", said Bentham. But is that really the only relevant question? Suppose ants can suffer. Then is the suffering of one ant equal to the suffering of one human? This would seem outrageous. They are so much smaller than us. So too, the magnitude of their suffering is surely less. Well, there are two approaches:
1. Scalar: In this approach, "Can ants suffer?" is the first question. The question that must immediately follow is "Then, how much can ants suffer?".
2. Binary: On this view, "Can ants suffer?" Is the only question to be asked. One either is suffering or is not. Value depends on the number of animals and the total of their suffering. We cannot make any further stipulations about this suffering without being discriminatory.

The scalar approach seems intuitive to me. Here's how. Imagine a person's brain is split in half. Does their moral value suddenly double? Surely it cannot. Suppose I have multiple personality disorder. Now, through psychotherapy, I reunite my three selves. Has my moral value dropped by atwo-thirs? Surely not. Moral weight can't be proportional to the number of selves. It has to be proportional to the amount of 'stuff' that constitutes the selves. Take the force of gravity as an example. It is not proportional to the number of falling objects. It is proportional to mass. If mass was binary - there was no such thing as heavier and lighter objects, then imagine what would happen to projectiles. Every time a projectile split in two, it would suddenly accelerate. Absurd, right? Well maybe...

Here's a thought that Alan has presented to bend our intuitions the other way: "Do men deserve more moral weight because their brains are larger than those of women?" It's a fair question, if a politically incorrect one. Anyway, if we say that they do not, then we should not discount the moral value of ants beyond 40% either. **

The conclusion Alan comes to is that if ants can suffer, then the value of this suffering might be one fifth the value of one human's suffering**. Alan regards this 1/5th figure as a compromise between the scalar and binary approaches. But his value can be used in the following calculation:
1. If there is a 40% chance that ants can suffer,
2. If ants can suffer, they can probably only suffer a fifth as much as us,
3. So, the "actual exchange rate" is 0.08:1.

This kind of calculation will be required by a proponent of any scalar approach.

So, my first question to you, Felicifia readers, is whether your sympathies lie with the scalar or binary approach, or with some combination of the two.

My second question is on the practical implications. Has Alan's work on animal suffering so far implicitly used a binary approach? More generally, if we use a scalar approach, is the moral importance of wild animal suffering still enormous? A cursory look at the biomass of wild insects suggests so. Sure, ants outnumber us by many orders of magnitude. But even in mass, they outweigh us by more than triple. And that's only one family. So it seems the importance of wild animal suffering will not be threatened by a scalar approach.

Moving on to my third question: if we believe in a scalar concept of capacity for suffering, how do we non-arbitrarily determine how much particular animals can suffer? It seems that capacity for suffering has to be proportional to something. But what?
Mass? (This is a starting point, if only because it is measurable. But I do not become less conscious by cutting off my arm and losing its mass. So this is no perfect solution.)
Brain mass? (This is a step in the right direction...)
Number of neurons? (But surely, if a shorter and lighter set of neurons can make a similar set of computations to mine, they are no less able to suffer, right?)
Computational complexity, as measured by the number of possible brain states?***

Our estimates are improving. But let's pause to consider exactly what was so wrong with our earlier metrics for capacity to suffer. Take brain mass. The attraction of this metric is that it locates our discussion at the seat of consciousness. Now think of computational complexity. The attraction here is that it abstracts our discussion from the hardware of consciousness to the software. We are getting closer and closer, but we are still not quite there. What we are looking for is what the literature calls a neural correlate of consciousness (NCC). If we found an NCC, we would really be getting somewhere. We could just value animals proportionally to their posession of this NCC. What teh scalar view needs for completion, then, is to find one or more NCCs. Do you agree or disagree?

So, to sum up:
1. Is capacity for suffering scalar?
2. Is wild animal suffering still enormously important if we take a scalar view?
3. If we take a scalar view, how will we evaluate the extent to which animals can experience suffering?
4. If we scientifically find neural correlate of consciousness, then we should weigh animals' interests in proportion to their posession of this neural correlate.



*More precisely, what is the likelyhood that any particular animal - or indeed any object - has utility, defined as a preponderance of happiness over suffering, as the fulfilment of preferences, or otherwise. But let's stick with the example of animal suffering
**This is shorthand for "The value of their experiences ought to be about one fifth of the value of a human's experiences''
***To under of the storage space of a computer. One switch can have two states, on (1) or off (0). Two switches can have four states (00, 01, 10 and 11). Three switches can have eight states. And so on. For those mathematically inclined, it's a power relationship. Whereas with a 'number of neurons' model, the relationship is linear. The calculations are far more complicated in the case of a human brain, but they are possible. The point is that computationally, a big brain is much more than the sum of its parts. Humans would come off much better with a computational ('brain states') approach than a mass approach.

Didn't we already discuss this in Sentience and brain size?

My opinion is that consciousness is scalar. I would have guessed that it scales linearly with brain size. I take the fact that I'm one of the most intelligent creatures on the planet as evidence that it scales superlinearly, although that's not really that helpful until I can figure out how to operate under this kind of uncertainty. You'd have different ways of measuring utility, and expected value only works if you keep the units the same. I also believe that it's amount of computations, rather than literal brain size, that matters. Increasing the size of neurons, or running two brains identically, would do nothing.

If you take MWI at face value, Born probabilities would mean sentience is proportional to the square of the amplitude, so it would seem likely that sentience would increase with the square of brain size, and increasing neuron size would count. That said, it could turn out somewhat different. For example, you could modify the wavefunction to be nonlinear, and probability would be proportional to the square of the amplitude.

At least some part of me believes that neuron size does matter, and I'm just not admitting it because I don't like it.

Also, "How much can ants suffer?" is the only question. The amount of suffering of a system will never be exactly zero.

There's a famous thought experiment by Galileo showing that the weight of falling bodies isn't (much of) a factor in the speed they fall:

Salviati. If then we take two bodies whose natural speeds are different, it is clear that on uniting the two, the more rapid one will be partly retarded by the slower, and the slower will be somewhat hastened by the swifter. Do you not agree with me in this opinion?
Simplicio. You are unquestionably right.
Salviati. But if this is true, and if a large stone moves with a speed of, say, eight while a smaller moves with a speed of four, then when they are united, the system will move with a speed less than eight; but the two stones when tied together make a stone larger than that which before moved with a speed of eight. Hence the heavier body moves with less speed than the lighter; an effect which is contrary to your supposition. Thus you see how, from your assumption that the heavier body moves more rapidly than ' the lighter one, I infer that the heavier body moves more slowly.[4]

Seems like comparable reasoning applies to scalar util. If you take two similar brains and 'tie them together', such that they effectively form one brain, do you expect them to retain the same net quantity of consciousness as before, or is there some reason to suppose you've halved net consciousness?

Granted 'tying brains together' is a little different from tying rocks together, but this seems to be more or less what's already happening in our actual brains, as evidenced by those experiments where brain damage can cause one part of the brain to be effectively oblivious to the other part. So actually the thought experiment might be better conceived as splitting one brain into two.

I don't think brain size has anything to do with how much suffering or enjoyment a person is capable of. I wouldn't know.

It seems like relative size of brain to body would be a factor. A small brain in a large body must have its work cut out trying to run all the bodily functions (so the complexity of the animal's motor processes might also be relevant). Anyone have info on how we compare to eg insects and blue whales in this regard, and how men compare to women?

Wikipedia has an article on it. Shrews have the highest brain-to-body ratio.

It seems like straight ratio wouldn't work. It would be more like you'd subtract a certain portion of body mass from brain mass, and everything else matters.

Hmm, brain size divided by body size. Is that ratio what you call "mind over matter"?

Very droll