Suffering and happiness: Morally symmetric or orthogonal?

Abstract

Standard utilitarian views treat bads as negative goods, which is a mistake. The moral symmetry between happiness and suffering has problematic implications. It suggests the moral importance of creating intense happiness in an untroubled person is equivalent to alleviating intense suffering. However, providing a joy-inducing drug, even one without drawbacks, seems less important than administering anesthesia to a surgery patient. Furthermore, symmetry implies the permissibility of inflicting extreme suffering on one individual to increase the happiness of already well-off others. Psychological and neuroscientific findings indicate that pleasure and pain are distinct experiences with different impacts on well-being. Suffering has intrinsic urgency, a direct moral appeal for help, unlike a neutral state’s potential for increased happiness. Contentment, the absence of discomfort and frustrated desires, may hold more moral relevance than pleasure intensity. The creation of pleasure has no inherent value if it doesn’t satisfy a frustrated preference, whereas suffering always represents a frustrated preference. An orthogonal model, where reducing suffering has overriding moral importance on one axis while increasing pleasure has lesser or no importance on the other, better captures these views. Alternatively, some kinetic pleasures, involving the pursuit of something, may contain negative components like stress or frustration, making the pursuit of perfect tranquility the sole moral aim. This may explain the perceived symmetry: increasing pleasure often reduces negative states. Rejecting moral symmetry does not necessitate hostility toward continued existence; factors like completing life projects, autonomy, and instrumental reasons for reducing suffering can support it. A moral symmetry between happiness and suffering presents further implausible implications for the ethics of death and continued existence. – AI-generated abstract.