Suffering is bad: experiential understanding and the impossibility of intrinsically valuing suffering

Abstract

Suffering, I argue, is bad. This paper supports that claim by defending a somewhat bolder-sounding one: namely that if anyone—even a sadistic ‘amoralist’—fully understands the fact that someone else is suffering, then the only evaluative attitude they can possibly form towards the person’s suffering as such is that of being intrinsically against it. I first argue that, necessarily, everyone is disposed to be intrinsically against their own suffering experiences, holding fixed their specific overall degree of emotional aversiveness, because any evaluative attitude other than ‘being against’—including mere indifference—would in certain key circumstances make our suffering less emotionally aversive and thus different from the suffering experience (stipulatively) at issue. Second, fully understanding that someone else is having a given experience—Mary’s experiencing a vividly blue sky, say, or Job’s experiencing heart-rending grief—requires that we represent experientially their very instance of that experience-type (it requires, in other words, token phenomenal concepts). The result is that what goes for our own suffering goes for others’, too: maintaining an accurate experiential representation of the fact that someone else is having a suffering experience with a specific degree of overall emotional aversiveness is only compatible with coming to be intrinsically against their suffering. So suffering is—‘objectively’—bad: it’s only possible to respond with indifference towards anyone’s suffering if we don’t fully understand that they are suffering in the first place.