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

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.

Automated summary

This paper argues that if anyone fully understands another person's suffering, their only possible evaluative attitude towards that suffering is to be intrinsically against it. The author argues that any evaluative attitude other than being against suffering would make our own suffering less emotionally aversive, and that understanding another person's suffering requires us to represent their experiential instance of that suffering. Therefore, suffering is objectively bad and indifference towards someone's suffering is only possible if we don't fully understand their experience.