But, hang on. Grant that there's some amount of disutility from permanent damage caused by torture. Nevertheless, as you add more specks, at some point you're going to have added more disutility, right? Suppose the torture victim lives for fifty years after you're done with him, and he's an emotional and physical wreck for every day of those fifty years; nevertheless, this is a finite amount of disutility and can be compensated for by inserting a sufficient number of Knuth up-arrows between the numerals. Right?
Prismattic:
in concrete situations
Rolf:
and can be compensated for by inserting a sufficient number of Knuth up-arrows between the numerals
I think for us "concrete situations", as meant here, does have a way lower border than just "for some natural number N". I think no parent of your comment disputed that we are still dealing with finite amounts of (dis)utility.
Most of the usual thought experiments that justify expected utilitarialism trade off fun for fun, or suffering for suffering. Here's a situation which mixes the two. You are offered to press a button that will select a random person (not you) and torture them for a month. In return the machine will make N people who are not suffering right now have X fun each. The fun will be of the positive variety, not saving any creatures from pain.
1) How large would X and N have to be for you to accept the offer?
2) If you say X or N must be very large, does this prove that you measure torture and fun using in effect different scales, and therefore are a deontologist rather than a utilitarian?