The human condition, OTOH as far as subjective interpretations (such as beauty, pleasure, pain etc) exists on personal/individual spectrums without objective constants, thus descriptors such as "negative", or "worse" only have meaning when compared to another event on that spectrum. — LuckyR

That would mean that if you put a dog in a cage at birth and beat it every day and gave it no pleasures, the least severe beating would be a positive experience. That is simply not correct.

By all means attack the connection I have made, but please don’t imply that I haven’t attempted to make one. — Herg

While I appreciate your elucidation, with respect this is not what I asked for. You made a connection between two conceptions of one assumed fact (which falls back on the previous objection).

What I want is something like:
Kicking puppies causes them harm =
It is wrong to kick puppies.

I cannot conceive of this, other than just claiming (as ethical naturalists often do) supervenience. That's fine if so, I just wanted that clarified. Please do not feel attacked. These are discussions about ethics and its best we stay away from taking things personally. I feel you havent clarified yourself or provided the baove. That's all.

torturing B is painful for B, that pain is intrinsically bad, that T is therefore instrumentally bad, and that if A is exercising free will when he performs T, then T is morally bad. I am not simply associating the facts in my mind, I have argued that they are connected in fact. — Herg

Fwiw, it wasn't sufficiently clear to me that this was your fundamental form of claim. Apologies I missed it.

I can see that you're trying to make that connection, but the second bold collapses into my prior objection. Why is pain intrinsically bad? I think, unfortunately, this is just wrong. There are plenty of counter-examples. Enough to make it a little silly, don't you think?

My claim is that pain is intrinsically bad. Where pain is beneficial, it is instrumentally good, which does not contradict my claim. — Herg

That's fine and i fully take the point. There's no logical incoherence in that. What i'm claiming is incoherent is making the claim that pain is intrinsically bad. But that's somewhat for another time, tbh.

The issue is that instrumental value is basically all we can actually assess. "intrinsically bad" begs a question. That means there is a basic, fundamental disconnect between what you'd call a natural fact "pain is bad" and the moral claim "it is wrong to cause pain". Far too much contingency in that for it to be a fact in any sense, imo.

evidence that (a) she was in a great deal of pain and (b) she had a strong negative response to the pain, which supports my contention that pain is intrinsically bad. — Herg

It absolutely does not. It supports the facts that a) she was in pain, and b) she had a strong negative response to the pain. This is personal discomfort, writ large. It does not follow, in any way, that pain is intrinsically bad. You've illustrated a single instance which cannot be extrapolated to every other instance. It says a lot more about your wife, than it does about the intrinsic nature of pain.

But why did she see it as bad? If you don’t think it is because it was intrinsically bad, then what was her reason? — Herg

Because she didn't enjoy it. People get the same feeling from eating food they don't like.

There is genuinely no connection in your posts between the claimed natural fact, and the moral claim such that
A. Pain is intrinsically bad; can be supported through to;
B. Therefore, do not pain.

Uummm... no. It doesn't mean that. As you've described it, the dog would be given no positive experiences from their handler. They would receive episodes of beatings of various severities. They'd have the majority of their life in the absence of beatings and dogs left on their own commonly lick themselves. So in summation the least severe beating would likely be a pretty severe negative, when looking at their lifespan. If you only count the beatings, it would be the least negative or the most positive, which are identical on a continuous spectrum in the absence of a zero.