MichaelStJules

Summary In my first piece, I settled on conceiving of radical empathy as an object view. I highlight some potential moral implications of object views: 1. More of what someone finds pleasant or is (knowingly or unknowingly) disposed to find pleasant is better for them, all else equal. Death can...

Summary I illustrate and defend actualist object views as my conception of radical empathy, of being concerned exactly with what we would actually care about. As a kind of asymmetric person-affecting view, the most important implication for cause prioritization is probably lower priority for extinction risk reduction relative to total...

Summary It seems to me that almost every view of what matters for welfare — hedonism, desire theories, preference views, and objective list theories — misses a lot of what we care about, projects concerns we don’t actually have onto us, or otherwise fails to care about them on our...

Summary 1. I make three arguments against standard difference-making risk aversion that I find compelling as a consequentialist, despite my substantial sympathy for something like difference-making risk aversion: 1. It privileges a default option, literally as or like an act-omission distinction, or is otherwise unmotivated (more). 2. It may lead...

We may be making important conceptual or methodological errors in prioritization between moral patients. In this sequence, I illustrate and address several: 1. Types of subjective welfare: I review types of subjective welfare, interpersonal comparisons with them and common grounds between them. 2. Solution to the two envelopes problem for...

Pleasure and suffering are not conceptual opposites. Rather, pleasure and unpleasantness are conceptual opposites. Pleasure and unpleasantness are liking and disliking, or positive affect and negative affect, respectively.[1] Imagine an experience of suffering that involved little or no effects on your attention. It's easy to ignore, along with whatever is...

Summary 1. Consider a pill that would cause a happy person with a fulfilling life to abandon their most important desires and cherished attachments, including goals, career and loved ones, but increase their lifetime subjective well-being. If what’s best for someone is just higher subjective well-being (including even higher lifetime...