What about an objective list theory containing only hedonistic value, preferences, and global desire or life satisfaction (whether mental state versions or not)? In this way, it could be the case that nonhuman animals do have welfare, but do not have access to certain kinds of welfare. Nonhuman animals may also not have access to non-mental state welfare beyond what’s already captured in their mental state welfare.
Of course, then we have to decide how to deal with conflicts and weighting between the different components, as you mention, and this to me seems doomed to arbitrariness.
Glad you raise this: I discuss the possibility of different species having different accounts of welfare in the paper in section 5.2 on the “too few subjects” objection! The main weirdness of such a view is that it’s vulnerable to spectrum arguments: it implies one of your ancestors had their well-being consist in (say) happiness and life satisfaction, but whose parents were slightly less cognitively developed and therefore their well-being consists just in happiness.
I don’t find this very unusual. I think the degree to which well-being consists in life satisfaction could come in continuous degrees. We could also say that the parents’ well-being did also consist in life satisfaction (on top of happiness), but the value was 0.
Also, can’t such an argument be applied to any theory of well-being? We have ancestors who weren’t capable of happiness whose offspring were. Sure, we’re saying this marks moral patienthood, but we can recognize that things can be moral patients for different reasons or in different ways, even multiple ways at the same time.
What about an objective list theory containing only hedonistic value, preferences, and global desire or life satisfaction (whether mental state versions or not)? In this way, it could be the case that nonhuman animals do have welfare, but do not have access to certain kinds of welfare. Nonhuman animals may also not have access to non-mental state welfare beyond what’s already captured in their mental state welfare.
Of course, then we have to decide how to deal with conflicts and weighting between the different components, as you mention, and this to me seems doomed to arbitrariness.
Glad you raise this: I discuss the possibility of different species having different accounts of welfare in the paper in section 5.2 on the “too few subjects” objection! The main weirdness of such a view is that it’s vulnerable to spectrum arguments: it implies one of your ancestors had their well-being consist in (say) happiness and life satisfaction, but whose parents were slightly less cognitively developed and therefore their well-being consists just in happiness.
I don’t find this very unusual. I think the degree to which well-being consists in life satisfaction could come in continuous degrees. We could also say that the parents’ well-being did also consist in life satisfaction (on top of happiness), but the value was 0.
Also, can’t such an argument be applied to any theory of well-being? We have ancestors who weren’t capable of happiness whose offspring were. Sure, we’re saying this marks moral patienthood, but we can recognize that things can be moral patients for different reasons or in different ways, even multiple ways at the same time.