Another term that might be used to capture both moral status and capacity for welfare is âmoral weight.â Although âstatus-adjusted welfareâ isnât a perfect term, I think âmoral weightâ suffers from two problems. First, to my ear, it doesnât sound agnostic between the hierarchical approach and the unitarian approach. One informal way of describing unitarianism is âthe view that rejects moral weights.â
1. I found that a little confusing. To me, âstatus-adjusted welfareâ sounds notably less agnostic than does âmoral weightâ regarding the hierarchical and unitarian approaches.
As you note, âUnitarians assign all creatures with moral standing the same moral status, so for the unitarian, status-adjusted welfare just collapses to welfare.â So if weâre choosing to use the term âstatus-adjusted welfareâ, I think we sound like weâre endorsing the hierarchical viewâeven if in reality we want to be open to saying âIt turns out moral status is equal between animals, so thereâs no need for status-adjustment.â
Whereas if weâre choosing to use the term âmoral weightâ, I think we sound like weâre open to the hierarchical view, but we at least avoid making it sound like weâre actually planning to adjust things by moral weight.
Perhaps the reason you see âstatus-adjusted welfareâ as sounding more agnostic is because youâre imagining the adjustment as potentially being a multiplication by 0, for beings that have no moral status, rather than by a number between 0 and 1? That didnât come to mind intuitively for me, because then I think Iâd just want to say the being has no welfare. But maybe thatâs me deviating from how philosophers would usually think/âtalk about these matters.
2. The prior point may be related to the fact that, as best I can tell, moral weight and status-adjusted welfare arenât really different terms for the same thing (which seemed to me to be what the first sentence of that quote was implying). At least based on how Iâve seen the term used (mainly by Muehlhauser), âmoral weightâ seems to mean pretty much just the âmoral statusâ componentâjust the term we multiply welfare by in order to get the number we really care about, rather than that final number.
So it seems like the synonym for âstatus-adjusted welfareâ would be not âmoral weightâ but âmoral-weight-adjusted welfareâ. And that, unlike just âmoral weightâ, does sound to me like itâs endorsing the hierarchical view.
3. Somewhat separate point, which Iâm uncertain about: Iâm not sure status-adjusted welfare really âcapturesâ capacity for welfare. Given your description, it seems status-adjusted welfare is just about multiplying the welfare the being is actually at (or a given change in welfare or something like that) by the moral status of the beingâwithout the beingâs capacity for welfare playing a role.
Did you mean that status-adjusted welfare âcapturesâ capacity for welfare to the extent that a lower or higher capacity for welfare will tend to reduce or increase the amount of welfare that is being experienced or changed?
Iâll admit that Iâm not wedded to the term âstatus-adjusted welfare.â I agree that it is less than ideal. I donât think âmoral weightâ is better, but I also donât think itâs much worse. If anyone has suggestions for a catch-all term for factors that might affect characteristic comparative moral value, I would be interested to hear them.
Interesting. My reading of Muehlhauser is that when he talks of moral weight he almost exclusively means âcapacity for welfareâ and basically never means âmoral status.â From conversations with him, I get the impression he is a unitarian and so doesnât endorse differences in moral status.
Did you mean that status-adjusted welfare âcapturesâ capacity for welfare to the extent that a lower or higher capacity for welfare will tend to reduce or increase the amount of welfare that is being experienced or changed?
This is close to what I meant, though I grant that maybe this isnât strong enough to qualify as âcapturingâ capacity for welfare. The basic idea is that a unitarian and a hierarchist could in theory agree that, say, the status-adjusted welfare of a cow is generally higher than the status-adjusted welfare of a mealworm even if they disagree about the nature of moral status. The hierarchist might believe that the mealworm and the cow have the same welfare level, but the mealwormâs welfare is adjusted downward. The unitarian might believe that the cow and the mealworm have the same moral status, but the cow has a greater capacity for welfare.
1. To clarify, I donât necessarily see status-adjusted welfare as a bad term. Iâd actually say it seems pretty good, as it seems to state what itâs about fairly explicitly and intuitively.
I was just responding to the claim that itâs better than âmoral weightâ in that it sounds more agnostic between unitarian and hierarchical approaches. I see it as perhaps scoring worse than âmoral weightâ on that particular criterion, or about the same.
(But I also still think it means a somewhat different thing to âmoral weightâ anyway, as best I can tell.)
2. Iâm not confident about whether Muehlhauser meant moral status or capacity for welfare, and would guess your interpretation is more accurate than my half-remembered interpretation. Though looking again at his post on the matter, I see this sentence:
This depends (among other things) on how much âmoral weightâ we give to the well-being of different kinds of moral patients.
This sounds to me most intuitively like itâs about adjusting a given unit of wellbeing/âwelfare by some factor that âweâre givingâ them, which therefore sounds like moral status. But thatâs just my reading of one sentence.
In any case, I think I poorly expressed what I actually meant, which was related to my third point: It seems like âstatus-adjusted welfareâ is the product of moral status and welfare, whereas âmoral weightâ is either (a) some factor by which we adjust the welfare of a being, or (b) some factor that captures how intense the welfare levels of the being will tend to be (given particular experiences/âevents), or some mix of (a) and (b). So âmoral weightâ doesnât seem to include the beingâs actual welfare, and thus doesnât seem to be a synonym for âstatus-adjusted welfareâ.
(Incidentally, having to try to describe in the above paragraph what âmoral weightâ seems to mean has increased my inclination to mostly ditch that term and to stick with the âmoral status vs capacity for welfareâ distinction, as that does seem conceptually clearer.)
Thanks again. Regarding (2), I may be conflating a conversation I had with Luke about the subject back in February with the actual contents of his old LessWrong post on the topic. Youâre right that itâs not clear that heâs focusing on capacity for welfare in that post: he moves pretty quickly between moral status, capacity for welfare, and something like average realized welfare of the
âtypicalâ conscious experience of âtypicalâ members of different species when undergoing various âcanonicalâ positive and negative experiences
Frankly, itâs a bit confusing. (To be fair to Luke, he wrote that post before Kaganâs book came out.) One hope of mine is that by collectively working on this topic more, we can establish a common conceptual framework within the community to better clarify points of agreement and disagreement.
Thanks for this postâI found it very interesting and very clearly written and reasoned! I learned a lot, and have added it to my list of sources relevant to the idea of âmoral weightâ.
1. I found that a little confusing. To me, âstatus-adjusted welfareâ sounds notably less agnostic than does âmoral weightâ regarding the hierarchical and unitarian approaches.
As you note, âUnitarians assign all creatures with moral standing the same moral status, so for the unitarian, status-adjusted welfare just collapses to welfare.â So if weâre choosing to use the term âstatus-adjusted welfareâ, I think we sound like weâre endorsing the hierarchical viewâeven if in reality we want to be open to saying âIt turns out moral status is equal between animals, so thereâs no need for status-adjustment.â
Whereas if weâre choosing to use the term âmoral weightâ, I think we sound like weâre open to the hierarchical view, but we at least avoid making it sound like weâre actually planning to adjust things by moral weight.
Perhaps the reason you see âstatus-adjusted welfareâ as sounding more agnostic is because youâre imagining the adjustment as potentially being a multiplication by 0, for beings that have no moral status, rather than by a number between 0 and 1? That didnât come to mind intuitively for me, because then I think Iâd just want to say the being has no welfare. But maybe thatâs me deviating from how philosophers would usually think/âtalk about these matters.
2. The prior point may be related to the fact that, as best I can tell, moral weight and status-adjusted welfare arenât really different terms for the same thing (which seemed to me to be what the first sentence of that quote was implying). At least based on how Iâve seen the term used (mainly by Muehlhauser), âmoral weightâ seems to mean pretty much just the âmoral statusâ componentâjust the term we multiply welfare by in order to get the number we really care about, rather than that final number.
So it seems like the synonym for âstatus-adjusted welfareâ would be not âmoral weightâ but âmoral-weight-adjusted welfareâ. And that, unlike just âmoral weightâ, does sound to me like itâs endorsing the hierarchical view.
3. Somewhat separate point, which Iâm uncertain about: Iâm not sure status-adjusted welfare really âcapturesâ capacity for welfare. Given your description, it seems status-adjusted welfare is just about multiplying the welfare the being is actually at (or a given change in welfare or something like that) by the moral status of the beingâwithout the beingâs capacity for welfare playing a role.
Did you mean that status-adjusted welfare âcapturesâ capacity for welfare to the extent that a lower or higher capacity for welfare will tend to reduce or increase the amount of welfare that is being experienced or changed?
Hi Michael,
Thanks for your comment.
Iâll admit that Iâm not wedded to the term âstatus-adjusted welfare.â I agree that it is less than ideal. I donât think âmoral weightâ is better, but I also donât think itâs much worse. If anyone has suggestions for a catch-all term for factors that might affect characteristic comparative moral value, I would be interested to hear them.
Interesting. My reading of Muehlhauser is that when he talks of moral weight he almost exclusively means âcapacity for welfareâ and basically never means âmoral status.â From conversations with him, I get the impression he is a unitarian and so doesnât endorse differences in moral status.
This is close to what I meant, though I grant that maybe this isnât strong enough to qualify as âcapturingâ capacity for welfare. The basic idea is that a unitarian and a hierarchist could in theory agree that, say, the status-adjusted welfare of a cow is generally higher than the status-adjusted welfare of a mealworm even if they disagree about the nature of moral status. The hierarchist might believe that the mealworm and the cow have the same welfare level, but the mealwormâs welfare is adjusted downward. The unitarian might believe that the cow and the mealworm have the same moral status, but the cow has a greater capacity for welfare.
1. To clarify, I donât necessarily see status-adjusted welfare as a bad term. Iâd actually say it seems pretty good, as it seems to state what itâs about fairly explicitly and intuitively.
I was just responding to the claim that itâs better than âmoral weightâ in that it sounds more agnostic between unitarian and hierarchical approaches. I see it as perhaps scoring worse than âmoral weightâ on that particular criterion, or about the same.
(But I also still think it means a somewhat different thing to âmoral weightâ anyway, as best I can tell.)
2. Iâm not confident about whether Muehlhauser meant moral status or capacity for welfare, and would guess your interpretation is more accurate than my half-remembered interpretation. Though looking again at his post on the matter, I see this sentence:
This sounds to me most intuitively like itâs about adjusting a given unit of wellbeing/âwelfare by some factor that âweâre givingâ them, which therefore sounds like moral status. But thatâs just my reading of one sentence.
In any case, I think I poorly expressed what I actually meant, which was related to my third point: It seems like âstatus-adjusted welfareâ is the product of moral status and welfare, whereas âmoral weightâ is either (a) some factor by which we adjust the welfare of a being, or (b) some factor that captures how intense the welfare levels of the being will tend to be (given particular experiences/âevents), or some mix of (a) and (b). So âmoral weightâ doesnât seem to include the beingâs actual welfare, and thus doesnât seem to be a synonym for âstatus-adjusted welfareâ.
(Incidentally, having to try to describe in the above paragraph what âmoral weightâ seems to mean has increased my inclination to mostly ditch that term and to stick with the âmoral status vs capacity for welfareâ distinction, as that does seem conceptually clearer.)
3. That makes sense to me.
Hey Michael,
Thanks again. Regarding (2), I may be conflating a conversation I had with Luke about the subject back in February with the actual contents of his old LessWrong post on the topic. Youâre right that itâs not clear that heâs focusing on capacity for welfare in that post: he moves pretty quickly between moral status, capacity for welfare, and something like average realized welfare of the
Frankly, itâs a bit confusing. (To be fair to Luke, he wrote that post before Kaganâs book came out.) One hope of mine is that by collectively working on this topic more, we can establish a common conceptual framework within the community to better clarify points of agreement and disagreement.