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. You’re right that it’s not clear that he’s 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
“typical” conscious experience of “typical” members of different species when undergoing various “canonical” positive and negative experiences
Frankly, it’s a bit confusing. (To be fair to Luke, he wrote that post before Kagan’s 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.
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. You’re right that it’s not clear that he’s 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, it’s a bit confusing. (To be fair to Luke, he wrote that post before Kagan’s 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.