In your Welfare Range Estimate and your Introduction to Moral Weights, you don’t mention the potential of humans to make a positive impact, instead focusing only on averting DALYs. Perhaps I’m missing something here, but isn’t this neglecting the hedonic goods from a positive utilitarian perspective and only addressing it from the negative utilitarian side of things?
Please let me know if this topic is addressed in another entry in your sequence, and thank you for the time you have spent researching and writing about these important topics!
Hi Josh. There are two issues here: (a) the indirect effects of helping humans (to include the potential that humans have to make a positive impact) and (b) the positive portion of human and animals’ welfare ranges. We definitely address (b), in that we assume that every individual with a welfare range has a positive dimension of that welfare range. And we don’t ignore that in cost-effectiveness analysis, as the main benefit of saving human lives is allowing/​creating positive welfare. (So, averting DALYs is equivalent to allowing/​creating positive welfare, at least in terms of the consequences.)
We don’t say anything about (a), but that was beyond the scope of our project. I’m still unsure how to think about the net indirect effects of helping humans, though my tendency is to think that they’re positive, despite worries about the meat-eater problem, impacts on wild animals, etc. (Obviously, the direct effects are positive!) Others, however, probably have much more thoughtful takes to give you on that particular issue.
In your Welfare Range Estimate and your Introduction to Moral Weights, you don’t mention the potential of humans to make a positive impact, instead focusing only on averting DALYs. Perhaps I’m missing something here, but isn’t this neglecting the hedonic goods from a positive utilitarian perspective and only addressing it from the negative utilitarian side of things?
Please let me know if this topic is addressed in another entry in your sequence, and thank you for the time you have spent researching and writing about these important topics!
Hi Josh. There are two issues here: (a) the indirect effects of helping humans (to include the potential that humans have to make a positive impact) and (b) the positive portion of human and animals’ welfare ranges. We definitely address (b), in that we assume that every individual with a welfare range has a positive dimension of that welfare range. And we don’t ignore that in cost-effectiveness analysis, as the main benefit of saving human lives is allowing/​creating positive welfare. (So, averting DALYs is equivalent to allowing/​creating positive welfare, at least in terms of the consequences.)
We don’t say anything about (a), but that was beyond the scope of our project. I’m still unsure how to think about the net indirect effects of helping humans, though my tendency is to think that they’re positive, despite worries about the meat-eater problem, impacts on wild animals, etc. (Obviously, the direct effects are positive!) Others, however, probably have much more thoughtful takes to give you on that particular issue.