Do you happen to recall if you encountered the term âmoral weightâ outside of EA/ârationality circles? The term isnât in the titles in the bibliography (though it may be in the full papers), and I see one that says âMoral status as a matter of degree?â, which would seem to refer to a similar idea. So this seems like it might be additional weak evidence that âmoral weightâ might be an idiosyncratic term in the EA/ârationality community (whereas when I first saw Muehlhauser use it, I assumed he took it from the philosophical literature).
The term âmoral weightâ is occasionally used in philosophy (David DeGrazia uses it from time to time, for instance) but not super often. There are a number of closely related but conceptually distinct issues that often get lumped together under the heading moral weight:
Capacity for welfare, which is how well or poorly a given animalâs life can go
Average realized welfare, which is how well or poorly the life of a typical member of a given species actually goes
Moral status, which is how much the welfare of a given animal matters morally
Differences in any of those three things might generate differences in how we prioritize interventions that target different species.
Rethink Priorities is going to release a report on this subject in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned for more details!
Thanks, thatâs really helpful! Iâd been thinking thereâs an important distinction between that âcapacity for welfareâ idea and that âmoral statusâ idea, so itâs handy to know the standard terms for that.
Ah great, thanks!
Do you happen to recall if you encountered the term âmoral weightâ outside of EA/ârationality circles? The term isnât in the titles in the bibliography (though it may be in the full papers), and I see one that says âMoral status as a matter of degree?â, which would seem to refer to a similar idea. So this seems like it might be additional weak evidence that âmoral weightâ might be an idiosyncratic term in the EA/ârationality community (whereas when I first saw Muehlhauser use it, I assumed he took it from the philosophical literature).
The term âmoral weightâ is occasionally used in philosophy (David DeGrazia uses it from time to time, for instance) but not super often. There are a number of closely related but conceptually distinct issues that often get lumped together under the heading moral weight:
Capacity for welfare, which is how well or poorly a given animalâs life can go
Average realized welfare, which is how well or poorly the life of a typical member of a given species actually goes
Moral status, which is how much the welfare of a given animal matters morally
Differences in any of those three things might generate differences in how we prioritize interventions that target different species.
Rethink Priorities is going to release a report on this subject in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned for more details!
Thanks, thatâs really helpful! Iâd been thinking thereâs an important distinction between that âcapacity for welfareâ idea and that âmoral statusâ idea, so itâs handy to know the standard terms for that.
Looking forward to reading that!