Remember that these values are conditional on hedonism. If you think that humans can experience greater amounts of value per limit time because of some non-hedonic goods that humans have access to that non-human animals don’t, then you can accept everything the RP Moral Weight report says, but still think that human lives are far more valuable relative to non-human animal lives than just plugging in the numbers from the report would suggest. Personally I find the numbers low relative to my intuitions, but not necessarily counterintuitive conditional on hedonism. Most of the reasons I can think of to value humans more than animals don’t have anything to do with the (to me, somewhat weird) idea that humans have more intense pleasures and pains than other conscious animals. Hedonism is very much a minority view amongst philosophers, and “objective list” theories that are at least arguably friendly to human specialness (or maybe to human and mammal specialness) are by far the most popular: https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/5206
“Hedonism is very much a minority view amongst philosophers, and “objective list” theories that are at least arguably friendly to human specialness (or maybe to human and mammal specialness) are by far the most popular: https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/5206″
Because of this, I like Bob Fischer’s comittment above to keep trying to generate Moral weights that don’t assume hedonism. Otherwise we only have the current RP numbers, and we will see similar graphs and arguments “conditional on hedonism” which might not reflect the range of opinions people both EAs and non-EAs have about whether or not we should look at the world purely hedonistically…
Remember that these values are conditional on hedonism. If you think that humans can experience greater amounts of value per limit time because of some non-hedonic goods that humans have access to that non-human animals don’t, then you can accept everything the RP Moral Weight report says, but still think that human lives are far more valuable relative to non-human animal lives than just plugging in the numbers from the report would suggest. Personally I find the numbers low relative to my intuitions, but not necessarily counterintuitive conditional on hedonism. Most of the reasons I can think of to value humans more than animals don’t have anything to do with the (to me, somewhat weird) idea that humans have more intense pleasures and pains than other conscious animals. Hedonism is very much a minority view amongst philosophers, and “objective list” theories that are at least arguably friendly to human specialness (or maybe to human and mammal specialness) are by far the most popular: https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/5206
Niceone, If this is the case
“Hedonism is very much a minority view amongst philosophers, and “objective list” theories that are at least arguably friendly to human specialness (or maybe to human and mammal specialness) are by far the most popular: https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/5206″
Because of this, I like Bob Fischer’s comittment above to keep trying to generate Moral weights that don’t assume hedonism. Otherwise we only have the current RP numbers, and we will see similar graphs and arguments “conditional on hedonism” which might not reflect the range of opinions people both EAs and non-EAs have about whether or not we should look at the world purely hedonistically…