Executive summary: This post suggests that moral concern can be categorized into welfare-promotion based and suffering-reduction based, and proposes studying these two categories separately to improve moral decision-making and reduce uncertainty.
Key points:
Moral concern is typically studied as a uniform concept, but comprises diverse attitudes like welfare promotion and harm prevention.
These can be framed as positive and negative rights—welfare promotion confers positive rights, while harm prevention confers negative rights.
Framing moral concern through welfare promotion or suffering reduction may affect how we ascribe moral status.
Studying moral concern through these distinct frameworks could reduce moral uncertainty in decision-making.
More research is needed on how varied framing impacts moral concern attribution.
Splitting moral concern this way, despite limitations, can improve taxonomy and advocacy.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, andcontact us if you have feedback.
Executive summary: This post suggests that moral concern can be categorized into welfare-promotion based and suffering-reduction based, and proposes studying these two categories separately to improve moral decision-making and reduce uncertainty.
Key points:
Moral concern is typically studied as a uniform concept, but comprises diverse attitudes like welfare promotion and harm prevention.
These can be framed as positive and negative rights—welfare promotion confers positive rights, while harm prevention confers negative rights.
Framing moral concern through welfare promotion or suffering reduction may affect how we ascribe moral status.
Studying moral concern through these distinct frameworks could reduce moral uncertainty in decision-making.
More research is needed on how varied framing impacts moral concern attribution.
Splitting moral concern this way, despite limitations, can improve taxonomy and advocacy.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.