This sounds a lot like a version of preference utilitarianism, certainly an interesting perspective.
I know a lot of effort in political philosophy has gone into trying to define freedom—personally, I don’t think it’s been especially productive, and so I think ‘freedom’ as a term isn’t that useful except as rhetoric. Emphasising ‘fulfilment of preferences’ is an interesting approach, though. It does run into tricky questions around the source of those preferences (eg addiction).
Yeah, it is very similar to preference utilitarianism. I’m still undecided between hedonic and preference utilitarianism, but thinking about this made me lean more toward preference utilitarianism.
What do you think is wrong with the current definitions of liberty? I think the concept of well-being is similarly vague. I tend to use different proxies for well-being interchangeably (fulfillment of preferences, happiness minus suffering, good health as measured by QALYs or DALYs, etc.) and I think this is common practice in EA. But I still think that freedom and well-being are useful concepts: for example, most people would agree that China has less economic and political freedom than the United States.
I don’t mind rhetorical descriptions of China as having ‘less economic and political freedom than the United States’, in a very general discussion. But if you’re going to make any sort of proposal like ‘there should be more political freedom!’ I would feel the need to ask many follow-up clarifying questions (freedom to do what? freedom from what consequences? freedom for whom?) to know whether I agreed with you.
Well-being is vague too, I agree, but it’s a more necessary term than freedom (from my philosophical perspective, and I think most others).
This sounds a lot like a version of preference utilitarianism, certainly an interesting perspective.
I know a lot of effort in political philosophy has gone into trying to define freedom—personally, I don’t think it’s been especially productive, and so I think ‘freedom’ as a term isn’t that useful except as rhetoric. Emphasising ‘fulfilment of preferences’ is an interesting approach, though. It does run into tricky questions around the source of those preferences (eg addiction).
Yeah, it is very similar to preference utilitarianism. I’m still undecided between hedonic and preference utilitarianism, but thinking about this made me lean more toward preference utilitarianism.
What do you think is wrong with the current definitions of liberty? I think the concept of well-being is similarly vague. I tend to use different proxies for well-being interchangeably (fulfillment of preferences, happiness minus suffering, good health as measured by QALYs or DALYs, etc.) and I think this is common practice in EA. But I still think that freedom and well-being are useful concepts: for example, most people would agree that China has less economic and political freedom than the United States.
I don’t mind rhetorical descriptions of China as having ‘less economic and political freedom than the United States’, in a very general discussion. But if you’re going to make any sort of proposal like ‘there should be more political freedom!’ I would feel the need to ask many follow-up clarifying questions (freedom to do what? freedom from what consequences? freedom for whom?) to know whether I agreed with you.
Well-being is vague too, I agree, but it’s a more necessary term than freedom (from my philosophical perspective, and I think most others).