I just finished reading the book. Thank you, Magnus, for putting this together! I thought I’d share my quick take on it here:
This book seems very important. I endorsed a suffering-focused view before, but Magnus does a great job of collecting many relevant facts and arguments. The book is exceptionally well researched and Magnus tries hard to anticipate counter-arguments and takes them seriously. The book is also well structured and easy to follow despite being very dense.
I found the first 3 chapters a little weak/long. I think this is primarily because:
I didn’t find the argument that creating happiness is more important than reducing suffering plausible to begin with.
A lot of the provided evidence came in the form of quotes from other philosophers or thinkers. I guess that this is actually what counts as evidence for some approaches to moral philosophy, but my “empirical science background” didn’t find it so compelling.
I then got stuck for a while on some of his graphic descriptions of extreme suffering in chapter 4 (which are tough, but important, I think). From chapter 5 onwards the book really picked up IMO. In fact, chapter 5 itself (“A Moral Realist Case for Minimizing Extreme Suffering”) might be the most important one of the first section.
For me personally the book has increased my conviction to make the reduction of suffering a foremost priority and given me some new ways to think about how we should try and accomplish this—let’s see how I manage to turn that into action.
I just finished reading the book. Thank you, Magnus, for putting this together! I thought I’d share my quick take on it here:
This book seems very important. I endorsed a suffering-focused view before, but Magnus does a great job of collecting many relevant facts and arguments. The book is exceptionally well researched and Magnus tries hard to anticipate counter-arguments and takes them seriously. The book is also well structured and easy to follow despite being very dense.
I found the first 3 chapters a little weak/long. I think this is primarily because:
I didn’t find the argument that creating happiness is more important than reducing suffering plausible to begin with.
A lot of the provided evidence came in the form of quotes from other philosophers or thinkers. I guess that this is actually what counts as evidence for some approaches to moral philosophy, but my “empirical science background” didn’t find it so compelling.
I then got stuck for a while on some of his graphic descriptions of extreme suffering in chapter 4 (which are tough, but important, I think). From chapter 5 onwards the book really picked up IMO. In fact, chapter 5 itself (“A Moral Realist Case for Minimizing Extreme Suffering”) might be the most important one of the first section.
For me personally the book has increased my conviction to make the reduction of suffering a foremost priority and given me some new ways to think about how we should try and accomplish this—let’s see how I manage to turn that into action.