In general I would be very wary of taking definitions written for an academic philosophical audience and relying on them in other situations. Often the use of technical language by philosophers does not carry over well to other contexts
ADDITIONAL EVIDENCE FOR THE ABOVE
For example I have a very vague memory of talking to Will on this and concluding that he had a slightly odd and quite broad definition of “welfarist”, where “welfare” in this context just meant ‘good for others’ without any implications of fulfilling happiness / utility / preference / etc. This comes out in the linked paper, in the line “if we want to claim that one course of action is, as far as we know, the most effective way of increasing the welfare of all, we simply cannot avoid making philosophical assumptions. How should we value improving quality of life compared to saving lives? How should we value alleviating non-human animal suffering compared to alleviating human suffering? How should we value mitigating risks ….” etc
In general I would be very wary of taking definitions written for an academic philosophical audience and relying on them in other situations. Often the use of technical language by philosophers does not carry over well to other contexts
The definitions and explanations used here: https://www.effectivealtruism.org and here: https://whatiseffectivealtruism.com/ are in my mind, better and more useful than the quote above for almost any situation I have been in to date.
ADDITIONAL EVIDENCE FOR THE ABOVE For example I have a very vague memory of talking to Will on this and concluding that he had a slightly odd and quite broad definition of “welfarist”, where “welfare” in this context just meant ‘good for others’ without any implications of fulfilling happiness / utility / preference / etc. This comes out in the linked paper, in the line “if we want to claim that one course of action is, as far as we know, the most effective way of increasing the welfare of all, we simply cannot avoid making philosophical assumptions. How should we value improving quality of life compared to saving lives? How should we value alleviating non-human animal suffering compared to alleviating human suffering? How should we value mitigating risks ….” etc