Bob Fischer

The Moral Parliament Tool provides a framework for modeling participants' general moral views and simulating democratic deliberation among them. We show how the tool can be used to support democratic decisions about how to allocate healthcare resources. We apply the tool to three different bioethics case studies, showing how a hypothetical moral parliament composed of delegates of diverse worldviews would decide to distribute resources. This approach provides a more generalizable alternative to existing methods for participatory algorithm design.

Many claim that there is an important relationship between consciousness and welfare. Call this general view phenomenalism. One way of fleshing out phenomenalism is to hold that consciousness is what makes one the type of entity that can be noninstrumentally better or worse off in the first place. Consciousness is at least a necessary condition on welfare subjecthood. A different account holds that even if consciousness is not necessary for welfare subjecthood, conscious welfare subjects have greater welfare capacity. We argue that the most likely source of support for either version of phenomenalism—hedonism about welfare goods and bads—provides no support at all. Along the way, we discuss an alternative view of welfare subjectivity and welfare capacity that does not appeal to consciousness, but only to mentality, a view we call mentalism.

Interspecies welfare comparisons—judgments about whether one individual of a given species is better or worse off than another of a different species—are behind a wide range of moral and practical decisions. However, it remains unclear how to make such comparisons. This paper surveys the emerging literature on this problem. It distinguishes interspecies comparisons from related questions about individual welfare assessment and normative weighting, presents a simple model for extending welfare comparisons across species, and clarifies the problem of identifying appropriate comparative scales. It also examines proposals for estimating relative welfare ranges. The paper closes by highlighting the conceptual and practical challenges that remain and outlining ways philosophers can contribute to building a coherent, interdisciplinary framework for comparing welfare across species.

Academic research has explored the relationship between the number of neurons different organisms possess and the cognitive abilities of those organisms. Several authors have endorsed using neuron counts as a rough proxy that can help determine moral priorities. In this chapter, I examine the reasoning in favor of this view and argue that neuron counts should not be used as a sole proxy for welfare ranges. Because explicit arguments explaining the relevance of neuron counts for moral evaluating are scarce, I first put forward the most plausible possible arguments for inferring that welfare ranges might depend on the raw number of neurons, or other related proxies. I argue that no single proxy captures what authors seem most interested in (information-processing capacity) and further present empirical evidence and conceptual arguments that raise serious doubts about the plausibility that welfare ranges directly correlate with measures of neuron counts. However, I contend that neuron counts can still be useful as one component in a model that estimates welfare ranges.

This chapter explores Tatjana Višak’s arguments for the claim that all animals have the same welfare ranges. It starts by defining capacity for welfare and reviews some theoretical considerations that bear on this question. Next, Višak’s empirically informed, theoretical arguments for the claim that all animals have the same welfare ranges are reviewed. Her arguments rely on the idea that relativized accounts of well-being are the most plausible accounts and appeal to a certain view about the evolutionary explanation of hedonic capacities. It’s then argued that relativized accounts of well-being are implausible because (i) they generate absurd conclusions and (ii) cannot plausibly be extended to account for animals’ total well-being. The paper ends by reviewing Višak’s evolutionary explanation of hedonic capacities and argues that the descriptive features of evolution she discusses do not provide evidence of equal hedonic capacities across taxa. In fact, given the way that evolution works, it would be very surprising if that turned out to be true. Consequently, Višak’s arguments fail to establish their conclusion.

We put some pressure on the utility of the pathological complexity thesis by considering the challenge of nonconscious mentality. Here’s the problem in a nutshell. Suppose we grant Veit’s view that “hedonically felt valence is the best explanation of how animals came to deal with [pathological] complexity and thus how consciousness gradually evolved.” It remains an open question as to when pathological complexity reached the point where there was a fitness advantage for individuals with the capacity for hedonically felt valence. So, if Veit wants to say, for instance, that consciousness arose at some era, then he owes us a story about why conscious valenced states have more explanatory power in that era than nonconscious valenced states. But Veit doesn’t provide that story. Instead, he bases his timeline for the origin of consciousness on evidence of valence simpliciter—not conscious valence.

This chapter does four things. First, it considers several questions about the proposed methodology. Second, it answers several objections to the methodology, many of which center on the results of implementing it. Third, it identifies several ways we could improve the methodology going forward, improving the empirical rigor of our approach. Fourth and finally, it takes stock of the project and provides our overall view of its significance. We emphasize that insofar as it’s appropriate to use our welfare range estimates for decision-making, they are placeholders for the main result, which is that the differences between species are smaller than some may have anticipated (or, more cautiously, that there is little empirical basis for postulating larger differences).

This chapter provides some tentative welfare range estimates, where a welfare range is understood as the difference between the most intense positively valenced experience and the most intense negatively valenced experience available to members of a species. These estimates are conditional on hedonism, which means that they don’t reflect the implications of uncertainty about the correct theory of welfare, and they are intended as a proof of concept, so they do not factor in every possible complexity even given hedonism. The chapter’s main aim is to explain a method we can use to generate estimates. Along the way, we provide an overview of the proxies we used for differences in the possible intensities of valenced states across species and a summary of the literature reviews about those proxies for several farmed species. Finally, we explain how those reviews can be converted into specific estimates.

Given that there are no direct interspecies measures of the intensity of valenced experiences, we outline a methodology for estimating welfare ranges that does not rely on such direct measures. This methodology has four steps: First, specify the determinants of welfare. Second, identify measurable proxies for variation in the ability to realize the determinants of welfare. Third, survey the empirical literature for evidence about these proxies. Fourth, aggregate the results of that literature review to generate welfare range estimates. We then review some of the limitations of this approach, which include the problem of missing data, the difficulty of navigating phylogenetic distance, and puzzles about scoring and aggregating the proxies.

We do not have direct interspecies measures of the intensity of valenced experiences. Still, we can explore some factors that might affect animals’ welfare ranges. This chapter explores those factors and, ultimately, explains why we have to rely on indirect proxies for variation. First, we consider what theoretical evolutionary biology can tell us about the function of valenced experience. Next, we explore how different aspects of intellectual and emotional complexity might affect the characteristic intensity of valenced experience. Finally, we explore potential neurobiological, behavioral, and physiological markers of the intensity of valenced experience in human and nonhuman animals.

This chapter addresses the degree to which people should trust their intuitions about animals’ welfare ranges. If intuitions are fairly reliable here, then perhaps a complex methodology for producing welfare range estimates is unnecessary. Unfortunately, as we show, intuitions about welfare ranges are highly unreliable. We begin by developing general criteria that determine the degree to which any intuition is (un)reliable. We then review the philosophical literature that invokes intuitions about welfare ranges, as well as the survey data that track various intuitions the public has about animals. The criteria we defend show all such intuitions to be highly unreliable. We do allow that certain types of intuitions are reliable in some, but not all contexts. Still, the unreliability of intuitions about animals’ welfare ranges demands that we seek a more reliable methodology, at least with respect to this issue.

The book’s main objective is to provide a method for estimating differences in animals’ welfare ranges. This chapter distinguishes the concept of welfare ranges from various others: welfare subjecthood, realized welfare, capacity for welfare, welfare profiles, moral status, and moral weight. Then, after characterizing a welfare range as the difference between the best and worst welfare states that an animal can realize, it explores the modal force of “can” in that characterization, ultimately giving an account in terms of the welfare states that are realizable relative to an evidential base. It concludes by illustrating one practical application of the concept.

This chapter introduces the problem of interspecies welfare comparisons and discusses its relevance to a wide variety of important practical problems. It lists several assumptions that the authors make throughout the book, including the view that welfare is measurable on a ratio scale; that equal quantities of welfare count equally, regardless of kind or origin; that welfare is determined by the balance of positive and negative valenced experiences; and that a single theory of welfare applies to all welfare subjects. The chapter then clarifies which of these assumptions are essential and which aren’t. It concludes with an overview of the rest of the book.

This book articulates and defends a theory-based epistemology of modality (TEM). At TEM’s core is the idea that if we’re justified in believing the extraordinary modal claims to which philosophers often appeal—such as the claim that I could be disembodied, or that there could be a maximally perfect being—it’s because we’re justified in believing theories according to which those claims are true. This chapter articulates some of the assumptions that shape TEM, sketches the view, and then develops the basic argument for it, which is based on an analogy between a plausible modal epistemology for games and modal epistemology generally.

According to TEM, a person is justified in believing an interesting modal claim, p, if and only if (a) she is justified in believing a theory according to which p is true, (b) she believes p on the basis of that theory, and (c) she has no defeaters for her belief that p. Accordingly, we need a story about how we come to justifiably believe theories, a story about theories on which they have modal content, and a story about what it is to believe a claim on the basis of a theory. This chapter provides the second and third story, and explains why I can leave the problem of theory confirmation for others.

In this chapter, I argue that TEM is offers a better basis for modal skepticism than the one van Inwagen develops. My aim here is twofold. On the one hand, I want to show that TEM can lead to a form of modal skepticism, and if it does, then it leads to a better form than what’s previously been available. Second, I want to clarify what it would take to get a non-skeptical version of TEM—i.e., one on which we’re justified in believing some extraordinary modal claims. In other words, the goal here is to give a better sense of what TEM requires of those who think, for example, that they justifiably believe that there could be a maximally perfect being. Doing so will help us appreciate the nature of TEM’s cautiousness, as well as what’s valuable about it.

This chapter begins Part II. In it, I develop a general framework for selecting between competing modal epistemologies, focusing on three desiderata that are especially relevant to our choice: conservatism, simplicity, and the ability to handle modal disagreement. Unsurprisingly, I argue that TEM fares well in the relevant respects. However, I’ll also distinguish the senses in which TEM is and isn’t conservative, eventually describing TEM’s disagreement with some modal intuitions as its cautiousness. This requires further discussion in subsequent chapters.

We’re justified in believing some alethic modal claims: the losing team could have won; that bridge could collapse; two and two couldn’t equal five; etc. The epistemology of modality is concerned with the nature of this justification. How can we get it? How can we lose it? And what, exactly, explains why it’s available to us at all? The goal of this book is to give a hearing to those who are moving away from the purer strains of rationalism in modal epistemology, finding room for experience to play a larger justificatory role—or even the only role. At the same time, it makes room for those who want to construct modal epistemologies that answer primarily to ordinary modal claims rather than the ones that have been of interest to metaphysicians and philosophers of mind—e.g., teletransportation, disembodied minds, etc.

This chapter does four things. First, it considers several questions about the proposed methodology. Second, it answers several objections to the methodology, many of which center on the results of implementing it. Third, it identifies several ways we could improve the methodology going forward, improving the empirical rigor of our approach. Fourth and finally, it takes stock of the project and provides our overall view of its significance. We emphasize that insofar as it’s appropriate to use our welfare range estimates for decision-making, they are placeholders for the main result, which is that the differences between species are smaller than some may have anticipated (or, more cautiously, that there is little empirical basis for postulating larger differences).

This chapter addresses the degree to which people should trust their intuitions about animals’ welfare ranges. If intuitions are fairly reliable here, then perhaps a complex methodology for producing welfare range estimates is unnecessary. Unfortunately, as we show, intuitions about welfare ranges are highly unreliable. We begin by developing general criteria that determine the degree to which any intuition is (un)reliable. We then review the philosophical literature that invokes intuitions about welfare ranges, as well as the survey data that track various intuitions the public has about animals. The criteria we defend show all such intuitions to be highly unreliable. We do allow that certain types of intuitions are reliable in some, but not all contexts. Still, the unreliability of intuitions about animals’ welfare ranges demands that we seek a more reliable methodology, at least with respect to this issue.

Many people in animal studies favor the use of gendered pronouns for nonhuman animals, even in cases where the animal’s sex is unknown. By contrast, many people in gender studies favor the use of the default singular they for humans. Our aim is to show that the most obvious ways of fitting these pronoun norm proposals together—a hybrid option (“he”/“she” for animals, “they” for humans) and a uniform one (i.e., default to the singular they when gender identity is unknown, regardless of species)—have serious costs. Animal advocates will worry that the hybrid approach marks animals as fundamentally different from human beings, while advocates for gender justice will worry that preserving gendered pronouns for animals will also preserve gender essentialism. However, switching to a universal default singular they—that is, where we use “they” for all individuals, both human and nonhuman—may set back animals’ interest in being seen as sentient individuals. Our aim is not to defend a solution to this problem, but simply to argue that this is a problem that deserves consideration when assessing candidate pronoun norms.