Mild welfarism: avoiding the demandingness of total(itarian) welfarism

Should you think about your duty, or about the consequences of your actions? Or should you concentrate on becoming a good person?

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Rational ethicist
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Joined: Wed Dec 14, 2022 9:51 am

Mild welfarism: avoiding the demandingness of total(itarian) welfarism

Post by Rational ethicist »

I developed a new moral theory which I call mild welfarism (or more technically discounted utilitarianism), and want to hear your thoughts about it.
For a full but simplified explanation [links redacted—iMod]

According to the moral theory of total welfarism, we should choose the option (situation) that maximizes the total welfare, i.e. the sum of the welfare values of everyone who exists, existed or will exist. This theory is very demanding, requiring a lot of sacrifices, and hence can also be called totalitarian welfarism.

I propose a modification of total welfarism that completely avoids the demandingness problem in a manner that causes the least amount of complaints. According to mild welfarism, we should choose the option that maximizes the total validly discounted welfare, i.e. the sum of everyone’s welfare minus the complaint-free discounts. Everyone has a bounded or limited right to discount the welfare of others if the welfare discounted people cannot validly complain against their welfare being discounted. The discounting is valid only if the complaints are invalid. A complaint is valid only if that welfare discounted person exists and the welfare gain of that person could also be achieved if the people who discount that person’s welfare did not exist.

In general, everyone has the right to discount someone else’s welfare in some options if those options are not possible (or if the outcomes of those options would change) if the people who do the discounting did not exist or if the option with the highest total discounted welfare (the sum of everyone’s welfare minus discounts) is one in which the people whose welfare is discounted do not exist. A complaint made by welfare discounted people is not valid if the existence of the discounting people is in a sense necessary (the option cannot be chosen if none of the discounting people existed) or if the existence of the discounted people is in a sense not necessary (the option that should be chosen is one where the people do not exist).

For individual choices, people can freely choose for themselves a finite upper-bound on the amount of discounting. For collective choices, this upper-bound can be decided democratically.

The theory of mild welfarism entails some deontological principles, such as the mere means principle (do not use the body of someone else as a means against that person's will), and avoids problems in population ethics, such as the repugnant conclusion.
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