Research

Which is the mind that matters? That is, what kind of mind is necessary and sufficient for moral status—for an entity to have interests that matter morally in and of themselves? This paper defends Affective Sentientism, the view that moral status requires the capacity for conscious experiences that feel good or bad, such as pleasure, pain, and emotions. I argue that this form of affective consciousness is what makes an entity a welfare subject, and that all and only welfare subjects have moral status. The connection between affect and welfare is systematic: I show that every major candidate welfare good is best understood as having an affective component. In particular, many such goods require the capacity to care about things, which essentially involves affective experience. I also show that even if the properties of being phenomenally conscious, being autonomous, or having a welfare level zero could come apart from affective consciousness, they could not ground moral status in its absence. Finally, I explore the implications of Affective Sentientism for animals and artificial intelligence systems. 

Both within and outside academic philosophy, it is widely believed that only phenomenally conscious beings can be welfare subjects—subjects for whom certain things can be intrinsically good or bad. Recently, however, this view—Phenomenal Necessitarianism—has come under sustained attack. Opponents hold that putatively non-conscious entities, such as artificial intelligences, plants, or other beings, can have genuine welfare interests. In this paper, I defend Phenomenal Necessitarianism with a new epistemic argument. My argument goes in two steps. First, I argue that upon introspection certain experiences seem to provide prima facie, defeasible justification for a belief in Phenomenal Necessitarianism. Second, I contend that there is no defeating evidence against this introspectively justified belief—neither from apparently opposing intuitions, nor from wellbeing theory, nor from philosophy of mind. Since in the absence of defeating evidence prima facie justification should be taken as all-things-considered justification, I conclude we ought to be necessitarians.

Although the fictional domain exhibits a prima facie freedom from real-world moral constraints, certain fictive imaginings seem to deserve moral criticism. Capturing both intuitions, this paper argues for double-standard moralism, the view that fictive imaginings are subject to different moral standards than their real-world counterparts. I show how no account has, thus far, offered compelling reasons to warrant the moral appropriateness of this discrepancy. I maintain that the normative discontinuity between fiction and the actual world is moderate, as opposed to one that leaves fictive engagements wholly exempt from moral evaluations. I propose a way of addressing the gamer’s dilemma that is compatible with a moderate kind of discontinuity. Finally, I contend that the audience is justified in adopting deviant moral attitudes in fictional situations because their consequences largely differ from those that analogous real-world events would have.

The environmental crisis challenges the adequacy of traditional moral theories, particularly in the case of act consequentialism—the view that an act is morally right if and only if it brings about the best available outcome. Although anthropogenic climate change threatens the well-being of billions of humans and trillions of non-human animals, it is difficult for an act consequentialist to condemn actions that contribute to it, as each individual action makes no difference to the probability of whether climate change will occur. Or so one argument goes. This chapter examines the limits and possibilities of a consequentialist approach to climate ethics. It discusses various types of consequentialist theories applicable to the current environmental situation. It outlines outcome-based strategies to address the no-difference problem and to promote individual climate action. Finally, it considers environmental cases of evaluative uncertainty and how a consequentialist could deal with them.

Secondo la teoria dell’errore tutte le proposizioni morali sono false poiché non si riferiscono ad alcun referente nel mondo. Se tale metaetica fosse corretta, dovremmo abbandonare il pensiero morale o continuare come nulla fosse? Come vivremmo se nelle nostre scelte non tenessimo conto di alcuna considerazione morale? L’abolizionismo morale argomenta che le nostre vite risulterebbero essere migliori, e perciò tenta di persuaderci a eliminare le pratiche morali. Questo contributo presenta un’introduzione critica al progetto abolizionista, indagandone le ragioni e mettendone in luce le difficoltà. L’abolizionismo morale verrà collocato all’interno di una più ampia cornice metaetica e quindi confrontato con il finzionalismo e il conservazionismo morale. Infine, verrà esaminata la distinzione tra abolizionismo morale assertivo e non-assertivo.