Consciousness makes things matter
Andrew Y. Lee (University of Toronto)
GPI Working Paper No. 25-2024, forthcoming at Philosophers’ Imprint
PDF downloadThis paper argues that phenomenal consciousness is what makes an entity a welfare subject, or the kind of thing that can be better or worse off. I develop and motivate this view, and then defend it from objections concerning death, non-conscious entities that have interests (such as plants), and conscious subjects that necessarily have welfare level zero. I also explain how my theory of welfare subjects relates to experientialist and anti-experientialist theories of welfare goods.