Desire-Fulfilment and Consciousness
Andreas Mogensen (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
GPI Working Paper No. 24-2024
I show that there are good reasons to think that some individuals without any capacity for consciousness should be counted as welfare subjects, assuming that desire-fulfilment is a welfare good and that any individuals who can accrue welfare goods are welfare subjects. While other philosophers have argued for similar conclusions, I show that they have done so by relying on a simplistic understanding of the desire-fulfilment theory. My argument is intended to be sensitive to the complexities and nuances of contemporary developments of the theory, while avoiding highly counter-intuitive implications of previous arguments for the same conclusion.
Other working papers
Towards shutdownable agents via stochastic choice – Elliott Thornley (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford), Alexander Roman (New College of Florida), Christos Ziakas (Independent), Leyton Ho (Brown University), and Louis Thomson (University of Oxford)
Some worry that advanced artificial agents may resist being shut down. The Incomplete Preferences Proposal (IPP) is an idea for ensuring that doesn’t happen. A key part of the IPP is using a novel ‘Discounted REward for Same-Length Trajectories (DREST)’ reward function to train agents to (1) pursue goals effectively conditional on each trajectory-length (be ‘USEFUL’), and (2) choose stochastically between different trajectory-lengths (be ‘NEUTRAL’ about trajectory-lengths). In this paper, we propose evaluation metrics…
The Conservation Multiplier – Bård Harstad (University of Oslo)
Every government that controls an exhaustible resource must decide whether to exploit it or to conserve and thereby let the subsequent government decide whether to exploit or conserve. This paper develops a positive theory of this situation and shows when a small change in parameter values has a multiplier effect on exploitation. The multiplier strengthens the influence of a lobby paying for exploitation, and of a donor compensating for conservation. …
The cross-sectional implications of the social discount rate – Maya Eden (Brandeis University)
How should policy discount future returns? The standard approach to this normative question is to ask how much society should care about future generations relative to people alive today. This paper establishes an alternative approach, based on the social desirability of redistributing from the current old to the current young. …