Once More, Without Feeling
Andreas Mogensen (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
GPI Working Paper No. 2-2025
I argue for a pluralist theory of moral standing, on which both welfare subjectivity and autonomy can confer moral status. I argue that autonomy doesn’t entail welfare subjectivity, but can ground moral standing in its absence. Although I highlight the existence of plausible views on which autonomy entails phenomenal consciousness, I primarily emphasize the need for philosophical debates about the relationship between phenomenal consciousness and moral standing to engage with neglected questions about the nature of autonomy and its possible links to consciousness, especially if we’re to face up to the ethical challenges future AI systems may pose.
Other working papers
Population ethical intuitions – Lucius Caviola (Harvard University) et al.
Is humanity’s existence worthwhile? If so, where should the human species be headed in the future? In part, the answers to these questions require us to morally evaluate the (potential) human population in terms of its size and aggregate welfare. This assessment lies at the heart of population ethics. Our investigation across nine experiments (N = 5776) aimed to answer three questions about how people aggregate welfare across individuals: (1) Do they weigh happiness and suffering symmetrically…
Simulation expectation – Teruji Thomas (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
I present a new argument for the claim that I’m much more likely to be a person living in a computer simulation than a person living in the ground-level of reality. I consider whether this argument can be blocked by an externalist view of what my evidence supports, and I urge caution against the easy assumption that actually finding lots of simulations would increase the odds that I myself am in one.
Strong longtermism and the challenge from anti-aggregative moral views – Karri Heikkinen (University College London)
Greaves and MacAskill (2019) argue for strong longtermism, according to which, in a wide class of decision situations, the option that is ex ante best, and the one we ex ante ought to choose, is the option that makes the very long-run future go best. One important aspect of their argument is the claim that strong longtermism is compatible with a wide range of ethical assumptions, including plausible non-consequentialist views. In this essay, I challenge this claim…