How is suffering centrally relevant to anything? If a person strives for shaping the world in some ways, it’s about the shape of the world, the possibilities and choice among them, not particularly about someone’s emotions, and not specifically suffering. Perhaps people, emotions, or suffering are among the considerations for how the world is being shaped, but that’s hardly the first thing that should define the whole affair.
(Imagine a post-ASI world where all citizens are mandated to retain a capacity to suffer, on pain of termination.)
I have been associating the term “welfare” with suffering-minimization. (Suffering is, in the most general sense, the feelings that come from lacking something from the Maslow’s hierarcy of needs.)
It indeed seems like I’ve misunderstood the whole caring-about-others thing. It’s about value-fullfillment, letting them shape the world as they see fit? And reducing suffering is just the primary example of how biological agents wish the world to change.
That’s way more elegant model than focusing on the suffering, at least. Sadly this seems to make the question “why should I care?” even harder to answer. At least suffering is aesthetically ugly, and there’s some built-in impulse to avoid it.
EDIT: You’re arguing for preference utilitarism here, right?
How is suffering centrally relevant to anything? If a person strives for shaping the world in some ways, it’s about the shape of the world, the possibilities and choice among them, not particularly about someone’s emotions, and not specifically suffering. Perhaps people, emotions, or suffering are among the considerations for how the world is being shaped, but that’s hardly the first thing that should define the whole affair.
(Imagine a post-ASI world where all citizens are mandated to retain a capacity to suffer, on pain of termination.)
I have been associating the term “welfare” with suffering-minimization. (Suffering is, in the most general sense, the feelings that come from lacking something from the Maslow’s hierarcy of needs.)
It indeed seems like I’ve misunderstood the whole caring-about-others thing. It’s about value-fullfillment, letting them shape the world as they see fit? And reducing suffering is just the primary example of how biological agents wish the world to change.
That’s way more elegant model than focusing on the suffering, at least. Sadly this seems to make the question “why should I care?” even harder to answer. At least suffering is aesthetically ugly, and there’s some built-in impulse to avoid it.
EDIT: You’re arguing for preference utilitarism here, right?