Essays on Suffering-Focused Ethics

by Magnus Vinding

Essays on Suffering-Focused Ethics is a collection of 33 essays that explore various questions related to the reduction of suffering. Some of the essays provide novel arguments in favor of suffering-focused moral views, while others explore urgent practical questions about how we can best reduce the torment of sentient beings. Taken together, these essays make the case for a principled yet nuanced approach to the prevention of extreme suffering.

290 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 30, 2022

About the author

Magnus Vinding is the author of Speciesism: Why It Is Wrong and the Implications of Rejecting It (2015), Reflections on Intelligence (2016), You Are Them (2017), Effective Altruism: How Can We Best Help Others? (2018), Suffering-Focused Ethics: Defense and Implications (2020), Reasoned Politics (2022), Essays on Suffering-Focused Ethics (2022), and Essays on UFOs and Related Conjectures (2024).

His next book will be Compassionate Purpose: Personal Inspiration for a Better World.

Reviews

[Magnus Vinding]

The book can be downloaded for free in various formats:
https://magnusvinding.com/2023/01/09/...

[Teo · Rating 5 out of 5]

2018.08.19–2023.01.23

Contents

Vinding M (2022) Essays on Suffering-Focused Ethics

Preface

Part I: Theoretical Issues

01. Why I used to consider the absence of sentience tragic

02. Narrative self-deception: The ultimate elephant in the brain?

03. On purported positive goods “outweighing” suffering

04. Suffering and happiness: Morally symmetric or orthogonal?

05. A phenomenological argument against a positive counterpart to suffering

06. A thought experiment that questions the moral importance of creating happy lives

07. Clarifying lexical thresholds

08. Lexicality between mild discomfort and unbearable suffering: A variety of possible views

09. Lexical priority to extreme suffering — in practice

Part II: Replies to Critiques of Suffering-Focused Views

10. Note on Pummer’s “Worseness of nonexistence”

11. Comparing repugnant conclusions: Response to the “near-perfect paradise vs. small hell” objection

12. Reply to Gustafsson’s “Against Negative Utilitarianism”

13. Reply to Chappell’s “Rethinking the Asymmetry”

14. Comments on Mogensen’s “The weight of suffering”

15. Critique of MacAskill’s “Is It Good to Make Happy People?”

16. Reply to the “evolutionary asymmetry objection” against suffering-focused ethics

17. Reply to the scope neglect objection against value lexicality

Part III: Practical Issues

18. Why altruists should be cooperative

19. Suffering-focused ethics and the importance of happiness

20. Moral circle expansion might increase future suffering

21. On fat-tailed distributions and s-risks

22. Antinatalism and reducing suffering: A case of suspicious convergence

23. Priorities for reducing suffering: Reasons not to prioritize the Abolitionist Project

24. Why I don’t prioritize consciousness research

25. The dismal dismissal of suffering-focused views

26. Beware frictions from altruistic value differences

27. Research vs. non-research work to improve the world: In defense of more research and reflection

28. S-risk impact distribution is double-tailed

29. Beware underestimating the probability of very bad outcomes: Historical examples against future optimism

30. Radical uncertainty about outcomes need not imply (similarly) radical uncertainty about strategies

31. Some pitfalls of utilitarianism

32. Distrusting salience: Keeping unseen urgencies in mind

33. Popular views of population ethics imply a priority on preventing worst-case outcomes

Other Resources on Suffering-Focused Ethics