Consciousness Makes Things Matter

Abstract

This 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 and that can have a life worth living. I develop a variety of motivations for 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 re-lates to experientialist and anti-experientialist theories of welfare goods.

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