EA - New Guest Essays on Hedonism [Utilitarianism.net] by Richard Y Chappell

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: New Guest Essays on Hedonism [Utilitarianism.net], published by Richard Y Chappell on August 26, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Utilitarianism.net has just published two guest essays on ethical hedonism: (1) In Analytic Hedonism and Observable Moral Facts, Sharon Hewitt Rawlette offers a précis of her 2016 book, The Feeling of Value. Philosophers may be especially interested in her explanation of analytic hedonism and how she addresses Moore’s open question argument. For a general audience, the bulk of the essay then runs through how she responds to a variety of objections to hedonism. (2) Neil Sinhababu’s Naturalistic Arguments for Ethical Hedonism offers two new (and, I think, very interesting) arguments for hedonism: the reliability argument and the universality argument. More philosophical background may be required to get the most out of this one (it’s very clearly written, but the latter argument, especially, is quite intricate). Enjoy! [Update: And for a broader view, see our full chapter on theories of well-being.] Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.