CFP: WoW 2025 – Workshop on Welfare and Ethics

Keynote speakers

Chris Heathwood (University of Colorado, Boulder)

Hilary Greaves (Oxford University)

Call for Papers

We are inviting submissions for talks, which should be between 20 and 30 minutes in length. We are particularly interested in current or future research projects, and especially welcome submissions from philosophers in underrepresented groups. To propose a talk, please send an abstract of approximately 500 words as a PDF attachment [email protected]. The abstract should be suitable for blind review, i.e. it should not contain any information that may identify you as the author. The deadline for submission is 10 April 2025. We aim to notify you about the acceptance of your paper by the end of April. Please make sure that the email to which the abstract is attached contains your name, institutional affiliation, and the title of the paper.

Information on the workshop

Considerations about the nature of welfare, the value of welfare, its distribution, or welfare-based claims and complaints are central to moral philosophy. They are of particular concern for all philosophers who take welfare to be (at least) one source for normative reasons. Evaluative and deontic considerations about welfare provide an array of fascinating philosophical questions.

It is (quite) uncontroversial that welfare has moral value and provides moral reasons; but it is highly contested how in particular. We ought not to harm people, but do we also ought to benefit them? Does this include future people – even if their existence depends on our actions? And can we aggregate people’s welfare, or should we limit the trade-offs between their harms and benefits?

Our account of welfare has implications for ethics; but do ethical considerations also provide reasons to adopt one or another theory of welfare? What is the interaction between theories of welfare and the ethics of welfare? 

Some lives are better and some are worse; but what constitutes their prudential value? Are well-being and ill-being analogous or do they differ in structure and relevance – and what do particular theories imply? What are the relevant underlying concepts of desire, pleasure, friendship, or other objective goods on which welfare may depend?

This workshop provides a forum for the discussion of those and related questions. It aims at rallying scholars of philosophy to expand our understanding in these issues, and we hope to promote the philosophical engagement with ethics, welfare, and how they interact.