Welfare as self-fulfillment: the implications of Haybron's account for welfare assessment and ethics

Tatjana Visak

Abstract: Daniel Haybron (2008) has recently sketched a novel account of welfare. While Haybron does not discuss animals other than humans, applying his account of welfare to animal welfare assessment and animal ethics proofs to be promising for three reasons. First, while Haybron would agree with the current prominent accounts of animal welfare assessment that mental states are imortant for welfare, the mental states Haybron considers are profounder than the ones that other theories appeal to. This allows to explain in an intuitively more plausible way which mental states are central to welfare and which are not. Secondly, while Haybron would agee with current prominent accounts of animal welfare assessment that both mental states and nature fulfiment are important for welfare, his account is better suited to explain why these things matter and how they relate to each other. Third, Haybron's account of welfare might have the additional advantage of capturing intuitions that have hitherto inspired the search for morally relevant criteria beyond animal welfare.

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