Welfarism

Abstract Welfarism is a view about what, morally speaking, matters about the people who matter. In particular, welfarism holds that the only things that constitute moral reasons to act are facts about the welfare of morally salient individuals. This chapter distinguishes a number of versions of welfare, including moral, evaluative, accidental, and explanatory welfarism, and argues against the truth of at least one form of explanatory moral welfarism. It is argued that despite welfarism’s initial plausibility, there is good reason to accept a different approach to what matters when people matter that is called “normativism”—roughly, that moral reasons which concern salient individuals can be constituted not just by facts about their welfare but also about facts concerning their special or agent-relative reasons.