Principia Qualia: blueprint for a new cause area, consciousness research with an eye toward ethics and x-risk

Abstract

Hi all, Effective altruism has given a lot of attention to ethics, and in particular suffering reduction. However, nobody seems to have a clear definition for what suffering actually is, or what moral value is. The implicit assumptions seem to be:

We (as individuals and as a community) tend to have reasonably good intuitions as to what suffering and moral value are, so there’s little urgency to put things on a more formal basis; and/or Formally defining suffering & moral value is much too intractable to make progress on, so it would be wasted effort to try (this seems to be the implicit position of e.g., Foundational Research Institute, and other similar orgs).