WoW 2025 – Workshop on Welfare and Ethics

Keynote speakers

• Chris Heathwood (University of Colorado, Boulder)
• Hilary Greaves (Oxford University)

Further Speakers

• Willem van der Deijl (Tilburg University)
• Jonas Harney (TU Dortmund University)
• Luca Hemmerich (Goethe University Frankfurt)
• Hasko von Kriegstein (Humboldt Foundation/Toronto Metropolitan University)
• Yuqi Liang (Oxford University)
• Mauro Rossi (Université du Québec à Montréal)
• Luca Stroppa (University of Turin)
• Tomasz Żuradzki (Jagiellonian University Kraków)

Location

The workshop will take place at the Graduate Center (Building C 9.3) at the Campus of Saarland University in Saarbrücken. (View on Maps)

Here, you can find a site map of the campus which indicates the location of the Graduate Center.
Although Saarbrücken is fairly small such that you can walk most distances, the university is located a bit outside of the city. Walking from downtown to the Graduate Center takes at least one hour. You can go there by bus (lines 101, 102, 109, 111, 112, 124). The bus stop “Universität Mensa” is the closest to the Graduate Center. Note, however, that the buses can get quite busy during the day so you better plan with some extra time. Alternatively, you can take a taxi or Uber to get to the campus.

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.
 

Organizers

The workshop is organised by Jonas Harney (TU Dortmund University), Thorsten Helfer (Saarland University), Maximilian Klein (Saarland University) and Hasko von Kriegstein (Toronto Metropolitan University) and generously supported by UdS Professorship for Practical Philosophy, and the German Society for Analytic Philosophy (GAP).