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5.3 Singer's account of welfare is linked to
a particular account of the harm of death
Singer's argument for the limitation of the scope of the Replaceability
Argument forces him to accept a particular account of the harm of death.
Singer's account of welfare implies that the harm of death consists in the
fact that present desires cannot be fulfilled anymore. So, for instance, a
person is harmed by death because her present desire to go on living and
her present desire to finish certain projects are frustrated. Those who do
not find this account of the harm of death plausible have a reason to
reject Singer's account of welfare because it implies this account of the
harm of death.
Singer defines the harm of death in terms of the frustration of desires
that were already present before death and cannot be fulfilled due to
death. Instead, utilitarians can define the harm of death as a depriva-
tion of future desire-satisfaction. If that is the case, not only desires that
existed before death, but all future desires that the being would have
had are taken into account. This is the forbearance view on the harm of
death. The forbearance view is the natural view on the harm of death for
hedonists, and it is also compatible with other accounts of welfare, such
as objective-list accounts and desire-satisfaction accounts.
Hence, in order to restrict the scope of the Replaceability Argument,
Singer needs his particular account of welfare, which implies a particular
account of the harm of death, focused on the lack of fulfilment of the
future-directed desires that the being had before its death.
5.4 Singer's account of welfare is ad-hoc in several respects
Another criticism against Singer's account of welfare is that it is ad-hoc
in several respects. It will become clear what I mean by 'ad-hoc' in what
follows.
First, as Singer himself admits, it is ad-hoc regarding the question of
where exactly in the modified moral ledger model one should locate the suffi-
ciency level . The sufficiency level is supposed to indicate the amount of
unsatisfied preferences that is declared to count as neutral value. So, the
neutral zone is shifted down the scale, in order to avoid the implication
that most of us would be better off having not lived. It is arbitrary where
exactly in the originally negative area the 'zero' should be put.
Secondly, Singer's account of welfare is ad-hoc in the sense that it is not
linked to the rest of his work. On other occasions, Singer does not indicate in
any way that he disagrees with the standard assumption that there is positive,
negative and neutral welfare. To the contrary, elsewhere Singer speaks about
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