The Replaceability Argument - Killing Happy Animals: Explorations in Utilitarian Ethics - page 64

as discussed above. This modification did not have the desired results.
Singer does not defend this modification any longer.
In order to avoid the unwelcome implication of the moral ledger
model, Singer now proposes to accept preference-independent value.
Singer now accepts 'a notion of value that goes beyond the minimalist
basis for preference utilitarianism'. Singer needs to accept that there are
two kinds of value: 'preference-dependent value, which depends on the
existence of beings with preferences and is tied to the preferences of
those specific beings, and value that is independent of preferences'. 32
The underlying idea seems to be that if desire-satisfaction cannot create
positive welfare (as the moral ledger model implies), and yet if lives
in which nearly all of our preferences are fulfilled are to be consid-
ered valuable overall, then the value has to come from somewhere else.
Thus, other things besides preference satisfaction must have value. If
that were the case, it would be possible to claim that our lives have
been valuable, even if not all of our desires have been fulfilled. After all,
desire-satisfaction would not be the only value.
Is the acceptance of desire-independent value new for utilitarians?
Obviously, the acceptance of desire-independent value goes beyond the
desire-satisfaction account of value, which says that desire-satisfaction
is the sole, ultimate value. Hedonists, in contrast, accept an account
of value that is desire-independent. Hedonists accept that pleasure or
happiness is the sole, ultimate value. If Singer now wishes to accept a
combination of a desire-satisfaction account with a hedonist account of
value, an obvious challenge would be to point out how such a combi-
nation could work. After all, both accounts might have different impli-
cations as to what counts as welfare and of why something counts as
welfare. Furthermore, Singer would need to point out what the accept-
ance of this partly hedonist account of welfare would imply for the rest
of his moral theory. For instance, hedonism goes together with the fore-
closure view on the harm of death.
Accepting a preference-independent account of welfare would have
consequences for Singer's account of the harm of death. As we have seen,
according to the foreclosure view, every being that is deprived by death
of a pleasant future is thereby harmed, no matter whether the being has
any conception of its own future, or any future-directed desires. Thus, it
seems that even those beings would be harmed by death and therefore
would not be replaceable without welfare loss. Singer could, of course,
accept the Time-Relative Interest Account, along with the foreclosure
view on the harm of death and thus discount the harm caused by the
deprivation of a pleasant future for lack of psychological connectedness.