WoW 2026 – Sixth International Workshop on Welfare and Ethics
1–2 July 2026
Saarland University, Germany
Registration
If you would like to attend, please send an email to workshoponwelfare@gmail.com by 15 June.
Keynote speakers
Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek (University of Lodz)
Theron Pummer (University of St Andrews)
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 ought we also benefit them? Does this include non-human animals and other agents, and does it include future people even if their existence depends on our actions? 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.
Wednesday, 1 July
11:00 – 11:15 Welcome and Introduction
11:15 – 12:00 Jonas Harney (Dortmund University) & Luca Stroppa (University of Turin): Justifying Resolute Choice
12:30 – 13:15 Sylvester Kollin (Stockholm University): Welfarism Reconceptualised
13:15 – 14:15 Lunch
14:15 – 15:00 Paul Heller (University of Oxford): It is better if there are more kinds of good lives
15:30 – 16:15 Adriano Mannino (Bielefeld University & UC Berkeley): Are There Supreme Evils?
16:45 – 18:15 Theron Pummer (University of St Andrews): Future Suffering and the Non-Identity Problem
19:30 Dinner
Thursday, 2 July
9:30 – 10:15 Thorsten Helfer (Saarland University): Desires Running Wild
10:45 – 12:15 Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek (University of Lodz): On the Notion of Pleasure
12.15 – 13:15 Lunch
13:15 – 14:00 Travis Rebello (University of Colorado Boulder): Well-Being and Psychological Continuity
14:30 – 15:15 Rebecca Dreier (London School of Economics): Welfare Implications of Episodic-Like Memory in Nonhuman Animals
15:45 – 16:30 Willem van der Deijl (Tilburg University): Unnoticeable Welfare Value and Non-Experienced Welfare Goods
18:30 Dinner
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 e.V.).