I’m borrowing the concept ‘well-being of conscious creatures’ from Sam Harris, who seems to think of it in terms of mind-dependent facts, perhaps involving (e.g.) brain states we might call ‘pain’ or ‘pleasure’.
That doesn’t really answer my question. Let me try again. There are two things you might mean by “mind dependent”.
(1) You might just mean “makes some reference to the mind”. So, for example, the necessary truth that “Any experience of red is an experience of colour” would also count as “mind-dependent” in this sense. (This seems a very misleading usage though.)
(2) More naturally, “mind dependent” might be taken to mean that the truth of the claim depends upon certain states of mind actually existing. But “pain is bad for people” (like my example above) does not seem to be mind-dependent in this sense.
By saying that “facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are mind-dependent facts,” I just mean that statements about the well-being of conscious creatures are made true or false by facts abound mind states. A statement about my well-being is mind-dependent in the sense that a statement about my well-being (as I am using the term) is a statement about my brain states. A statement about the distance between my chair and my desk is not a statement about brain states, and would be true or false whether or not our Hubble volume still contained any minds.
I’m borrowing the concept ‘well-being of conscious creatures’ from Sam Harris, who seems to think of it in terms of mind-dependent facts, perhaps involving (e.g.) brain states we might call ‘pain’ or ‘pleasure’.
That doesn’t really answer my question. Let me try again. There are two things you might mean by “mind dependent”.
(1) You might just mean “makes some reference to the mind”. So, for example, the necessary truth that “Any experience of red is an experience of colour” would also count as “mind-dependent” in this sense. (This seems a very misleading usage though.)
(2) More naturally, “mind dependent” might be taken to mean that the truth of the claim depends upon certain states of mind actually existing. But “pain is bad for people” (like my example above) does not seem to be mind-dependent in this sense.
Which did you have in mind?
By saying that “facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are mind-dependent facts,” I just mean that statements about the well-being of conscious creatures are made true or false by facts abound mind states. A statement about my well-being is mind-dependent in the sense that a statement about my well-being (as I am using the term) is a statement about my brain states. A statement about the distance between my chair and my desk is not a statement about brain states, and would be true or false whether or not our Hubble volume still contained any minds.