It's a bit complicated. If you read the entire book, and the arguments and intuition pumps that he brings up, I think it's clear that he is pushing towards a conclusion that morality always, in some shape or form, cares about the well-being of conscious beings, which is basically beneficentrism, but because at the time he didn't really g…
It's a bit complicated. If you read the entire book, and the arguments and intuition pumps that he brings up, I think it's clear that he is pushing towards a conclusion that morality always, in some shape or form, cares about the well-being of conscious beings, which is basically beneficentrism, but because at the time he didn't really get metaethics, he sometimes also makes baseless metaethical claims about what this normative ethical fact means. And he's since gotten wiser about all of this, and spoken to serious moral philosophers. So I think with some edits, the book is basically a very good persuasive argument for the undeniable truth of beneficentrism.
It's a bit complicated. If you read the entire book, and the arguments and intuition pumps that he brings up, I think it's clear that he is pushing towards a conclusion that morality always, in some shape or form, cares about the well-being of conscious beings, which is basically beneficentrism, but because at the time he didn't really get metaethics, he sometimes also makes baseless metaethical claims about what this normative ethical fact means. And he's since gotten wiser about all of this, and spoken to serious moral philosophers. So I think with some edits, the book is basically a very good persuasive argument for the undeniable truth of beneficentrism.