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MAYERFELD, Jamie. Suffering and Moral Responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. xiii + 237 pp. Cloth, $45.00-Mayerfeld's aim in this work is to defend "the claim that we are subject to a prima facie duty to relieve suffering" and to clarify "the content of that duty" (p. 9). In his analysis, Mayerfeld takes suffering in a psychological sense, that is, in the sense of how it feels to individuals. He denies the hedonistic utilitarian's claim that only happiness and suffering are relevant to wellbeing or, for that matter, to morality. Nevertheless, Mayerfeld embraces a hedonistic conception of happiness and suffering, identifying these experiences with "overall states of feeling at a particular moment" (p. 14).
Mayerfeld distinguishes his conception of happiness and suffering from alternative conceptions on which these experiences are understood solely in terms of desire-satisfaction and desire-frustration, pleasure and pain, or the subjective opinions that agents might hold about their own happiness or suffering. Once properly identified, these overall states of feeling are candidates for an assignment of cardinal measures of intensity. According to the author, we assess the feelings of another individual by drawing together all available evidence, everything from that individual's testimony to facts about her situation, where the latter "refers...