Hedonistic well-being theory
(Kriegel, 2019) seperates well-being theories into three common types:
- hedonistic,
- desire-satisfaction, and
- objective-list theories.
For hedonistic well-being theories, well-being is determined by the distribution of hedonically valenced experiences, most often pain and pleasure.
Source: Kriegel, U. (2019) ‘The Value of Consciousness’, Analysis, 79(3), pp. 503–520. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/anz045.
Links: This connects with the claim that only sentience matters for determining moral status. Therefore, pain and pleasure matter in virtue of their phenomenological content, e.g. whether they are negatively or positively valenced.