Christine M. Korsgaard was kind enough to answer a few questions of mine. Here's an excerpt:
ERICH: I have the impression that some utilitarian philosophers are having an outsize impact on the world. I am thinking, for example, of Singer, Toby Ord, William MacAskill and Hilary Greaves who have been instrumental in founding the Effective Altruism movement, which is having a large impact on global poverty and health, factory farming and so on. Is this a correct observation, do you think? If so, is it something about utilitarianism that spurs concrete action of this sort? And does Kantianism not?
CHRISTINE: The idea of doing a lot of good has a lot of appeal. The Effective Altruism movement also appeals because of its focus on good you can do right now, and as an individual, at least as long as someone else is doing the complicated work of organizing the charity and distributing the proceeds effectively. The problem of global poverty requires a political solution; charity, no matter how extensive, can never be more than a band-aid. But it does have immediate results. I think utilitarianism has an advantage over Kantianism in the public sphere because it is, at least superficially, much easier to understand, and the theoretical problems with it that I described before are hard to see.
I haven't read her work myself and probably should, but I was told by someone that basically condition 3 or even having goal-directed behaviour is not necessary. I would hope it wouldn't be, because we could have a being who experiences good and bad and so has their own ends, but has no power to control what they experience and so would just be completely vulnerable and unable to pursue their own ends. Wouldn't such a being still matter? It seems like many young animals and (conscious) fetuses are in such a state. Maybe one way of putting it is that these experiences do in fact guide them to pursue their own (functional) good, but they are just unable to actually do so. But then what does it mean to say these experiences guide them to pursue their own good if they can't pursue their own good?
I also wonder what she has in mind by "functional" in "functional good". Do we need to decide what something's function is, if any, to define their goods and bads, and how do we do that? In my view, animals define their own goods and bads through their valenced experiences and/or desires, not just that they happen to experience their goods and bads or that their experiences guide them towards their own functional goods.
And what if their valenced experiences guided them to violate their own functional good?
It's interesting that she brings up artwork and the environment, too, as potential ends in themselves:
Thank you for the thoughtful comment! It is an excellent book – if you are at all interested in Kant's moral philosophy, I highly recommend it. I will preface the remainder of this comment with the caveat that I am explaining someone else's work, and that Professor Korsgaard may not agree with my interpretation. Also, any typos in the quoted passages are copying errors.
Here's a passage from the book that expands on that thought but doesn't counter your objection:
However, later on she gets to the argument from marginal cases (if something like intelligence or rationality is the ground for moral standing among humans, then what about infants, or folks with severe developmental impairments?), which I think is similar to your objection here. Korsgaard argues against it, because to her, there is such a thing as a type of creature, even if categories have fuzzy borders. And though your example beings may not be able to pursue their own functional goods, they are still the sorts of creatures who do.
Korsgaard is talking about rationality here because that, to her, is what sets humans apart from the other animals (though of course she thinks that is the reason why we are moral agents, but not why we have moral standing). But I think she would argue similarly about creatures that are defective in other ways, e.g. who has no power to control what they experience or to pursue goals.
If I understand you correctly, I think she would agree. Her distinction between "final goods" and "functional goods" comes, I think, from this 1983 paper of hers, though there she calls functional goods "instrumental" instead. The functional good is basically that which allows a thing to function well, e.g. a whetstone is good for the blade because it keeps it sharp and tar is good for the boat because it keeps it from taking in water. The final good is "the end or aim of all our strivings, or at any rate the crown of their success, the summum bonum, a state of affairs that is desirable or valuable or worth achieving for its own sake". Where does the final good come from? Korsgaard basically argues, if I recall correctly, following Aristotle, that creatures have functions, and that, when we act to achieve some end, to attain whatever we value as good-for us, we take that end to be good in the final sense. I think this is pretty similar to what you were getting at?
Ah yes, I thought so too, especially since I had understood (mistakenly, apparently) from the book that she did not think of those things as ends in themselves. I actually wrote a dialogue in the old style about this very subject, concluding that inanimate objects are not ends in themselves.
Thanks for the clarifications!
Maybe having valenced experiences means they have goods and bads, and not being able to pursue them makes them defective, regardless of what type of creature they are (e.g. if they were designed from scratch to lack the ability to pursue their ends)?
Aren't human infants pretty psychologically disconnected from their future rational selves, though? It's extremely rare for adult humans to retain memories from experiences in infancy, although I suppose experiences in infancy might still shape their adult personalities.
Are final goods also functional goods, though? It seems to me that our functions are also supposed to determine our final goods, not just that functional goods are instrumental. Or maybe they happen to coincide for humans? From the abstract of this paper of hers (assuming this is the view she is promoting generally, not just a specific defense of Aristotle):
This gets into modal personism/personhood. I have some objections to this and her responses to the argument from marginal cases in general, some coming from the literature on this topic (I think here and here, but it's been a while since I read those), but maybe they are based on misunderstandings, since my understanding is pretty shallow here:
This was also cross-posted to LessWrong.
Indeed, and a commenter there pointed out an interesting paper by Richard Yetter Chappell (pdf) which explores and argues against this claim by Korsgaard:
The title of the paper is "Value Receptacles". I haven't read it yet but I suspect it would be of interest to many here.
I wonder what she has in mind, especially what reforms she thinks are most politically feasible. Also, to what extent will developing countries essentially free their own citizens as they develop? Maybe there isn't much we can feasibly do other than speed up growth and ensure it makes it to the people (with more and better trade agreements, oversight in supply chains), rather than just the government and the corrupt?
I would think the impartiality and demandingness of utilitarianism are the main motivators to do so much good. Others' interests matter as much as your own, up to equal consideration of equal interests, and should be promoted to the same extent, all else equal. My impression of Kantian ethics is that it's much more permissible to pursue your own interests even if it means not promoting others' to a greater extent. On the other hand, in utilitarianism, your own interests are effectively dominated by others', and so should basically be treated instrumentally (i.e. you need to take care of yourself to help others sustainably and effectively), although they do still matter in themselves.
That's interesting and I think that's true to a certain extent, the bottomless pits of suffering and all that. Though Kantianism does make some pretty strong demands in its own way, for instance in the way that it really hammers home the idea of seeing things from others' points of view (via the Formula of Humanity), or in the way that it considers some duties to be absolute ("perfect").
I believe that Korsgaard also thinks we have duties to help others' promote their own good if it's at no great cost to ourselves, though these duties are not as strong as those not to violate other people's autonomy. I think maybe these sorts of duties lead to something like Effective Altruism, though I haven't really thought all of this through yet, or read much of the relevant literature, so what do I know.
I wonder what she thinks of EA's approach to animal advocacy. I know that many rights theorists object to welfare reform for allowing or promoting animal exploitation.
Also, intervening to promote wild animal welfare, too. There's been some writing in EA connecting wild animal welfare and rights:
Only seeing this now, but she does have sections in the book on thinking about species, habitat loss, eliminating predation and what she calls "creation ethics" among other things. I didn't get the feeling reading the book that she would be against welfare reform, but leafing through the pages now I couldn't find any passage that covers that topic explicitly. Thanks for the resources.