I found the exchange between Richard Chappell and Jim Buhler interesting because I think each captures part of the truth.
Richard seems right that a known welfare effect can provide a reason for action even when the complete downstream consequences are unknowable. Jim seems right that this does not establish that the action improves global welfare overall, and that attempts to infer a global verdict from local goodness risk becoming arbitrary.
My inclination is therefore to separate having a reason from having an all-things-considered verdict. Saving a child can give us a genuine reason to support AMF because we have good evidence for that welfare effect. Potential effects on farmed animals, future people, and so on may generate further reasons, some of them very large and difficult to compare. We should add those reasons where the evidence supports them, rather than treating the first reason as a proxy for global welfare. The result may be that we have several genuine reasons without being able to say which action is best overall.
So I am sympathetic to prospectism at the level of reasons, without following it all the way to a fallible best guess about global welfare. Perhaps the mistake is to require either that local reasons aggregate into a global verdict or that failure to reach such a verdict deprives those reasons of practical force. I think we should respect both the reasons we have and the limits of our knowledge about what is best overall.
Thank you for engaging with my essay and I think you have identified the main issue left open.
I am not claiming that a reason-based approach always yields a determinate answer. In the malaria case, the strong reason to benefit the child conflicts with a large but uncertain animal-welfare reason and we may not be able to reach a conclusion.
In practice I envisage something like ordinary deliberation under uncertainty: identify the reasons, assess how well supported they are, compare magnitudes where comparison is possible, and look for robustness across reasonable ways of weighing them. Sometimes one reason will clearly dominate; sometimes a decision will remain finely balanced or genuinely unresolved.
My main disagreement with the global-welfare approach is therefore not that reasons solve cluelessness. They often do not. It is that we should not make a complete global comparison a prerequisite for recognising or acting on the reasons we do have. Global welfare may emerge as an overall judgement where the reasons can be integrated; where they cannot, I think we should represent that indeterminacy rather than attempt to manufacture a precise aggregate.
Thanks. You make the point well that partitioning can be arbitrary. However, my proposed approach is not to partition consequences, but to consider significant reasons. Particular causal facts can generate reasons wherever the causal and evaluative evidence supports them: saving the child gives a reason for AMF; additional farmed-animal suffering gives a reason against; other consequences may generate further reasons. The hard question is then how to weigh these reasons, and this may remain indeterminate.
So I think the decomposition problem is serious for bracketing approaches that need to choose a privileged set of value locations. A reasons-based approach may avoid that requirement, though it leaves the question of how reasons are individuated and weighed.
I share your concern about the meat-eating problem. In my example it is not just a speculative possibility as there is a clear causal route from saving human lives to increased animal consumption.
I find the 'market' analogy helpful. There is a range of possibilities from centrally lead to radically pluralistic, and your free market suggestions show how a pluralistic approach may be implemented. The market analogy highlights several ideas - some central management should be cause neutral, competition can be helpful, the culture should be open to a marketplace of ideas. There is a role for leaders, but they need to be respectful of those working towards different views of how to do good.
I recommend the audio version on Joe Carlsmith Audio. For me, the reading by the author made this essay very engaging and conveyed additional meaning, with the final section very strong.
You conclude that there is a degree of Easterlin Paradox - that happiness increases less with growth over time than would be expected from how happiness increases with income within a country and how it increases with income levels between countries.
To what extent do you think that the remaining Easterlin effect is due to status levels being an important aspect of happiness so we don’t benefit much if our neighbours get richer with us? Or do respondents adjust life satisfaction scales as life expectations advance with incomes over time, so that happiness improves but is not measured?
Richard - Thank you for a super post. A great statement of the view that problem cases held against utilitarianism would also be problems for any other theory that aimed to be systematic.
I don't entirely agree that to stop systematic theorising is to stop thinking. Thinking can still be applied to making good decisions in particular cases and the balance between the particular and general principles can be debated.
I totally support your arguments in your post and your replies against neutrality on creating positive lives. I think this blog post by Joseph Carlsmith also makes the case against neutrality very well.
Thank you also for the recent series of fine articles on your blog, Good Thoughts. I would strongly recommend this to anyone interested in moral philosophy, utilitarianism and EA.
Thank you, an important one to include. It shows that you can certainly make longtermism look bad if you add together all the crazy train things that have been said. To my mind, shows the wisdom of MacAskill concentrating on presenting an inclusive and commonsensical approach to longtermism In WWOTF and his media appearances.
I found the exchange between Richard Chappell and Jim Buhler interesting because I think each captures part of the truth.
Richard seems right that a known welfare effect can provide a reason for action even when the complete downstream consequences are unknowable. Jim seems right that this does not establish that the action improves global welfare overall, and that attempts to infer a global verdict from local goodness risk becoming arbitrary.
My inclination is therefore to separate having a reason from having an all-things-considered verdict. Saving a child can give us a genuine reason to support AMF because we have good evidence for that welfare effect. Potential effects on farmed animals, future people, and so on may generate further reasons, some of them very large and difficult to compare. We should add those reasons where the evidence supports them, rather than treating the first reason as a proxy for global welfare. The result may be that we have several genuine reasons without being able to say which action is best overall.
So I am sympathetic to prospectism at the level of reasons, without following it all the way to a fallible best guess about global welfare. Perhaps the mistake is to require either that local reasons aggregate into a global verdict or that failure to reach such a verdict deprives those reasons of practical force. I think we should respect both the reasons we have and the limits of our knowledge about what is best overall.
Thank you for engaging with my essay and I think you have identified the main issue left open.
I am not claiming that a reason-based approach always yields a determinate answer. In the malaria case, the strong reason to benefit the child conflicts with a large but uncertain animal-welfare reason and we may not be able to reach a conclusion.
In practice I envisage something like ordinary deliberation under uncertainty: identify the reasons, assess how well supported they are, compare magnitudes where comparison is possible, and look for robustness across reasonable ways of weighing them. Sometimes one reason will clearly dominate; sometimes a decision will remain finely balanced or genuinely unresolved.
My main disagreement with the global-welfare approach is therefore not that reasons solve cluelessness. They often do not. It is that we should not make a complete global comparison a prerequisite for recognising or acting on the reasons we do have. Global welfare may emerge as an overall judgement where the reasons can be integrated; where they cannot, I think we should represent that indeterminacy rather than attempt to manufacture a precise aggregate.
Thanks. You make the point well that partitioning can be arbitrary. However, my proposed approach is not to partition consequences, but to consider significant reasons. Particular causal facts can generate reasons wherever the causal and evaluative evidence supports them: saving the child gives a reason for AMF; additional farmed-animal suffering gives a reason against; other consequences may generate further reasons. The hard question is then how to weigh these reasons, and this may remain indeterminate.
So I think the decomposition problem is serious for bracketing approaches that need to choose a privileged set of value locations. A reasons-based approach may avoid that requirement, though it leaves the question of how reasons are individuated and weighed.
I share your concern about the meat-eating problem. In my example it is not just a speculative possibility as there is a clear causal route from saving human lives to increased animal consumption.
I find the 'market' analogy helpful. There is a range of possibilities from centrally lead to radically pluralistic, and your free market suggestions show how a pluralistic approach may be implemented. The market analogy highlights several ideas - some central management should be cause neutral, competition can be helpful, the culture should be open to a marketplace of ideas. There is a role for leaders, but they need to be respectful of those working towards different views of how to do good.
I recommend the audio version on Joe Carlsmith Audio. For me, the reading by the author made this essay very engaging and conveyed additional meaning, with the final section very strong.
Thank you for your response, and for referencing the two papers.
You conclude that there is a degree of Easterlin Paradox - that happiness increases less with growth over time than would be expected from how happiness increases with income within a country and how it increases with income levels between countries.
To what extent do you think that the remaining Easterlin effect is due to status levels being an important aspect of happiness so we don’t benefit much if our neighbours get richer with us? Or do respondents adjust life satisfaction scales as life expectations advance with incomes over time, so that happiness improves but is not measured?
Richard - Thank you for a super post. A great statement of the view that problem cases held against utilitarianism would also be problems for any other theory that aimed to be systematic.
I don't entirely agree that to stop systematic theorising is to stop thinking. Thinking can still be applied to making good decisions in particular cases and the balance between the particular and general principles can be debated.
I totally support your arguments in your post and your replies against neutrality on creating positive lives. I think this blog post by Joseph Carlsmith also makes the case against neutrality very well.
Thank you also for the recent series of fine articles on your blog, Good Thoughts. I would strongly recommend this to anyone interested in moral philosophy, utilitarianism and EA.
Thank you, an important one to include. It shows that you can certainly make longtermism look bad if you add together all the crazy train things that have been said. To my mind, shows the wisdom of MacAskill concentrating on presenting an inclusive and commonsensical approach to longtermism In WWOTF and his media appearances.
Any others to add to the list?
This post and reply are quite a triumph for the connectivity of the EA Forum!