I have a clarification question regarding the judges’ interpretation of “constructive” response. For the question to make sense, though, I need to offer a bit of context.
One way to understand the meaning of “constructive response” is to construe it as “a response that gets the ‘impartial altruist’ out of a perceived pickle, allowing them to continue to inhabit the ‘impartial altruist’ orientation in some form.”
The pickle is “Yipes! If we’re really clueless, then this EA stuff maybe isn’t so E after all.” The constructive response is “Well, maybe it’s still as E as we can hope for, given our station, relative to the other options”. Or something.
As shorthand, we can think of this kind of constructive response as an “internally constructive” response: inside the orientation of the ‘impartial altruist,’ it constructs an escape hatch from the pickle that allows one to retain at least some level of confidence that sticking with some version of the ‘impartial altruist’ orientation is advisable.
Another way that a response might be “constructive” is by liberating one from an orientation that is no longer advisable to retain. Such a response is constructive not because it builds an internal escape hatch from the pickle, but because it constructs an escape hatch from the orientation itself.
As shorthand, we can think of this kind of constructive response as an “externally constructive” response: given that it is generally a good (constructive) thing to escape a failing enterprise, the former ‘impartial altruist’ sees, from outside their past orientation, the opportunity costs of staying within it and the prospects of moving beyond it.
In my field, philosophy, one might see W.V.O. Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” as an externally constructive response to logical positivism, or Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity as an externally constructive response to ordinary language philosophy, or Wilfird Sellars’ Empiricism and the The Philosophy of Mind as an externally constructive response to naive foundationalism in epistemology.
Maybe it’s more descriptively accurate to call externally constructive responses, as I’m thinking of them, as “program ending” responses, but it does seem to me that they are constructive in an important sense given that abandoning flagging and failed prospects can save a lot of time and energy that can be more wisely repurposed.
My question is whether judges would consider “externally constructive”/”program ending” contributions eligible to win prizes. I’m curious about this because I have conflicting intuitions.
On the one hand, I can’t imagine that the (fictional) Effective Logical Positivism Society would have ever considered awarding W.V.O Quine a 1,325 pound prize (roughly $50,000 in 1951 BPS) had he submitted “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” to a similar essay contest. In a similar vein, one wouldn’t expect a (fictional) Christian Theodicy Society to award a prize to an essay that persuasively shows theodicy to be a flawed enterprise. When an organization is promoting a particular paradigm, program, or identity, it is counterintuitive that they would fete an essay that undercuts the paradigm, program, or identity they support.
On the other hand, EA’s commitment to impartiality and to following the evidence where it leads, even if it leads to counterintuitive or unwelcome conclusions, invites one to wonder whether (what I’m calling) an “externally constructive”/”program ending” essay wouldn’t be very desirable for its allowing one to put aside something that is underperforming or failing so that the resources going into it can be reinvested more wisely without nostalgia for the loss of a certain favored identity or method.
Good grief! I had intended for this to be three or four sentences! Apologies for the length!
We’d be happy with externally constructive critiques. For example, there are responses we would value which argue that we should not aim to be impartial altruists or that we should let go of even the broad conception of ‘expected value’ reasoning from Premise 1.
However, eligible posts for the competition will respond to one of the premises, defend a counterargument, or pose a constructive resolution. If your argument doesn’t fall into one of these, I’d urge you to post it during the event week anyway (August 17th) and take part in the discussion, but it wouldn’t be eligible for the competition.
A judge also said to me: “I’d think that ‘externally constructive’ responses are OK, but good ones will answer this problem: It seems like any plausible moral view is going to require some limited form of consequentialism (e.g., you should save two drowning children rather than one ceteris paribus) and we would like some account of how that consequentialism is supposed to work without bringing cluelessness back in.”
I have a clarification question regarding the judges’ interpretation of “constructive” response. For the question to make sense, though, I need to offer a bit of context.
One way to understand the meaning of “constructive response” is to construe it as “a response that gets the ‘impartial altruist’ out of a perceived pickle, allowing them to continue to inhabit the ‘impartial altruist’ orientation in some form.”
The pickle is “Yipes! If we’re really clueless, then this EA stuff maybe isn’t so E after all.” The constructive response is “Well, maybe it’s still as E as we can hope for, given our station, relative to the other options”. Or something.
As shorthand, we can think of this kind of constructive response as an “internally constructive” response: inside the orientation of the ‘impartial altruist,’ it constructs an escape hatch from the pickle that allows one to retain at least some level of confidence that sticking with some version of the ‘impartial altruist’ orientation is advisable.
Another way that a response might be “constructive” is by liberating one from an orientation that is no longer advisable to retain. Such a response is constructive not because it builds an internal escape hatch from the pickle, but because it constructs an escape hatch from the orientation itself.
As shorthand, we can think of this kind of constructive response as an “externally constructive” response: given that it is generally a good (constructive) thing to escape a failing enterprise, the former ‘impartial altruist’ sees, from outside their past orientation, the opportunity costs of staying within it and the prospects of moving beyond it.
In my field, philosophy, one might see W.V.O. Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” as an externally constructive response to logical positivism, or Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity as an externally constructive response to ordinary language philosophy, or Wilfird Sellars’ Empiricism and the The Philosophy of Mind as an externally constructive response to naive foundationalism in epistemology.
Maybe it’s more descriptively accurate to call externally constructive responses, as I’m thinking of them, as “program ending” responses, but it does seem to me that they are constructive in an important sense given that abandoning flagging and failed prospects can save a lot of time and energy that can be more wisely repurposed.
My question is whether judges would consider “externally constructive”/”program ending” contributions eligible to win prizes. I’m curious about this because I have conflicting intuitions.
On the one hand, I can’t imagine that the (fictional) Effective Logical Positivism Society would have ever considered awarding W.V.O Quine a 1,325 pound prize (roughly $50,000 in 1951 BPS) had he submitted “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” to a similar essay contest. In a similar vein, one wouldn’t expect a (fictional) Christian Theodicy Society to award a prize to an essay that persuasively shows theodicy to be a flawed enterprise. When an organization is promoting a particular paradigm, program, or identity, it is counterintuitive that they would fete an essay that undercuts the paradigm, program, or identity they support.
On the other hand, EA’s commitment to impartiality and to following the evidence where it leads, even if it leads to counterintuitive or unwelcome conclusions, invites one to wonder whether (what I’m calling) an “externally constructive”/”program ending” essay wouldn’t be very desirable for its allowing one to put aside something that is underperforming or failing so that the resources going into it can be reinvested more wisely without nostalgia for the loss of a certain favored identity or method.
Good grief! I had intended for this to be three or four sentences! Apologies for the length!
Beautifully put, at least from my perspective :) You’ve articulated something I’ve been struggling to find the right words for.
Hey Matthew!
We’d be happy with externally constructive critiques. For example, there are responses we would value which argue that we should not aim to be impartial altruists or that we should let go of even the broad conception of ‘expected value’ reasoning from Premise 1.
However, eligible posts for the competition will respond to one of the premises, defend a counterargument, or pose a constructive resolution. If your argument doesn’t fall into one of these, I’d urge you to post it during the event week anyway (August 17th) and take part in the discussion, but it wouldn’t be eligible for the competition.
A judge also said to me: “I’d think that ‘externally constructive’ responses are OK, but good ones will answer this problem: It seems like any plausible moral view is going to require some limited form of consequentialism (e.g., you should save two drowning children rather than one ceteris paribus) and we would like some account of how that consequentialism is supposed to work without bringing cluelessness back in.”