William Macaskill makes a few good points here about why EA does not rely on utilitarianism. It’s true that a lot of EAs are utilitarian, but I’ve seen plenty of discussions on normative ethics among EA circles, so I wouldn’t describe it as a silent unanimity.
I would, as I already have, readily admit that EA is of ecumenical moral interest. Its practitioners, however, are overwhelmingly of a singular stripe. I have certainly never heard it discussed, having followed and somewhat intermingled with the community for some time.
I think it’s fair to say that effective altruists don’t discuss “the fact that they’re predominantly utilitarian” very much and that might seem kind of sinister on the surface but I’m not quite sure how they’re supposed to discuss this topic. They could do a mea culpa and apologise for their lack of philosophical diversity but this seems inappropriate. Alternatively, they could analyse utilitarianism in detail, which also seems wrong. What they have done is make a few public statements that in-principle, EA is more inclusive than that, which seems like a good first step. Is there much more that urgently needs to be done?
[I rearranged this to put the last paragraph first, because it gives the most concise and direct attention to my point of concern]
Let me put the question of tactics, with simplification, this way: insofar as you admit that optimising units of consequences is a subset of the panoply of moral obligations one faces, two things appear true. (i) externally, an organisation claiming merely to evaluate the best means of increasing valuable units of consequence per donation appears unproblematic; it facilitates your meeting of part of your moral obligations; (ii) an organisation internally operating, across its management, personnel and dissemination, with the sole goal of maximising valuable units of consequence per available resource, excludes the full range of the human values you recognise. Note that something similar holds for the internal composition of the movement. That is to say, while the movement might outwardly facilitate value pluralism, internally in organisation and composition, it abides by an almost singular logic. That can be extremely alienating for someone who doesn’t share that world-view, like myself.
I don’t encounter it as sinister in the slightest. I feel respondents are running away with the possible allusions or intended implications of my post. The EA community is seething with a very particular and on the whole homogeneous identity, a caricature of which might be drawn thus: a rigorous concern with instrumental rationality, with conforming available techniques and resources with given ends; an associated, marked favouring of analytically tractable meads/ends; and an unsophisticated intuitionistic or simply assumed utilitarianism, augmented in a complementary naturalistic world-view.
There is a whole lot to value there, exemplified well enough in the movement’s results. I do find two things alienating, however: the rationalization of the whole human experience, such that one is merely a teleological vessel to the satisfaction of the obvious and absolute good of benefits over costs (which for at least the few ‘professional’ members of the movement I have encountered, sits squarely alongside neoclassical economic orthodoxy); and the failure to ever talk about or admit human values other than the preferred unit of consequence.
I should stress immediately, contrary to the sentiment of your (generous) reply, these are largely experiences of individuals. I occasionally find that it contaminates analysis itself: such as in inter-generational comparisons (i.e. FHI’s straight-faced contemplation of the value of totalitarianism in guarding against xrisk), or tactical questions of how to best disseminate EA (i.e. again, in caricature: ‘say and do whatever most favourably brings about the desired reaction’). But for the most part, it does not make donor-relevant analysis problematic for me.
I want to say two things then: (i) that I find something problematic in an absolutising rationalization without great reflection; with being highly adept in means, without giving pause to properly consider ends. (ii) with the dominance this tendency has internal to the movement. (i) is a question of personal world-view adequacy, (ii) is one of organisational adequacy. Obviously I don’t expect those affirming (i) or its cognates to agree, but I do think (ii) has significance regardless of whether one observes or rejects it. Namely, for the idea, suggested in this thread, that the movement can both present itself as only attempting to satisfy an important subset of possible moral values, while being internally monological. You might readily accept this, but it is consequential for the limits of the movement’s membership at least.
*to repeat thrice for want to avoid misunderstanding and too heavy a flurry of down-votes, I readily admit that the study of maximising favoured consequences is of ecumenical interest, and is sufficient in itself to warrant its organisational study.
I partially agree here. The parts that I find easiest to agree with relate to exclusion of none utilitarians. I think it’s important that people who are not utilitarian can enter effective altruist circles and participate in discussions. I think it also might be good for effective altruists to pull back from their utilitarian frame of analysis and take a more global view of how their proposals (e.g. totalitarianism as a reducer of x-risk) might be perceived from a broader value system, if for no reason other than ensuring their research remainsbof wider societal interest. FHI would argue that they already do a lot of this, for example, in his thesis, Nick Beckstead argued that he the importance of the far future goes trough on a variety of moral theories,not just classical utilitarianism. But they have some room to improve.
I find it harder to sympathize with the view that effective altruists are collecting a a certain moral perspective unreflectively. I think most have read some ethics abd metaethics and some have read more than the average philosophy major. So the ‘naive’ and simple view can be held by a sophisticated reader.
My last suggestion is that given that the focus of effective altruism is how to do good, its only natural that its earliest adopters are consequentialist. If one thinks that different value systems converge in a lot of developing world or existential risk-related problems, then it might be appropriate to focus on the ‘how’ questions rather than trying harder to pin down a more precise notion of good. As the movement grows, one hopes that the values of its constituency will broaden.
William Macaskill makes a few good points here about why EA does not rely on utilitarianism. It’s true that a lot of EAs are utilitarian, but I’ve seen plenty of discussions on normative ethics among EA circles, so I wouldn’t describe it as a silent unanimity.
I would, as I already have, readily admit that EA is of ecumenical moral interest. Its practitioners, however, are overwhelmingly of a singular stripe. I have certainly never heard it discussed, having followed and somewhat intermingled with the community for some time.
I think it’s fair to say that effective altruists don’t discuss “the fact that they’re predominantly utilitarian” very much and that might seem kind of sinister on the surface but I’m not quite sure how they’re supposed to discuss this topic. They could do a mea culpa and apologise for their lack of philosophical diversity but this seems inappropriate. Alternatively, they could analyse utilitarianism in detail, which also seems wrong. What they have done is make a few public statements that in-principle, EA is more inclusive than that, which seems like a good first step. Is there much more that urgently needs to be done?
[I rearranged this to put the last paragraph first, because it gives the most concise and direct attention to my point of concern]
Let me put the question of tactics, with simplification, this way: insofar as you admit that optimising units of consequences is a subset of the panoply of moral obligations one faces, two things appear true. (i) externally, an organisation claiming merely to evaluate the best means of increasing valuable units of consequence per donation appears unproblematic; it facilitates your meeting of part of your moral obligations; (ii) an organisation internally operating, across its management, personnel and dissemination, with the sole goal of maximising valuable units of consequence per available resource, excludes the full range of the human values you recognise. Note that something similar holds for the internal composition of the movement. That is to say, while the movement might outwardly facilitate value pluralism, internally in organisation and composition, it abides by an almost singular logic. That can be extremely alienating for someone who doesn’t share that world-view, like myself.
I don’t encounter it as sinister in the slightest. I feel respondents are running away with the possible allusions or intended implications of my post. The EA community is seething with a very particular and on the whole homogeneous identity, a caricature of which might be drawn thus: a rigorous concern with instrumental rationality, with conforming available techniques and resources with given ends; an associated, marked favouring of analytically tractable meads/ends; and an unsophisticated intuitionistic or simply assumed utilitarianism, augmented in a complementary naturalistic world-view.
There is a whole lot to value there, exemplified well enough in the movement’s results. I do find two things alienating, however: the rationalization of the whole human experience, such that one is merely a teleological vessel to the satisfaction of the obvious and absolute good of benefits over costs (which for at least the few ‘professional’ members of the movement I have encountered, sits squarely alongside neoclassical economic orthodoxy); and the failure to ever talk about or admit human values other than the preferred unit of consequence.
I should stress immediately, contrary to the sentiment of your (generous) reply, these are largely experiences of individuals. I occasionally find that it contaminates analysis itself: such as in inter-generational comparisons (i.e. FHI’s straight-faced contemplation of the value of totalitarianism in guarding against xrisk), or tactical questions of how to best disseminate EA (i.e. again, in caricature: ‘say and do whatever most favourably brings about the desired reaction’). But for the most part, it does not make donor-relevant analysis problematic for me.
I want to say two things then: (i) that I find something problematic in an absolutising rationalization without great reflection; with being highly adept in means, without giving pause to properly consider ends. (ii) with the dominance this tendency has internal to the movement. (i) is a question of personal world-view adequacy, (ii) is one of organisational adequacy. Obviously I don’t expect those affirming (i) or its cognates to agree, but I do think (ii) has significance regardless of whether one observes or rejects it. Namely, for the idea, suggested in this thread, that the movement can both present itself as only attempting to satisfy an important subset of possible moral values, while being internally monological. You might readily accept this, but it is consequential for the limits of the movement’s membership at least.
*to repeat thrice for want to avoid misunderstanding and too heavy a flurry of down-votes, I readily admit that the study of maximising favoured consequences is of ecumenical interest, and is sufficient in itself to warrant its organisational study.
I partially agree here. The parts that I find easiest to agree with relate to exclusion of none utilitarians. I think it’s important that people who are not utilitarian can enter effective altruist circles and participate in discussions. I think it also might be good for effective altruists to pull back from their utilitarian frame of analysis and take a more global view of how their proposals (e.g. totalitarianism as a reducer of x-risk) might be perceived from a broader value system, if for no reason other than ensuring their research remainsbof wider societal interest. FHI would argue that they already do a lot of this, for example, in his thesis, Nick Beckstead argued that he the importance of the far future goes trough on a variety of moral theories,not just classical utilitarianism. But they have some room to improve.
I find it harder to sympathize with the view that effective altruists are collecting a a certain moral perspective unreflectively. I think most have read some ethics abd metaethics and some have read more than the average philosophy major. So the ‘naive’ and simple view can be held by a sophisticated reader.
My last suggestion is that given that the focus of effective altruism is how to do good, its only natural that its earliest adopters are consequentialist. If one thinks that different value systems converge in a lot of developing world or existential risk-related problems, then it might be appropriate to focus on the ‘how’ questions rather than trying harder to pin down a more precise notion of good. As the movement grows, one hopes that the values of its constituency will broaden.