Thanks for posting this Tom, it resonates with some concerns I’ve had recently. In my opinion, EA does need somewhat of an image review, if not overhaul. A few comments:
“It’s much easier for someone who hasn’t been depressed, or devoted a lot of time to helping a depressed friend, to accept that it’s better to give to AMF than to charities that help the mentally ill.”
If I can offer a personal experience, I was deeply depressed earlier in my life, and have lost family members to cancer. Interestingly, this motivated me to objectively do the most good more than focussing on these causes specifically, before I even discovered EA. I had experienced ‘suffering’, and became fixated with reducing ‘suffering’. I wonder why this is, as I know this isn’t the case for many. I hope this doesn’t come across as smug, I’m just thinking out loud.
“Adjust the pledge so that, below a certain income threshold, one can give less than 10%”
I prefer Peter Singer’s calculator which gives a % based off of your income. And I always tell people, “Try to do a little more good than you did last year.” So telling people to start with a small and easily achievable goal like donating 1% to an effective charity and increasing that every year might be effective.
“EAs are committed narrow consequentialists even when the vast majority of experts dismiss it.”
By this do you mean they propose a broader consequentialism including justice etc.? I confess I didn’t know this, and would appreciate some further reading or philosophers who say so.
“By this do you mean they propose a broader consequentialism including justice etc.?”
More than that, most academic philosophers working in ethics are not consequentialist:
Deontology (35.3%)
Other (29.5%)
Consequentialism (23.0%)
Virtue ethics (12.2%)
(These numbers are “accept or lean towards” so a greater number of these will be not strictly or purely utilitarian no doubt.
Philosophers overall were not much more consequentialist, though they were a bit less deontological and more ‘other.’
Accept or lean toward: deontology 49 / 139 (35.3%)
Other 41 / 139 (29.5%)
Accept or lean toward: consequentialism 32 / 139 (23.0%)
Accept or lean toward: virtue ethics 17 / 139 (12.2%)
Fwiw I went my whole Philosophical career without knowingly meeting any other person who was a utilitarian (and I was actively seeking them out) which was pretty isolating to say the least.
When I was at grad school for legal&political science the main way I encountered utilitarianism was as a bogeyman in legal/political/social science papers. Though limited to my own experience and universities I visited—my overwhelming impression is that in most policy connected academic disciplines not specifically housed in dedicated philosophy departments utilitarianism is mostly used as a signalling slur in similar way to a word like “neoliberalism” is and is not considered a respectable “thing” to identify as.
From David Chalmers’ site, a guide to philosophical terms:
Utilitarian: one who believes that the morally right action is the one with the best consequences, so far as the distribution of happiness is concerned; a creature generally believed to be endowed with the propensity to ignore their own drowning children in order to push buttons which will cause mild sexual gratification in a warehouse full of rabbits
Thanks for posting this Tom, it resonates with some concerns I’ve had recently. In my opinion, EA does need somewhat of an image review, if not overhaul. A few comments:
“It’s much easier for someone who hasn’t been depressed, or devoted a lot of time to helping a depressed friend, to accept that it’s better to give to AMF than to charities that help the mentally ill.”
If I can offer a personal experience, I was deeply depressed earlier in my life, and have lost family members to cancer. Interestingly, this motivated me to objectively do the most good more than focussing on these causes specifically, before I even discovered EA. I had experienced ‘suffering’, and became fixated with reducing ‘suffering’. I wonder why this is, as I know this isn’t the case for many. I hope this doesn’t come across as smug, I’m just thinking out loud.
“Adjust the pledge so that, below a certain income threshold, one can give less than 10%”
I prefer Peter Singer’s calculator which gives a % based off of your income. And I always tell people, “Try to do a little more good than you did last year.” So telling people to start with a small and easily achievable goal like donating 1% to an effective charity and increasing that every year might be effective.
“EAs are committed narrow consequentialists even when the vast majority of experts dismiss it.”
By this do you mean they propose a broader consequentialism including justice etc.? I confess I didn’t know this, and would appreciate some further reading or philosophers who say so.
“By this do you mean they propose a broader consequentialism including justice etc.?”
More than that, most academic philosophers working in ethics are not consequentialist: Deontology (35.3%) Other (29.5%) Consequentialism (23.0%) Virtue ethics (12.2%) (These numbers are “accept or lean towards” so a greater number of these will be not strictly or purely utilitarian no doubt. Philosophers overall were not much more consequentialist, though they were a bit less deontological and more ‘other.’ Accept or lean toward: deontology 49 / 139 (35.3%) Other 41 / 139 (29.5%) Accept or lean toward: consequentialism 32 / 139 (23.0%) Accept or lean toward: virtue ethics 17 / 139 (12.2%)
Fwiw I went my whole Philosophical career without knowingly meeting any other person who was a utilitarian (and I was actively seeking them out) which was pretty isolating to say the least.
When I was at grad school for legal&political science the main way I encountered utilitarianism was as a bogeyman in legal/political/social science papers. Though limited to my own experience and universities I visited—my overwhelming impression is that in most policy connected academic disciplines not specifically housed in dedicated philosophy departments utilitarianism is mostly used as a signalling slur in similar way to a word like “neoliberalism” is and is not considered a respectable “thing” to identify as.
From David Chalmers’ site, a guide to philosophical terms:
Utilitarian: one who believes that the morally right action is the one with the best consequences, so far as the distribution of happiness is concerned; a creature generally believed to be endowed with the propensity to ignore their own drowning children in order to push buttons which will cause mild sexual gratification in a warehouse full of rabbits