Third, the thrust of my article is that MacAskill makes a disquietingly polemical, one-sided case for longtermism.
If one were just to read WWOTF they would come away with an understanding of:
The intuition of neutrality—what it is, the fact that some people hold it, the fact that if you accept it you shouldn’t care about losing future generations.
The non-identity problem—what it is and why some see it as an argument against being able to improve the future.
The repugnant conclusion—what it is, how some find it repugnant and why it is an argument against total utilitarianism.
This is all Will explaining the ‘other side’. Sure he’s one-sided in the sense that he also explains why he disagrees with these arguments, but that seems fine to me. He’s not writing a textbook. What would have been an issue is if he had, say, just explained total utilitarianism without also explaining the repugnant conclusion, the intuition of neutrality or the non-identity problem.
Regarding the “polemical” description. I’m not really sure what you’re getting at. Merriam-Webster defines a polemic as “an aggressive controversialist”. Do you think Will was aggressive? As I say he presents ‘the other side’ while also explaining why he disagrees with it. I’m not really seeing an issue here.
I think this is another point where you’re missing context. It’s kind of a quirk of academic language, but “polemical” is usually used in contrast to analytical in texts like these—meaning that the work in question is more argumentative/persuasive than analytical or explicative, which I honestly think is a very apt description of WWTF.
I think this is confused. WWOTF is obviously both aiming to be persuasive and coming from a place of academic analytical philosophical rigour. Many philosophers write books that are both, e.g. Down Girl by Kate Manne or The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan. I don’t think a purely persuasive book would have so many citations. .
Book reviews are meant to be informative and critiques aren’t always meant to be negative, so I don’t know why you’re framing it as an attack on WWTF or MacAskill. Knowing the tone of a work is valuable information for someone reading a book review.
On a personal note, I’ll say that I also agree with the “disquieting” portion of “disquietingly polemical”—I had the sense that WWTF presented longtermism and caring about future generations as a kind of foregone conclusion and moral imperative rather than something to be curious about and think deeply on, but I prefer these kinds of books to be more proactive in very strongly establishing the opposing viewpoints, so it’s probably more irksome to me than it would be to others. He wasn’t writing a textbook and it’s prerogative to write something that’s an outright manifesto if he so chooses, but that doesn’t make pointing out the tone an unvalid critique.
I’m not sure I have framed the review as an attack? I don’t think it is. I have no problem with Michael writing the review, I just disagree with the points he made.
It was a while since I read the book in its entirety, but I will just leave a quote from the introduction which to me doesn’t read as “disquietingly polemical” (bold emphasis mine):
For those who want to dig deeper into some of my claims, I have compiled extensive supplementary materials, including special reports I commissioned as background research, and made them available at whatweowethefuture.com. Despite the work done so far, I believe we have only scratched the surface of longtermism and its implications; there is much still to learn.
If I’m right, then we face a huge responsibility. Relative to everyone who could come after us, we are a tiny minority. Yet we hold the entire future in our hands. Everyday ethics rarely grapples with such a scale. We need to build a moral worldview that takes seriously what’s at stake.
The general tone of your comments + the line “I’m still happy I wrote that section because I wanted to defend longtermism from your attack” in one comment gives me the impression that you are, but I’m fully willing to accept that it’s just the lack of emotive expressiveness in text.
Yes, MacAskill does have these explicit lines at certain points (I’d argue that this is the bare minimum, but it’s a problem I have with a large swathe of academic and particularly pop-philosophy texts and as I said it’s in some measure a matter of personal preference), but the overall tone of the text and the way he engages with counterarguments and positions still came off as polemical to me. I admittedly hold seminal texts—which WWTF is obviously intended to be—up to particularly high standards in this regard, which I think is fair but completely understand if others disagree. To be clear, I think that this also weakens the argumentation overall rather than just being a lopsided defense or a matter of tone. I think the points raised here about the intuition of neutrality are an good example of this; a more robust engagement with the intuition of neutrality and its implications for longtermism could help specify longtermism and it’s different strains to make it less of an amorphous moral imperative to “think/care about future generations” and a more easily operationalized and intellectually/analytically robust moral philosophy since it would create room for a deeper discussion of how longtermist approaches that prioritize the existence of future people differ from longtermist approaches that view the benefits for future people as secondary.
Ah ok I actually used the word “attack”. I probably shouldn’t have, I feel no animosity at all towards Michael. I love debating these topics and engaging with arguments. I wish he’d had more room to expand on his person-affecting leanings. In a sense he is “attacking” longtermism but in a way that I welcome and enjoy responding to.
I happen to think the level of attention Will gave to population ethics and the concepts of the non-identity problem, repugnant conclusion, and person-affecting intuition is fairly admirable for a book intended for a general non-philosophical audience. As I say, if you read the book you do understand why these three things can be seen as undermining longtermism. Saying up front that he has more material to engage with on his website seems great to me.
I lean towards thinking the following is unfair.
If one were just to read WWOTF they would come away with an understanding of:
The intuition of neutrality—what it is, the fact that some people hold it, the fact that if you accept it you shouldn’t care about losing future generations.
The non-identity problem—what it is and why some see it as an argument against being able to improve the future.
The repugnant conclusion—what it is, how some find it repugnant and why it is an argument against total utilitarianism.
This is all Will explaining the ‘other side’. Sure he’s one-sided in the sense that he also explains why he disagrees with these arguments, but that seems fine to me. He’s not writing a textbook. What would have been an issue is if he had, say, just explained total utilitarianism without also explaining the repugnant conclusion, the intuition of neutrality or the non-identity problem.
Regarding the “polemical” description. I’m not really sure what you’re getting at. Merriam-Webster defines a polemic as “an aggressive controversialist”. Do you think Will was aggressive? As I say he presents ‘the other side’ while also explaining why he disagrees with it. I’m not really seeing an issue here.
I think this is another point where you’re missing context. It’s kind of a quirk of academic language, but “polemical” is usually used in contrast to analytical in texts like these—meaning that the work in question is more argumentative/persuasive than analytical or explicative, which I honestly think is a very apt description of WWTF.
OK. I think Will intended WWOTF to be a persuasive piece so I’m not sure if this is a valid criticism. He wasn’t writing a textbook.
I think this is confused. WWOTF is obviously both aiming to be persuasive and coming from a place of academic analytical philosophical rigour. Many philosophers write books that are both, e.g. Down Girl by Kate Manne or The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan. I don’t think a purely persuasive book would have so many citations.
.
Book reviews are meant to be informative and critiques aren’t always meant to be negative, so I don’t know why you’re framing it as an attack on WWTF or MacAskill. Knowing the tone of a work is valuable information for someone reading a book review.
On a personal note, I’ll say that I also agree with the “disquieting” portion of “disquietingly polemical”—I had the sense that WWTF presented longtermism and caring about future generations as a kind of foregone conclusion and moral imperative rather than something to be curious about and think deeply on, but I prefer these kinds of books to be more proactive in very strongly establishing the opposing viewpoints, so it’s probably more irksome to me than it would be to others. He wasn’t writing a textbook and it’s prerogative to write something that’s an outright manifesto if he so chooses, but that doesn’t make pointing out the tone an unvalid critique.
I’m not sure I have framed the review as an attack? I don’t think it is. I have no problem with Michael writing the review, I just disagree with the points he made.
It was a while since I read the book in its entirety, but I will just leave a quote from the introduction which to me doesn’t read as “disquietingly polemical” (bold emphasis mine):
The general tone of your comments + the line “I’m still happy I wrote that section because I wanted to defend longtermism from your attack” in one comment gives me the impression that you are, but I’m fully willing to accept that it’s just the lack of emotive expressiveness in text.
Yes, MacAskill does have these explicit lines at certain points (I’d argue that this is the bare minimum, but it’s a problem I have with a large swathe of academic and particularly pop-philosophy texts and as I said it’s in some measure a matter of personal preference), but the overall tone of the text and the way he engages with counterarguments and positions still came off as polemical to me. I admittedly hold seminal texts—which WWTF is obviously intended to be—up to particularly high standards in this regard, which I think is fair but completely understand if others disagree. To be clear, I think that this also weakens the argumentation overall rather than just being a lopsided defense or a matter of tone. I think the points raised here about the intuition of neutrality are an good example of this; a more robust engagement with the intuition of neutrality and its implications for longtermism could help specify longtermism and it’s different strains to make it less of an amorphous moral imperative to “think/care about future generations” and a more easily operationalized and intellectually/analytically robust moral philosophy since it would create room for a deeper discussion of how longtermist approaches that prioritize the existence of future people differ from longtermist approaches that view the benefits for future people as secondary.
Ah ok I actually used the word “attack”. I probably shouldn’t have, I feel no animosity at all towards Michael. I love debating these topics and engaging with arguments. I wish he’d had more room to expand on his person-affecting leanings. In a sense he is “attacking” longtermism but in a way that I welcome and enjoy responding to.
I happen to think the level of attention Will gave to population ethics and the concepts of the non-identity problem, repugnant conclusion, and person-affecting intuition is fairly admirable for a book intended for a general non-philosophical audience. As I say, if you read the book you do understand why these three things can be seen as undermining longtermism. Saying up front that he has more material to engage with on his website seems great to me.