The problems with extending standard total utilitarianism to the infinite case are the easiest to understand, which is why I put that in the summary, but I don’t think most of the article was about that.
For example, the fact that you can’t have intergenerational equity (Thm 3.2.1) seems pretty important no matter what your philosophical bent.
A minuscule proportion of political philosophy has concerned itself with aggregative ethics, and in my being a relatively deep hermeneutical contextualist, I take what is important to them to be what they thought to be important to them, and thus your statement—that intergenerational equity is perennially important—as patently wrong. Let alone people not formally trained in philosophy.
The fact I have to belabour that most of those interested in charitable giving are not by implication automatically interested in the ‘infinity problem’ is exactly demonstrative of my initial point, anyhow, i.e. of projecting highly controversial ethical theories, and obscure concerns internal to them, as obviously constitutive of, or setting the agenda for, effective altruism.
The problems with extending standard total utilitarianism to the infinite case are the easiest to understand, which is why I put that in the summary, but I don’t think most of the article was about that.
For example, the fact that you can’t have intergenerational equity (Thm 3.2.1) seems pretty important no matter what your philosophical bent.
A minuscule proportion of political philosophy has concerned itself with aggregative ethics, and in my being a relatively deep hermeneutical contextualist, I take what is important to them to be what they thought to be important to them, and thus your statement—that intergenerational equity is perennially important—as patently wrong. Let alone people not formally trained in philosophy.
The fact I have to belabour that most of those interested in charitable giving are not by implication automatically interested in the ‘infinity problem’ is exactly demonstrative of my initial point, anyhow, i.e. of projecting highly controversial ethical theories, and obscure concerns internal to them, as obviously constitutive of, or setting the agenda for, effective altruism.