I agree with some of these points. I am very often bothered by overuse of the charge of nihilism in general, and in this case if it comes down to “you don’t literally care about nothing, but there is something that seems to us worth caring about that you don’t” then this seems especially misleading. A huge amount of what we think of as moral progress comes from not caring anymore about things we used to, for instance couldn’t an old fashioned racist accuse modern sensibilities of being nihilistic philistines with respect to racial special obligations? I am somewhat satisfied by Chappell’s response here that what is uniquely being called out is views on which nothing is of positive value, which I guess is a more unique use of the charge and less worrying.
I also agree that the piece would have been more hygienic if it discussed parallel problems with its own views and parallel defenses of others more, though in the interest of space it might have instead linked to some pieces making these points or flagged that such points had been made elsewhere instead.
However, all of this being said, your comment bothers me. The standard you are holding this piece to is one that I think just about every major work of analytic ethics of the last century would have failed. The idea that this piece points to some debunking arguments but other debunking arguments can be made against views it likes is I think true of literally every work of ethics that has ever made a debunking argument. It is also true of lots of very standard arguments, like any that points to counter-intuitive implications of a view being criticized.
Likewise the idea that offhand uses of the words “problematic” or “perverse” to describe different arguments/implications is too charged not to be marked explicitly as a matter of opinion…I mean, at least some pieces of ethical writing don’t use debunking arguments at all, this point in particular though seems to go way too far. Not just because it is asking for ethics to entirely change its style in order to tip-toe around the author’s real emotions, but also because these emotions seem essential to the project itself to me.
Ethics papers do a variety of things, in particular they highlight distinctions, implications, and other things that might allow the reader to see a theory more clearly, but unless you are an extremely strict realist (and even realists like Parfit regularly break this rule) they are also to an extent an exercise in rhetoric. In particular they try to give the reader a sense of what it feels like from the inside to believe what they believe, and I think this is important and analytic philosophy will have gone too far when it decides that this part of the project simply doesn’t matter.
I’m sorry if I’m sounding somewhat charged here, again, I agree with many of your points and think you mean well here, but I’ve become especially allergic to this type of motte and bailey recently, and I’m worried that the way this comment is written verges on it.
Fair with respect nihilism in particular. I can see both the cases for and against that charge against the procreation asymmetry, EDIT although the word has fairly negative connotations, so I still think it’s better to not use it in this context.
With respect to fairness, I think the way the website is used and marketed, i.e., as an introductory textbook to be shared more widely with audiences not yet very familiar with the area, it’ll mislead readers new to the area or who otherwise don’t take the time to read it more carefully and critically. It’s even referenced in the EA Forum tag/wiki for Utilitarianism, alone with a podcast* in the section External links (although there are other references in Further reading), and described there as a textbook, too. I’m guessing EA groups will sometimes share it with their members. It might be used in actual courses, as it seems intended. If I were to include it in EA materials or university courses, I’d also include exercises asking readers to spot where parallel arguments could have been used but weren’t and try to come up with them, as well as about other issues, and have them read opposing pieces. We shouldn’t normally have to do this for something described as or intended to be treated as a textbook.
Within an actual university philosophy class, maybe this is all fine, since other materials and critical reading will normally be expected (or, I’d hope so). But that still leaves promotion within EA, where this might not happen. The page tries to steer the audience towards the total view and longtermism, so it could shape our community while misleading uncritical readers through unfairly treating other views. To be clear, though, I don’t know how and how much it is being or will be promoted within the community. Maybe these concerns are overblown.
On the other hand, academics are trained to see through these issues, and papers are read primarily by smaller and more critical audiences, so the risks of misleading are lower. So it seems reasonable to me to hold it to a higher standard than an academic paper.
* Bold part edited in after. I missed the podcast when I first looked. EDIT: I’ve also just added https://www.utilitarianism.com and some other standard references to that page.
I’m of two minds on this. On the one hand you’re right that a textbook style should be more referential and less polemical as a rule. On the other hand, as you also point out, pretty much every philosophy class I’ve ever taken is made entirely of primary source readings. In the rare cases where something more referential is assigned instead, generally it’s just something like a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry. I’m not certain how all introductory EA fellowships are run, but the one I facilitated was also mostly primary, semi-polemical sources, defending a particular perspective, followed by discussion, much like a philosophy class. Maybe utilitarianism.net is aiming more for being a textbook on utilitarianism, but it seems to me like it is more of a set of standard arguments for the classical utilitarian perspective, with a pretty clear bias in favor of it. That also seems more consistent with what Chappell has been saying, though of course it’s possible that its framing doesn’t reflect this sufficiently as well. Like you though, I’m not super familiar with how this resource is generally used, I just don’t know that I would think of it first and foremost as a sort of neutral secondary reference. That just doesn’t seem like its purpose.
Also, another difference with academic papers is that they’re often upfront about their intentions to defend a particular position, so readers don’t get the impression that a paper gives a balanced or fair treatment of the relevant issues. Utilitarianism.net is not upfront about this, and also makes some attempt to cover each side, but does so selectively and with dismissive language, so it may give a false impression of fairness.
That’s fair. Although on the point of covering both sides to a degree that at least seems typical of works of this genre. The Very Short Introduction series is the closest I have ever gotten to being assigned a textbook in a philosophy class, and usually they read about like this. Singer and de Lazari Radek’s Utilitarianism Very Short Introduction seems very stylistically similar in certain ways for instance. But I do think it makes sense that they should be more upfront about the scope at least.
I agree with some of these points. I am very often bothered by overuse of the charge of nihilism in general, and in this case if it comes down to “you don’t literally care about nothing, but there is something that seems to us worth caring about that you don’t” then this seems especially misleading. A huge amount of what we think of as moral progress comes from not caring anymore about things we used to, for instance couldn’t an old fashioned racist accuse modern sensibilities of being nihilistic philistines with respect to racial special obligations? I am somewhat satisfied by Chappell’s response here that what is uniquely being called out is views on which nothing is of positive value, which I guess is a more unique use of the charge and less worrying.
I also agree that the piece would have been more hygienic if it discussed parallel problems with its own views and parallel defenses of others more, though in the interest of space it might have instead linked to some pieces making these points or flagged that such points had been made elsewhere instead.
However, all of this being said, your comment bothers me. The standard you are holding this piece to is one that I think just about every major work of analytic ethics of the last century would have failed. The idea that this piece points to some debunking arguments but other debunking arguments can be made against views it likes is I think true of literally every work of ethics that has ever made a debunking argument. It is also true of lots of very standard arguments, like any that points to counter-intuitive implications of a view being criticized.
Likewise the idea that offhand uses of the words “problematic” or “perverse” to describe different arguments/implications is too charged not to be marked explicitly as a matter of opinion…I mean, at least some pieces of ethical writing don’t use debunking arguments at all, this point in particular though seems to go way too far. Not just because it is asking for ethics to entirely change its style in order to tip-toe around the author’s real emotions, but also because these emotions seem essential to the project itself to me.
Ethics papers do a variety of things, in particular they highlight distinctions, implications, and other things that might allow the reader to see a theory more clearly, but unless you are an extremely strict realist (and even realists like Parfit regularly break this rule) they are also to an extent an exercise in rhetoric. In particular they try to give the reader a sense of what it feels like from the inside to believe what they believe, and I think this is important and analytic philosophy will have gone too far when it decides that this part of the project simply doesn’t matter.
I’m sorry if I’m sounding somewhat charged here, again, I agree with many of your points and think you mean well here, but I’ve become especially allergic to this type of motte and bailey recently, and I’m worried that the way this comment is written verges on it.
Fair with respect nihilism in particular. I can see both the cases for and against that charge against the procreation asymmetry, EDIT although the word has fairly negative connotations, so I still think it’s better to not use it in this context.
With respect to fairness, I think the way the website is used and marketed, i.e., as an introductory textbook to be shared more widely with audiences not yet very familiar with the area, it’ll mislead readers new to the area or who otherwise don’t take the time to read it more carefully and critically. It’s even referenced in the EA Forum tag/wiki for Utilitarianism, alone with a podcast* in the section External links (although there are other references in Further reading), and described there as a textbook, too. I’m guessing EA groups will sometimes share it with their members. It might be used in actual courses, as it seems intended. If I were to include it in EA materials or university courses, I’d also include exercises asking readers to spot where parallel arguments could have been used but weren’t and try to come up with them, as well as about other issues, and have them read opposing pieces. We shouldn’t normally have to do this for something described as or intended to be treated as a textbook.
Within an actual university philosophy class, maybe this is all fine, since other materials and critical reading will normally be expected (or, I’d hope so). But that still leaves promotion within EA, where this might not happen. The page tries to steer the audience towards the total view and longtermism, so it could shape our community while misleading uncritical readers through unfairly treating other views. To be clear, though, I don’t know how and how much it is being or will be promoted within the community. Maybe these concerns are overblown.
On the other hand, academics are trained to see through these issues, and papers are read primarily by smaller and more critical audiences, so the risks of misleading are lower. So it seems reasonable to me to hold it to a higher standard than an academic paper.
* Bold part edited in after. I missed the podcast when I first looked. EDIT: I’ve also just added https://www.utilitarianism.com and some other standard references to that page.
I’m of two minds on this. On the one hand you’re right that a textbook style should be more referential and less polemical as a rule. On the other hand, as you also point out, pretty much every philosophy class I’ve ever taken is made entirely of primary source readings. In the rare cases where something more referential is assigned instead, generally it’s just something like a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry. I’m not certain how all introductory EA fellowships are run, but the one I facilitated was also mostly primary, semi-polemical sources, defending a particular perspective, followed by discussion, much like a philosophy class. Maybe utilitarianism.net is aiming more for being a textbook on utilitarianism, but it seems to me like it is more of a set of standard arguments for the classical utilitarian perspective, with a pretty clear bias in favor of it. That also seems more consistent with what Chappell has been saying, though of course it’s possible that its framing doesn’t reflect this sufficiently as well. Like you though, I’m not super familiar with how this resource is generally used, I just don’t know that I would think of it first and foremost as a sort of neutral secondary reference. That just doesn’t seem like its purpose.
Also, another difference with academic papers is that they’re often upfront about their intentions to defend a particular position, so readers don’t get the impression that a paper gives a balanced or fair treatment of the relevant issues. Utilitarianism.net is not upfront about this, and also makes some attempt to cover each side, but does so selectively and with dismissive language, so it may give a false impression of fairness.
That’s fair. Although on the point of covering both sides to a degree that at least seems typical of works of this genre. The Very Short Introduction series is the closest I have ever gotten to being assigned a textbook in a philosophy class, and usually they read about like this. Singer and de Lazari Radek’s Utilitarianism Very Short Introduction seems very stylistically similar in certain ways for instance. But I do think it makes sense that they should be more upfront about the scope at least.