Nihilists claim that nothing is of value. The view Iâm addressing holds that nothing is of positive value: utopia is no better than a barren rock. I find that objectionably nihilistic. (Though, in at least recognizing the problem of negative value, it isnât as bad as full-blown nihilism.)
Furthermore, the questions asked assume the answer (that the universe is good at all) or are rhetorical (âHow could that not be better than a barren rock?â) without offering any actual arguments.
Iâm trying to explain that I take as a premise that some things have positive value, and that utopia is better than a barren rock. (If you reject that premise, I have nothing more to say to youâany more than I could argue with someone who insisted that pain was intrinsically good. No offense intended; itâs simply a dialectical impasse.)
To make the argument pedantically explicit:
(P1) Utopia is better than a barren rock.
(P2) Person-affecting views (of the sort under discussion) imply otherwise.
Therefore, (C) Person-affecting views (of the sort under discussion) are false.
Is this âquestion-beggingâ? No more than any putative counterexample ever is. Of course, the logic of counterexamples is such that they can only ever be persuasive to those who havenât already appreciated that the putative counterexample is an implication of the targeted view. If you already accept the implication, then you wonât be persuaded. But the argument may nonetheless be rationally persuasive for those who (perhaps like the OP?) are initially drawn to person-affecting views, but hadnât considered this implication. Upon considering it, they may find that they share my view that the implication (rejecting P1) is unacceptable.
it doesnât treat the views fairly. That quote is an important example of this.
Surely those sympathetic to the expressed objections, myself included, donât agree.
Utilitarianism.net isnât wikipedia, striving for NPOV. You may not like our point of view, but having a point of view (and spending more time defending it than defending opposing views) does not mean that one has failed to treat the opposing views fairly. (Philosophers can disagree with each other without accusing each other of unfairness or other intellectual vices.)
FWIW, I thought the proposal to incorporate âvalue blurâ to avoid the simple objections was a pretty neat (and, afaik, novel?) sympathetic suggestion we offer on behalf of the person-affecting theorist. But yes, we do go on to suggest that the core view remains unacceptable. Thatâs a substantive normative claim weâre making. The fact that others may disagree with the claim doesnât automatically make it âunfairâ.
Youâre welcome to disagree! But I would hope that you can appreciate that we should also be free to disagree with you, including about the question of which moral views are plausible candidates to take seriously (i.e. as potentially correct) and which are not.
Fair with respect to it being a proposed counterexample. Iâve edited my reply above accordingly.
âit doesnât treat the views fairly. That quote is an important example of this.â
Surely those sympathetic to the expressed objections, myself included, donât agree.
Utilitarianism.net isnât wikipedia, striving for NPOV. You may not like our point of view, but having a point of view (and spending more time defending it than defending opposing views) does not mean that one has failed to treat the opposing views fairly.
(...)
Youâre welcome to disagree! But I would hope that you can appreciate that we should also be free to disagree with you, including about the question of which moral views are plausible candidates to take seriously (i.e. as potentially correct) and which are not.
I have multiple complaints where I think the article is unfair or misleading, and theyâre not just a matter of having disagreements with specific claims.
First, the article often fails to mark when something is opinion, giving the misleading impression of fact and objectivity. I quote examples below.
Second, I think we should hold ourselves to higher standards than using contemptuous language to refer to views or intuitions ethicists and thoughtful people find plausible or endorse, and I donât think itâs fair to otherwise just call the views implausible or not worth taking seriously without marking this very explicitly as opinion (âarguablyâ isnât enough, in my view, and Iâd instead recommend explicitly referring to the authors, e.g. use âWe think (...)â).
Third, I think being fair should require including the same kinds of arguments on each side, when available, and also noting when these arguments âprove too muchâ or otherwise undermine the views the article defends, if they do. Some of the kinds of arguments used to defend the total view against the Repugnant Conclusion can be used against intuitions supporting the total view or intuitions against person-affecting views (tolerating and debunking, as mentioned above, and attacking the alternatives, which the article does indeed do for alternatives to PA views).
Expanding on this third point, âHow could that not be better than a barren rock?â has an obvious answer that was left out: person-affecting views (or equivalently, reasons implying person-affecting views) could be correct (or correct to a particular person, without stance-independence). This omission and the contemptuous dismissal of the person-affecting intuition for this case that follows seem supposed to rule out tolerating the intuition and debunking the intuition, moves the article uses to defend the total view from the Repugnant Conclusion as an objection. The article also makes no attempt at either argument, when itâs not hard to come up with such arguments. This seems to me to be applying a double standard for argument inclusion.
One of the debunking arguments made undermines the veil of ignorance argument, which literally asks you to imagine yourself as part of the population, and is one of the three main arguments for utilitarianism on the introductory page:
Third, we may mistakenly imagine ourselves as part of the populations being compared in the repugnant conclusion. Consequently, an egoistic bias may push us to favor populations with a high quality of life.
Iâd also guess itâs pretty easy to generate debunking arguments against specific intuitions, and I can propose a few specifically against adding lives ever being good in itself. Debunking arguments have also been used against moral realism generally, so they might âprove too muchâ (although I think stance-independent moral realism is actually false, anyway).
The article also criticizes the use of the word ârepugnantâ in the name of the Repugnant Conclusion for being ârhetorically overblownâ in the main text (as well as âsadisticâ in âSadistic Conclusionâ for being âmisleadingâ/ââa misnomerâ, but only in a footnote), but then goes on to use similarly contemptuous and dismissive language against specific views (emphasis mine):
The procreative asymmetry also has several deeply problematic implications, stemming from its failure to consider positive lives to be a good thing.
(This is also a matter of opinion, and not marked as such.)
Most people would prefer world A over an empty world B. But the simple procreative asymmetry would seem, perversely, to favor the empty world B since it counts the many good lives in world A for nothing while the few bad lives dominate the decision.
Granted, the immense incomparability introduced by all the putatively âmehâ lives in A at least blocks the perverse conclusion that we must outright prefer the empty world B. Even so, holding the two worlds to be incomparable or âon a parâ also seems wrong.
(This is also a matter of opinion, and not marked as such.)
Any view that denies this verdict is arguably too nihilistic and divorced from humane values to be worth taking seriously.
Again, I also think âdivorced from humane valuesâ is plainly false under some common definitions of âhumaneâ. The way I use that word, mostly as a synonym for âcompassionateâ, ensuring happy people are born has nothing to do with being humane, while prioritizing suffering and the badly off as practically implied by procreation asymmetry is more humane than not.
There are other normative claims made without any language to suggest that theyâre opinions at all (again, emphasis mine):
The simplest such view holds that positive lives make no difference in value to the outcome. But this falsely implies that creating lives with low positive welfare is just as good as creating an equal number of lives at a high welfare level.
(...)
Clearly, we should prefer world A1 over A2
I doubt there are decisive proofs for these claims.
Another (again, emphasis mine):
Others might be drawn to a weaker (and correspondingly more plausible) version of the asymmetry, according to which we do have some reason to create flourishing lives, but stronger reason to help existing people or to avoid lives of negative wellbeing.
This gives me the impression that the author(s) didnât properly entertain person-affecting views or really consider objections to the weaker versions that donât apply to the stronger ones or alternatives (other than the original reasons given for person-affecting views). The weaker versions seem to me to be self-undermining, have to draw more arbitrary lines, and are supported only by direct intuitions about cases (at least in the article) over the stronger versions, not more general reasons:
On self-undermining, the reasons people give for holding person-affecting intuitions in the first place have to be defeated when lives are good enough, and the view would not really be person-affecting anymore, including according to the articleâs definition (âPerson-affecting views that deny we have (non-instrumental) reason to add happy lives to the world.â). Why wouldnât âmehâ lives be good enough, too?
On arbitrariness, how do you define a âflourishing lifeâ and where do you draw the line (or precisely how the blur is graded)? Will this view end up having to define it in an individual-specific (or species-specific) way, or otherwise discount some individuals and species for having their maximums too low? Something else?
As far as I can tell, the only arguments given for the weaker versions are intuitions about cases. Intuitions about cases should be weighed against more general reasons like those given in actualist arguments and Frickâs conditional reasons.
The value blur proposal was interesting and seems to me worth writing up somewhere, but itâs unlikely to represent anyoneâs (or any ethicistâs) actual views, and those sympathetic to person-affecting views might not endorse it even if they knew of it. The article also has a footnote that undermines the view itself (intentionally or not), but there are views that I think meet this challenge, so the value blur view risks being a strawman rather than a steelman, as might have been intended:
A major challenge for such a view would be to explain how to render this value blur compatible with the asymmetry, so that miserable lives are appropriately recognized as bad (not merely meh).
It would make more sense to me to focus on the asymmetric person-affecting views ethicists actually defend/âendorse or that otherwise already appear in the literature. (Personally, I think in actualist and/âor conditional reason terms, and Iâm most sympathetic to negative utilitarianism (not technically PA), actualist asymmetric person-affecting views, and the views in Thomas, 2019, but Thomas, 2019 seems too new and obscure to me to be the focus of the article, too.)
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 âyou donât literally care about nothing, but there is something that seems to us worth caring about that you donâtâ 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 couldnât an old fashioned racist accuse modern sensibilities of being nihilistic philistines with respect to racial special obligations? I am somewhat satisfied by Chappellâs 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 âproblematicâ or âperverseâ to describe different arguments/âimplications is too charged not to be marked explicitly as a matter of opinionâŠI mean, at least some pieces of ethical writing donât 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 authorâs 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 doesnât matter.
Iâm sorry if Iâm sounding somewhat charged here, again, I agree with many of your points and think you mean well here, but Iâve become especially allergic to this type of motte and bailey recently, and Iâm 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 itâs 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, itâll mislead readers new to the area or who otherwise donât take the time to read it more carefully and critically. Itâs even referenced in the EA Forum tag/âwiki 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. Iâm 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, Iâd also include exercises asking readers to spot where parallel arguments could have been used but werenât and try to come up with them, as well as about other issues, and have them read opposing pieces. We shouldnât 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, Iâd 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 donât 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: Iâve also just added https://ââwww.utilitarianism.com and some other standard references to that page.
Iâm of two minds on this. On the one hand youâre 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 Iâve ever taken is made entirely of primary source readings. In the rare cases where something more referential is assigned instead, generally itâs just something like a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry. Iâm 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 itâs possible that its framing doesnât reflect this sufficiently as well. Like you though, Iâm not super familiar with how this resource is generally used, I just donât know that I would think of it first and foremost as a sort of neutral secondary reference. That just doesnât seem like its purpose.
Also, another difference with academic papers is that theyâre often upfront about their intentions to defend a particular position, so readers donât 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.
Thatâs 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 Radekâs 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.
It seems like youâre conflating the following two views:
Utilitarianism.net has an obligation to present views other than total symmetric utilitarianism in a sympathetic light.
Utilitarianism.net has an obligation not to present views other than total symmetric utilitarianism in an uncharitable and dismissive light.
I would claim #2, not #1, and presumably so would Michael. The quote about nihilism etc. is objectionable because itâs not just unsympathetic to such views, itâs condescending. Clearly many people who have reflected carefully about ethics think these alternatives are worth taking seriously, and itâs controversial to claim that âhumane valuesâ necessitate wanting to create happy beings de novo even at some (serious) opportunity cost to suffering. âNihilisticâ also connotes something stronger than denying positive value.
It seems to me that youâre conflating process and substance. Philosophical charity is a process virtue, and one that I believe our article exemplifies. (Again, the exploration of value blur offers a charitable development of the view in question.) You just donât like that our substantive verdict on the view is very negative. And thatâs fine, you donât have to like it. But I want to be clear that this normative disagreement isnât evidence of any philosophical defect on our part. (And I should flag that Michaelâs process objections, e.g. complaining that we didnât preface every normative claim with the tedious disclaimer âin our opinionâ, reveals a lack of familiarity with standard norms for writing academic philosophy.)
âClearly many people who have reflected carefully about ethics think these alternatives are worth taking seriously, and itâs controversial to claim...â
This sociological claim isnât philosophically relevant. Thereâs nothing inherently objectionable about concluding that some people have been mistaken in their belief that a certain view is worth taking seriously. Thereâs also nothing inherently objectionable about making claims that are controversial. (Every interesting philosophical claim is controversial.)
What youâre implicitly demanding is that we refrain from doing philosophy (which involves taking positions, including ones that others might dislike or find controversial), and instead merely report on othersâ arguments and opinions in a NPOV fashion. Thatâs a fine norm for wikipedia, but I donât think itâs a reasonable demand to make of all philosophers in all places, and IMO it would make utilitarianism.net worse (and something I, personally, would be much less interested in creating and contributing to) if we were to try to implement it there.
As a process matter, Iâm all in favour of letting a thousand flowers bloom. If you donât like our philosophical POV, feel free to make your own resource that presents things from a POV you find more congenial! And certainly if weâre making philosophical errors, or overlooking important counterarguments, Iâm happy to have any of that drawn to my attention. But I donât really find it valuable to just hear that some people donât like our conclusions (that pretty much goes without saying). And I confess I find it very frustrating when people try to turn that substantive disagreement into a process complaint, as though it were somehow intrinsically illegitimate to disagree about which views are serious contenders to be true.
But I want to be clear that this normative disagreement isnât evidence of any philosophical defect on our part.
Oh I absolutely agree with this. My objections to that quote have no bearing on how legitimate your view is, and I never claimed as much. What I find objectionable is that by using such dismissive language about the view you disagree with, not merely critical language, youâre causing harm to population ethics discourse. Ideally readers will form their views on this topic based on their merits and intuitions, not based on claims that views are âtoo divorced from humane values to be worth taking seriously.â
complaining that we didnât preface every normative claim with the tedious disclaimer âin our opinionâ
Personally I donât think you need to do this.
This sociological claim isnât philosophically relevant. Thereâs nothing inherently objectionable about concluding that some people have been mistaken in their belief that a certain view is worth taking seriously. Thereâs also nothing inherently objectionable about making claims that are controversial.
Again, I didnât claim that your dismissiveness bears on the merit of your view. The objectionable thing is that youâre confounding readersâ perceptions of the views with labels like â[not] worth taking seriously.â The fact that many people do take this view seriously suggests that that kind of label is uncharitable. (I suppose Iâm not opposed in principle to being dismissive to views that are decently popularâI would have that response to the view that animals donât matter morally, for example. But what bothers me about this case is partly that your argument for why itâs not worth taking seriously is pretty unsatisfactory.)
Iâm certainly not calling for you to pass no judgments whatsoever on philosophical views, and âmerely report on othersâ arguments,â and I donât think a reasonable reading of my comment would lead you to believe that.
And certainly if weâre making philosophical errors, or overlooking important counterarguments, Iâm happy to have any of that drawn to my attention.
Indeed, I gave substantive feedback on the Population Ethics page a few months back, and hope you and your coauthors take it into account. :)
Nihilists claim that nothing is of value. The view Iâm addressing holds that nothing is of positive value: utopia is no better than a barren rock. I find that objectionably nihilistic. (Though, in at least recognizing the problem of negative value, it isnât as bad as full-blown nihilism.)
Iâm trying to explain that I take as a premise that some things have positive value, and that utopia is better than a barren rock. (If you reject that premise, I have nothing more to say to youâany more than I could argue with someone who insisted that pain was intrinsically good. No offense intended; itâs simply a dialectical impasse.)
To make the argument pedantically explicit:
(P1) Utopia is better than a barren rock.
(P2) Person-affecting views (of the sort under discussion) imply otherwise.
Therefore, (C) Person-affecting views (of the sort under discussion) are false.
Is this âquestion-beggingâ? No more than any putative counterexample ever is. Of course, the logic of counterexamples is such that they can only ever be persuasive to those who havenât already appreciated that the putative counterexample is an implication of the targeted view. If you already accept the implication, then you wonât be persuaded. But the argument may nonetheless be rationally persuasive for those who (perhaps like the OP?) are initially drawn to person-affecting views, but hadnât considered this implication. Upon considering it, they may find that they share my view that the implication (rejecting P1) is unacceptable.
Surely those sympathetic to the expressed objections, myself included, donât agree.
Utilitarianism.net isnât wikipedia, striving for NPOV. You may not like our point of view, but having a point of view (and spending more time defending it than defending opposing views) does not mean that one has failed to treat the opposing views fairly. (Philosophers can disagree with each other without accusing each other of unfairness or other intellectual vices.)
FWIW, I thought the proposal to incorporate âvalue blurâ to avoid the simple objections was a pretty neat (and, afaik, novel?) sympathetic suggestion we offer on behalf of the person-affecting theorist. But yes, we do go on to suggest that the core view remains unacceptable. Thatâs a substantive normative claim weâre making. The fact that others may disagree with the claim doesnât automatically make it âunfairâ.
Youâre welcome to disagree! But I would hope that you can appreciate that we should also be free to disagree with you, including about the question of which moral views are plausible candidates to take seriously (i.e. as potentially correct) and which are not.
Fair with respect to it being a proposed counterexample. Iâve edited my reply above accordingly.
I have multiple complaints where I think the article is unfair or misleading, and theyâre not just a matter of having disagreements with specific claims.
First, the article often fails to mark when something is opinion, giving the misleading impression of fact and objectivity. I quote examples below.
Second, I think we should hold ourselves to higher standards than using contemptuous language to refer to views or intuitions ethicists and thoughtful people find plausible or endorse, and I donât think itâs fair to otherwise just call the views implausible or not worth taking seriously without marking this very explicitly as opinion (âarguablyâ isnât enough, in my view, and Iâd instead recommend explicitly referring to the authors, e.g. use âWe think (...)â).
I think the above two are especially misleading since the website describes itself as a âtextbook introduction to utilitarianismâ and if itâs going to be shared and used as such (e.g. in EA reading groups or shared with people new to EA). I think itâs normal to expect textbooks to strive for NPOV.
Third, I think being fair should require including the same kinds of arguments on each side, when available, and also noting when these arguments âprove too muchâ or otherwise undermine the views the article defends, if they do. Some of the kinds of arguments used to defend the total view against the Repugnant Conclusion can be used against intuitions supporting the total view or intuitions against person-affecting views (tolerating and debunking, as mentioned above, and attacking the alternatives, which the article does indeed do for alternatives to PA views).
Expanding on this third point, âHow could that not be better than a barren rock?â has an obvious answer that was left out: person-affecting views (or equivalently, reasons implying person-affecting views) could be correct (or correct to a particular person, without stance-independence). This omission and the contemptuous dismissal of the person-affecting intuition for this case that follows seem supposed to rule out tolerating the intuition and debunking the intuition, moves the article uses to defend the total view from the Repugnant Conclusion as an objection. The article also makes no attempt at either argument, when itâs not hard to come up with such arguments. This seems to me to be applying a double standard for argument inclusion.
One of the debunking arguments made undermines the veil of ignorance argument, which literally asks you to imagine yourself as part of the population, and is one of the three main arguments for utilitarianism on the introductory page:
Iâd also guess itâs pretty easy to generate debunking arguments against specific intuitions, and I can propose a few specifically against adding lives ever being good in itself. Debunking arguments have also been used against moral realism generally, so they might âprove too muchâ (although I think stance-independent moral realism is actually false, anyway).
The article also criticizes the use of the word ârepugnantâ in the name of the Repugnant Conclusion for being ârhetorically overblownâ in the main text (as well as âsadisticâ in âSadistic Conclusionâ for being âmisleadingâ/ââa misnomerâ, but only in a footnote), but then goes on to use similarly contemptuous and dismissive language against specific views (emphasis mine):
(This is also a matter of opinion, and not marked as such.)
(This is also a matter of opinion, and not marked as such.)
Again, I also think âdivorced from humane valuesâ is plainly false under some common definitions of âhumaneâ. The way I use that word, mostly as a synonym for âcompassionateâ, ensuring happy people are born has nothing to do with being humane, while prioritizing suffering and the badly off as practically implied by procreation asymmetry is more humane than not.
There are other normative claims made without any language to suggest that theyâre opinions at all (again, emphasis mine):
I doubt there are decisive proofs for these claims.
Another (again, emphasis mine):
This gives me the impression that the author(s) didnât properly entertain person-affecting views or really consider objections to the weaker versions that donât apply to the stronger ones or alternatives (other than the original reasons given for person-affecting views). The weaker versions seem to me to be self-undermining, have to draw more arbitrary lines, and are supported only by direct intuitions about cases (at least in the article) over the stronger versions, not more general reasons:
On self-undermining, the reasons people give for holding person-affecting intuitions in the first place have to be defeated when lives are good enough, and the view would not really be person-affecting anymore, including according to the articleâs definition (âPerson-affecting views that deny we have (non-instrumental) reason to add happy lives to the world.â). Why wouldnât âmehâ lives be good enough, too?
On arbitrariness, how do you define a âflourishing lifeâ and where do you draw the line (or precisely how the blur is graded)? Will this view end up having to define it in an individual-specific (or species-specific) way, or otherwise discount some individuals and species for having their maximums too low? Something else?
As far as I can tell, the only arguments given for the weaker versions are intuitions about cases. Intuitions about cases should be weighed against more general reasons like those given in actualist arguments and Frickâs conditional reasons.
The value blur proposal was interesting and seems to me worth writing up somewhere, but itâs unlikely to represent anyoneâs (or any ethicistâs) actual views, and those sympathetic to person-affecting views might not endorse it even if they knew of it. The article also has a footnote that undermines the view itself (intentionally or not), but there are views that I think meet this challenge, so the value blur view risks being a strawman rather than a steelman, as might have been intended:
It would make more sense to me to focus on the asymmetric person-affecting views ethicists actually defend/âendorse or that otherwise already appear in the literature. (Personally, I think in actualist and/âor conditional reason terms, and Iâm most sympathetic to negative utilitarianism (not technically PA), actualist asymmetric person-affecting views, and the views in Thomas, 2019, but Thomas, 2019 seems too new and obscure to me to be the focus of the article, too.)
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 âyou donât literally care about nothing, but there is something that seems to us worth caring about that you donâtâ 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 couldnât an old fashioned racist accuse modern sensibilities of being nihilistic philistines with respect to racial special obligations? I am somewhat satisfied by Chappellâs 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 âproblematicâ or âperverseâ to describe different arguments/âimplications is too charged not to be marked explicitly as a matter of opinionâŠI mean, at least some pieces of ethical writing donât 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 authorâs 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 doesnât matter.
Iâm sorry if Iâm sounding somewhat charged here, again, I agree with many of your points and think you mean well here, but Iâve become especially allergic to this type of motte and bailey recently, and Iâm 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 itâs 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, itâll mislead readers new to the area or who otherwise donât take the time to read it more carefully and critically. Itâs even referenced in the EA Forum tag/âwiki 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. Iâm 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, Iâd also include exercises asking readers to spot where parallel arguments could have been used but werenât and try to come up with them, as well as about other issues, and have them read opposing pieces. We shouldnât 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, Iâd 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 donât 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: Iâve also just added https://ââwww.utilitarianism.com and some other standard references to that page.
Iâm of two minds on this. On the one hand youâre 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 Iâve ever taken is made entirely of primary source readings. In the rare cases where something more referential is assigned instead, generally itâs just something like a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry. Iâm 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 itâs possible that its framing doesnât reflect this sufficiently as well. Like you though, Iâm not super familiar with how this resource is generally used, I just donât know that I would think of it first and foremost as a sort of neutral secondary reference. That just doesnât seem like its purpose.
Also, another difference with academic papers is that theyâre often upfront about their intentions to defend a particular position, so readers donât 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.
Thatâs 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 Radekâs 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.
It seems like youâre conflating the following two views:
Utilitarianism.net has an obligation to present views other than total symmetric utilitarianism in a sympathetic light.
Utilitarianism.net has an obligation not to present views other than total symmetric utilitarianism in an uncharitable and dismissive light.
I would claim #2, not #1, and presumably so would Michael. The quote about nihilism etc. is objectionable because itâs not just unsympathetic to such views, itâs condescending. Clearly many people who have reflected carefully about ethics think these alternatives are worth taking seriously, and itâs controversial to claim that âhumane valuesâ necessitate wanting to create happy beings de novo even at some (serious) opportunity cost to suffering. âNihilisticâ also connotes something stronger than denying positive value.
It seems to me that youâre conflating process and substance. Philosophical charity is a process virtue, and one that I believe our article exemplifies. (Again, the exploration of value blur offers a charitable development of the view in question.) You just donât like that our substantive verdict on the view is very negative. And thatâs fine, you donât have to like it. But I want to be clear that this normative disagreement isnât evidence of any philosophical defect on our part. (And I should flag that Michaelâs process objections, e.g. complaining that we didnât preface every normative claim with the tedious disclaimer âin our opinionâ, reveals a lack of familiarity with standard norms for writing academic philosophy.)
This sociological claim isnât philosophically relevant. Thereâs nothing inherently objectionable about concluding that some people have been mistaken in their belief that a certain view is worth taking seriously. Thereâs also nothing inherently objectionable about making claims that are controversial. (Every interesting philosophical claim is controversial.)
What youâre implicitly demanding is that we refrain from doing philosophy (which involves taking positions, including ones that others might dislike or find controversial), and instead merely report on othersâ arguments and opinions in a NPOV fashion. Thatâs a fine norm for wikipedia, but I donât think itâs a reasonable demand to make of all philosophers in all places, and IMO it would make utilitarianism.net worse (and something I, personally, would be much less interested in creating and contributing to) if we were to try to implement it there.
As a process matter, Iâm all in favour of letting a thousand flowers bloom. If you donât like our philosophical POV, feel free to make your own resource that presents things from a POV you find more congenial! And certainly if weâre making philosophical errors, or overlooking important counterarguments, Iâm happy to have any of that drawn to my attention. But I donât really find it valuable to just hear that some people donât like our conclusions (that pretty much goes without saying). And I confess I find it very frustrating when people try to turn that substantive disagreement into a process complaint, as though it were somehow intrinsically illegitimate to disagree about which views are serious contenders to be true.
Oh I absolutely agree with this. My objections to that quote have no bearing on how legitimate your view is, and I never claimed as much. What I find objectionable is that by using such dismissive language about the view you disagree with, not merely critical language, youâre causing harm to population ethics discourse. Ideally readers will form their views on this topic based on their merits and intuitions, not based on claims that views are âtoo divorced from humane values to be worth taking seriously.â
Personally I donât think you need to do this.
Again, I didnât claim that your dismissiveness bears on the merit of your view. The objectionable thing is that youâre confounding readersâ perceptions of the views with labels like â[not] worth taking seriously.â The fact that many people do take this view seriously suggests that that kind of label is uncharitable. (I suppose Iâm not opposed in principle to being dismissive to views that are decently popularâI would have that response to the view that animals donât matter morally, for example. But what bothers me about this case is partly that your argument for why itâs not worth taking seriously is pretty unsatisfactory.)
Iâm certainly not calling for you to pass no judgments whatsoever on philosophical views, and âmerely report on othersâ arguments,â and I donât think a reasonable reading of my comment would lead you to believe that.
Indeed, I gave substantive feedback on the Population Ethics page a few months back, and hope you and your coauthors take it into account. :)