(I’m posting this as a separate comment for clarity)
I think it is important to state just how different CHA is from impartial consequentialism. I read your text as claiming that this is obviously what impartial consequentialism is under constraint (for example based on your “There is no option to avoid making choices, so complaining about having to do it imperfectly would go nowhere.” and “we are not so much given a possibility to be (kind of) rational in our choices as forced to apply the limited degree of rationality that’s available.”) The problem is if (1) that’s still the thing we cared about, (2) if it actually works and (3) if we are actually forced into it.
Limiting impartial consequentialism to a subset is fundamentally different from true impartial consequentialism, not just an imperfect way of doing it. Going from “Increasing welfare on balance” to “increasing welfare in a proper subset while knowing that the effect is indeterminate on balance” is a huge leap to me. I’m sympathetic to the latter one too but that requires independent motivations (like virtue). The whole deal with impartial consequentialism is doing good on balance so losing that is significant.
I don’t think it works as cleanly as you state it. See my other comment on bracketing.
There definitely are places to go besides nowhere (that is to say that we are not forced into CHA to get action guidance): other normative views and limited versions of impartial consequentialism motivated by reasons besides “nowhere else to go”. See TDB (very similar concept to CHA but in the overview Clifton is clear that it is a distinct theory from consequentialism as opposed to just obviously what clueless consequentialists are supposed to do), MNB, LF and possibly some other entries in the competition.
I’ll reply to the other comment later as I understand it less well immediately, but to this one, and now that I think about it, mainly just point 1 for now: I think this is having to do with with distinctions I already tried to deal with in the text.
If impartial consequentialism is defined as trying to maximise total expected value, then it is different from being motivated only by some subset of expected value, no matter what the motivation for doing the latter is. Under this definition of impartial consequentialism, there’s no solution for what to choose based on impartial consequentialism. I basically said this already.
What I’m saying is that we can be motivated by impartial values, without ever restricting what we value to begin with, and then be forced, by the nature of making choices, into applying the principle only in a limited area, because that’s all we can do. If what I’m saying is right otherwise, consequences we are clueless about are effectively just like things we can’t causally affect at all. So, choosing only based on what we can choose based on is no less impartial than aiming to affect only things that we can affect.
You could say the observation is that even as we find out that we can’t act on our impartial altruistic motivations based on maximising total expected value, that doesn’t mean that having impartial altruistic motivations implies not having any basis to make choices. The limitations we find are themselves a factor in what it’s rational to do based on our values.
As I also pointed out, the point isn’t about how you conceptualise this, anyway—whether as impartial altruism or as otherwise helpful to someone who started from it. But it’s saying something meaningful to say that we can have impartial altruistic motivations and values and still have a rational basis for deciding based on this. Especially, there’s no need to bring in other absolute values like virtue, unless you decide to define “doing what you can from impartial altruistic motivations in some other way than maximising total expected value because you can’t maximise it” as a different value.
(I’m posting this as a separate comment for clarity)
I think it is important to state just how different CHA is from impartial consequentialism. I read your text as claiming that this is obviously what impartial consequentialism is under constraint (for example based on your “There is no option to avoid making choices, so complaining about having to do it imperfectly would go nowhere.” and “we are not so much given a possibility to be (kind of) rational in our choices as forced to apply the limited degree of rationality that’s available.”) The problem is if (1) that’s still the thing we cared about, (2) if it actually works and (3) if we are actually forced into it.
Limiting impartial consequentialism to a subset is fundamentally different from true impartial consequentialism, not just an imperfect way of doing it. Going from “Increasing welfare on balance” to “increasing welfare in a proper subset while knowing that the effect is indeterminate on balance” is a huge leap to me. I’m sympathetic to the latter one too but that requires independent motivations (like virtue). The whole deal with impartial consequentialism is doing good on balance so losing that is significant.
I don’t think it works as cleanly as you state it. See my other comment on bracketing.
There definitely are places to go besides nowhere (that is to say that we are not forced into CHA to get action guidance): other normative views and limited versions of impartial consequentialism motivated by reasons besides “nowhere else to go”. See TDB (very similar concept to CHA but in the overview Clifton is clear that it is a distinct theory from consequentialism as opposed to just obviously what clueless consequentialists are supposed to do), MNB, LF and possibly some other entries in the competition.
I’ll reply to the other comment later as I understand it less well immediately, but to this one, and now that I think about it, mainly just point 1 for now: I think this is having to do with with distinctions I already tried to deal with in the text.
If impartial consequentialism is defined as trying to maximise total expected value, then it is different from being motivated only by some subset of expected value, no matter what the motivation for doing the latter is. Under this definition of impartial consequentialism, there’s no solution for what to choose based on impartial consequentialism. I basically said this already.
What I’m saying is that we can be motivated by impartial values, without ever restricting what we value to begin with, and then be forced, by the nature of making choices, into applying the principle only in a limited area, because that’s all we can do. If what I’m saying is right otherwise, consequences we are clueless about are effectively just like things we can’t causally affect at all. So, choosing only based on what we can choose based on is no less impartial than aiming to affect only things that we can affect.
You could say the observation is that even as we find out that we can’t act on our impartial altruistic motivations based on maximising total expected value, that doesn’t mean that having impartial altruistic motivations implies not having any basis to make choices. The limitations we find are themselves a factor in what it’s rational to do based on our values.
As I also pointed out, the point isn’t about how you conceptualise this, anyway—whether as impartial altruism or as otherwise helpful to someone who started from it. But it’s saying something meaningful to say that we can have impartial altruistic motivations and values and still have a rational basis for deciding based on this. Especially, there’s no need to bring in other absolute values like virtue, unless you decide to define “doing what you can from impartial altruistic motivations in some other way than maximising total expected value because you can’t maximise it” as a different value.