I would like to see more humility from people involved in effective altruism regarding metaethics, or at least better explanations for why EAs’ metaethical positions are what they are. Among smart friends and family members of mine whom I’ve tried to convince of EA ideas, the most common complaint is, ‘But that’s not what I think is good!’ I think this is a reasonable complaint, and I’d like it if we acknowledged it in more introductory material and in more of our conversations.
More broadly, I think that rather than having a ‘lying problem,’ EA has an ‘epistemic humility problem’—both around philosophical questions and around empirical ones, and on both the community level and the individual level.
It’s fascinating how diverse the movement is in this regard. I’ve only found a single moral realist EA who had thought about metaethics and could argue for it. Most EAs around me are antirealists or haven’t thought about it.
(I’m antirealist because I don’t know any convincing arguments to the contrary.)
My impression is that many of the founders of the movement are moral realists and professional moral philosophers e.g. Peter Singer published a book arguing for moral realism in 2014 (“The Point of View of the Universe”).
Anonymous #37:
It’s fascinating how diverse the movement is in this regard. I’ve only found a single moral realist EA who had thought about metaethics and could argue for it. Most EAs around me are antirealists or haven’t thought about it.
(I’m antirealist because I don’t know any convincing arguments to the contrary.)
My impression is that many of the founders of the movement are moral realists and professional moral philosophers e.g. Peter Singer published a book arguing for moral realism in 2014 (“The Point of View of the Universe”).
Plus some who at least put some non-negligible probability on moral realism, in some kind of moral uncertainty framework.
Ah, cool! I should read it.