Iâm very puzzled by this comment. Your characterization of Goldringâs argument is precisely the argument Iâm responding to, so Iâm confused that you present this as though you think I am interpreting Goldring as saying something different. I argue that an objectionable implication of Goldringâs position (and yours) is that we should abandon a larger group of children because they are in a country (Bangladesh) for which we have already helped some other children. You havenât responded to my argument at all.
Thank you for replying, although I admit to being equally puzzled by your puzzlement.
What Goldring is paraphrased as saying is that âFor a certain cost, the charity might enable only a few children to go to school in a country such as South Sudan, where the barriers to school attendance are high, he says; but that does not mean it should work only in countries where the cost of schooling is cheaper, such as Bangladesh, because that would abandon the South Sudanese children.â
Goldring is not âimplying that so long as we help some children in each country, it does not matter how many children we end up abandoningâ. I simply donât see where you get that from. Itâs just not the argument that heâs making. His argument is that the needs of children in South Sudan and Bangladesh are equally important, that the foundation for Oxfamâs work is needs rather than costs, and that the accident of birth that placed a child in South Sudan and not Bangladesh is thus not a justification to abandon the former.
What Goldring does imply is that applying âEA principlesâ would require Oxfam to abandon all the children of South Sudanâand probably for every aid organisation to abandon the entire country, since South Sudan is a difficult and costly working environment. In this case âquantity has a quality all of its ownââthe argument that justifies abandoning 100 children in one country in favour of 1000 children in another looks markedly different when itâs used to justify withdrawing all forms of assistance from an entire country.
This highlights the conflict between EAâs approachâwhich takes âeffectivenessâ (specifically cost-effectiveness) as an intrinsic rather than instrumental valueâand the framework used by others, who have other intrinsic values. That conflict is the reason why we may be talking past each otherâI recognise that you probably wonât agree with this argument, and may continue to be puzzled. I would suggest to you that this is the fundamental weakness of the paperâthat you are not taking these criticisms of EA in good faith, and in some cases are addressing straw man versions of them.
How far are you willing to push this? Presumably, you wouldnât educate 1 child in South Sudan and 10 in Bangladesh, rather than 0 in Sudan and 10 000 in Bangladesh, just so that you can say South Sudan hasnât been abandoned? So exactly how many more children have to go without education before you say âthatâs too many moreâ and switch to one country? What could justify a particular cut-off?
Iâm not a utilitarian, so I reject the premise of this question when presented in the abstract as it is here. Effectiveness for me is an instrumental value, so I would need to have a clearer picture of the operating environments in both countries and the funding environment at the global level before I would be able to answer it.
Just because youâre not a utilitarian doesnât mean you can reject the premise of the question. Deontologists have the same problem with trade offs! The premise of the question is one even the Oxfam report accepts. I also donât think you know what an instrumental value is. I think you keep throwing the term out but donât understand what it means in terms of how it is frames the instrumental empirical question in a way that other values dissolve.
Can you give me an argument for why I canât reject the premise of the question, rather than just telling me I canât? Iâve explained why I reject it in these comments. Goldring âacceptsâ the premise only in the sense that heâs attending an event which is based entirely on that premise, and has had that premise forced onto him through the rhetorical trick which I described in my reply to Chappell.
I think youâre partly right about my confusion about instrumental values. Now that I reconsider, the humanitarian principles are a strange mix of instrumental and intrinsic values; regardless, effectiveness remains solely an instrumental value. Perhaps you could explain what you mean by âother values dissolveâ?
Trade-offs inhere in all ethical systems so ârejecting utilitarianismâ doesnât do the work you think it does. The values you listed up in the thread that âinhereâ in
The actual premise youâre youâre rejecting is one you rely on, that of equal moral consideration of peoples. Each time you manipulate the ratio of tradeoff by rejecting âcost-effectivenessâ you are breaking treating people as morally equivalent.
Reasons you actually can reject the premise:
Actions that are upside bargains. E.g. break the trade off by having both options done but this is not the nature of aid as it currently is.
I think what you think youâre doing by saying youâre not a utilitarian is saying that you care about things EAs donât care about in the impact of aid. But even with other values you create different ratios of trade offs and Pareto Optimality such that youâre always trading off something even if itâs not utilitarianism. Itâs still something that is a cost and something that is a benefit. Thereâs no rhetorical trick here just the fungible nature of cash. The fact that cost effectiveness isnât an intrinsic value is what makes it a deciding force in the ratio of trade offs in other values.
Can you explain what you mean by âThereâs no rhetorical trick here just the fungible nature of cashâ? In practice cost effectiveness is a deciding force but not the deciding force.
I think what youâre saying. There are a plurality of values that EAs donât seem to care about that are deeply important and are skipped over through naive utilitarianism. These values cannot be measured through cost-effectiveness because they are deeply ingrained in the human experience.
The stronger version that I think youâre trying to elucidate but are unable to clearly is that cost-effectiveness can be inversely correlated with another value that is âmoreâ determinant on a moral level. E.g. North Koreans cost a lot more to help than Nigerians with malaria but their cost effectiveness difficulty inheres in their situation and injustice in and of itself.
What I am saying is that insofar as weâre in the realm of charity and budgets and financial tradeoffs it doesnât matter what your intrinsic value commitments are. There are choices that produce more of that value or less of that value which is what the concept of cost effectiveness is. Thus, it is a crux no matter what intrinsic value system you pick. Even deontology has these issues which I noted in my first response to you.
Thanks, yes. I think Iâm elucidating it pretty clearly, but perhaps Iâm wrong!
As Iâve said, Iâm not denying that cost effectiveness is a determinant in decision-makingâit plainly is a determinant, and an important one. What I am claiming is that it is not the primary determinant in decision-making, and simple calculus (as in the original thought experiment) is not really useful for decision-making.
The premise I reject is not that there are always trade-offs, but that a naive utilitarian calculus that abstracts and dehumanises individuals by presenting them as numbers in an equation unmoored from reality is a useful or ethical way to frame the question of how âbestâ to help people.
The premise that a naive utilitarian calculus that abstracts and dehumanises individuals by presenting them as numbers in an equation unmoored from reality is a useful or ethical way to frame the question of how âbestâ to help people. As Iâve said in another comment, the trolley problem was meant as a stimulus to discussion, not as a guide for making policy decisions around public transport systems.
EDIT: I realise that this description may come across as harsh on a forum populated almost entirely by utilitarians, but I felt that it was important to be clear about the exact nature of my objection. My position is that I agree that utilitarianism should be a tool in our ethical toolkit, but I disagree that it is the tool that we should reach for exclusively, or even first of all.
I suppose that part of my point is that we may not be discussing whether or not it makes sense to help more people over less. We may be discussing how we can help people who are most in need, who may cost more or less to help than other people.
Iâve claimed that naive utilitarian calculus is simply not that useful in guiding actual policy decisions. Those decisionsâwhich happen every day in aid organisationsâneed to include a much wider range of factors than just numbers.
If we keep it in the realm of thought experiments, itâs a simple question and an obvious answer. But do you really believe that the philosophical thought experiment maps smoothly and clearly to the real world problem?
âBut do you really believe that the philosophical thought experiment maps smoothly and clearly to the real world problem?â
No, of course not. But in assessing the real world problem, you seemed to be relying on some sort of claim that sometimes it better to help less people if it means a fairer distribution of help. So I was raising a problem for that view: if you think it is sometimes better to distribute money to more countries even though it helps less people, then either that is always better in any possible circumstance, realistic or otherwise or its sometimes better and sometimes not depending on circumstance. Then the thought experiment comes in to show that there are possible, albeit not very realistic circumstances where it clearly isnât better. So that shows one of the two options available to someone with your view is wrong.
Then, I challenged the other option that it is sometimes better and sometimes not, but the thought experiment wasnât doing any work there. Instead, I just asked what you think determines when it is better to distribute the money more evenly between countries versus when it is better to just help the most people, and implied that this is a hard question to answer. As it happens, I donât actually think that this view is definitely wrong, and you have hinted at a good answer, namely that we should sometimes help less people in order to prioritize the absolutely worst off. But I think it is a genuine problem for views like this that its always going to look a bit hazy what determines exactly how much you should prioritize the best of, and the view does seem to imply there must be an answer to that.
I think we need to get away from âcountriesâ as a frameâthe thought experiment is the same whether itâs between countries, within a country, or even within a community. So my claim is not that âit is sometimes better to distribute money to more countries even though it helps less peopleâ.
If we take the Bangladeshi school thought experimentâthat with available funding, you can educate either 1000 boys or 800 girls, because girls face more barriers to access educationâmy claim is obviously not that âit is sometimes better to distribute money to more genders even though it helps less peopleâ. You could definitely describe it that wayâjust as Chappell describes Goldringâs statementâbut that is clearly not the basis of the decision itself, which is more concerned with relative needs in an equity framework.
You are right to describe my basis for making decisions as context-specific. It is therefore fair to say that I believe that in some circumstances it is morally justified to help fewer people if those people are in greater need. The view that this is *always* better is clearly wrong, but I donât make that assessment on the basis of the thought experiment, but on the basis that moral decisions are almost always context-specific and often fuzzy around the edges.
So while I agree that it is always going to look a bit hazy what determines your priorities, I donât see it as a problem, but simply as the background against which decisions need to be made. Would you agree that one of the appeals of utilitarianism is that it claims to resolve at least some of that haziness?
âWould you agree that one of the appeals of utilitarianism is that it claims to resolve at least some of that haziness?â
Yes, indeed, I think I agree with everything in this last post. In general non-utilitarian views tend to capture more of what we actually care about at the cost of making more distinctions that look arbitrary or hard to justify on reflection. Itâs a hard question how to trade off between these things. Though be careful not to make the mistake of thinking utilitarianism implies that the facts about what empirical effects an action will have are simple: it says nothing about that at all.
Or at least, I think that, technically speaking, it is true that âit is sometimes better to distribute money to more genders even though it helps less peopleâ is something you believe, but thatâs a highly misleading way of describing your view: i.e. likely to make a reasonable person who takes it at face value believe other things about you and your view that are false.
I think the countries thing probably got this conversation off on the wrong foot, because EAs have very strong opposition to the idea that national boundaries ever have moral significance. But it was probably the fault of Richardâs original article that the conversation started there, since the charitable reading of Goldring was that he was making a point about prioritizing the worst off and using an example with countries to illustrate that, not saying that itâs inherently more fair to distribute resources across more countries.
My guess (though it is only a guess) is that if you ask Will MacAskill heâll tell you that at least in an artificial case where you can either help a million people who are very badly off, or a million and one people who are much better off by the same amount, you ought to help the worse off people. Itâs hard to see how he could deny that, given that he recommends giving some weight to all reasonable moral views in your decision-making, prioritizing the worse off is reasonable, and in this sort of case, helping the worse off people is much better if we ought to prioritize the worse off, while helping the million and one is only a very small amount better on the view where you ought just to help the most people.
Note by the way that you can actually have the âalways bring about the biggest benefit when distributing resources view, without worrying about prioritizing the worst offâ view and still reject utiltarianism overall. For example, its consistent with âhelp more people rather than less when the benefit per person is the same sizeâ that you value things other than happiness/âsuffering or preference satisfaction, that you believe it is sometimes wrong to violate rights in order to bring about the best outcome etc.
Likewise I think I agree with everything in this post. I appreciate that you took the time to engage with this discussion, and for finding grounds for agreement at least around the hazy edges.
Wait I just want to make an object level objection for the third party readers that most policy-making is guided by cost-benefit analysis and the assigning of value of statistical life (VSL) in most liberal democracies.
What do you mean by ânot⊠good faithâ? I take that to imply a lack of intellectual integrity, which seems a pretty serious (and insulting) charge. I donât take Goldring to be arguing in bad faithâI just think his position is objectively irrational and poorly supported. If you think my arguments are bad, youâre similarly welcome to explain why you believe that, but I really donât think anyone should be accusing me of failing to engage in good faith.
On to the substance: you (and Goldring) are especially concerned not to âwithdraw all⊠assistance from an entire country.â You would prefer to help fewer children, some in South Sudan and some in Bangladesh, rather than help a larger number of children in Bangladesh. When you help fewer people, you are thereby âabandoningâ, i.e. not helping, a larger number of people. Does it matter how many more we could help in Bangladesh? It doesnât seem to matter to you or Goldring. But that is just to say that it does not matter how many (more) children we end up abandoning, on your view, so long as we help some in each country. Thatâs the implication of your view, right? Can you explain why you think this isnât an accurate characterization?
ETA: I realize now thereâs a possible reading of the âit doesnât matterâ claim on which it could be taken to impute a lack of concern even for Pareto improvements, i.e. saving just one person in each country being no better than 10 people in each country. I certainly donât mean to attribute that view to Goldring, so will be sure to reword that sentence more carefully!
Thatâs not the implication of my view, no. It could matter how many more children we are abandoning, but this is not a purely utilitarian calculus. In humanitarian action effectiveness is an instrumental value not an intrinsic value, so prioritisation is not solely a question of cost-effectiveness, and neither the argument or the implication is âso long as we help some in each countryâ.
(This is also where my accusation of bad faith comes from. Either you do not know that there are other values at playâin which case you are not arguing properly, since you have not investigated sufficientlyâor you do know that there are other values at play, but are choosing not to point this out to your readerâin which case you are not arguing honestly.)
The simple addition of non-utilitarian values exposes how this sort of naive calculusâin which one child in one location can be exchanged directly for another child in a different locationâis fine as a thought experiment, but is largely useless as a basis for real-world decision-making, constrained as it is by a wider set of concerns that confound any attempt to apply such calculus.
My fundamental objection is that this thought experimentâand others like itâare an exercise in stacking the rhetorical deck, by building the conclusion that you are seeking into the framing of the question. This can be seen when you claim that I âwould prefer to help fewer children, some in South Sudan and some in Bangladesh, rather than help a larger number of children in Bangladesh.â
In fact I would prefer to help all of themâperhaps through the simple solution of seeking more funding. If you argue that this solution is not availableâthat there is no such additional fundingâthen you concede that the thought experiment only works in your favour because you have specifically framed it in that way. If you accept that this solution is available, then you should allow the full range of real-world factors that must be taken into account in such decision-making, in which case the utilitarian calculus becomes just one small part of the picture. In either case the experiment is useless to guide real-world decision-making.
Perhaps I could posit a similar thought experiment. In Bangladesh it is more expensive to educate girls than boys, because girls face additional barriers to access to education. You can educate 1000 boys or 800 girls. I assume that you would accept that your argument would conclude that we should focus all our spending on educating 1000 boys. But this conclusion seems obviously unjustifiable on any reasonable consideration of fairness, and in fact leads to worse outcomes for those who are already disadvantaged. The utilitarian calculus cannot possibly be the sole basis for allocating these resources.
Either you do not know that there are other values at playâin which case you are not arguing properly, since you have not investigated sufficientlyâor you do know that there are other values at play, but are choosing not to point this out to your readerâin which case you are not arguing honestly.)
Obviously Iâm engaging with a position on which there are believed to be âother values in playâ (e.g. a conception of fairness which prioritizes national representation over number of people helped), since Iâm arguing that those other values are ultimately indefensible.
Iâm going to leave the conversation at that. I can deal with polite philosophical ignorance (e.g. not understanding how to engage productively with thought experiments), or with arrogance from a sharp interlocutor who is actually making good points; but the combination of arrogance and ignorance is just too much for me.
Thanks for continuing to engageâI appreciate that it must be frustrating for you.
The other values at play are quite obviously not âprioritise national representation over number of people helpedâ. Thatâs why I proposed the parallel thought experiment of schoolboys and schoolgirls in Bangladeshâto show that your calculus is subject to the exact same objections without any implication of ânational representationâ, and therefore ânational representationâ is not part of this discussion.
The other values that I am referring to (as Iâve mentioned in other replies) might be the core humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence. These values are contested, and youâre obviously welcome to contest them, but they are the moral and to some extent legal basis of C20 humanitarian action.
They are not necessarily key to e.g. education provision, which although it is often delivered by âdual mandateâ organisations, is not strictly speaking a lifesaving activity, so you may wish to reject them on those grounds. However it seems to me that you believe that your cardinal value of effectiveness is applicable across all areas of altruism, so I think they are relevant to the argument.
You originally asked for any feedback, and I took you at your word. My feedback is simply that this paper is preaching to the choir, and it would be a stronger paper if you addressed these other value systemsâthe very basis of the topic that you are discussingârather than ignoring them completely. You can of course argue that theyâre indefensibleâand clearly we disagree thereâbut first you have to identify them correctly.
To the accusations of arrogance and ignorance. Obviously weâre all ignorantâitâs the human conditionâbut I try to alleviate my ignorance by e.g. reading papers and listening to viewpoints that I disagree with. Clearly you find me arrogant, but thereâs not much I can do about thatâIâve tried to be as polite as I can, but clearly that was insufficient.
If you can give me any tips on how to engage productively with thought experiments, I would welcome them. I would however note that Iâve always believed that the trolley problem was intended as a basis for discussion, rather than as a basis for policy decisions about public transport systems.
Clearly you find me arrogant, but thereâs not much I can do about thatâIâve tried to be as polite as I can, but clearly that was insufficient.
You come across as arrogant for a few reasons which are in principle fixable.
1: You seem to believe people who donât share your values are simply ignorant of them, and not in a deep âlooking for a black cat in an unlit room through a mirror darklyâ sort of way. If you think your beliefs are prima facie correct, fine, most people doâbut you still have to argue for them.
2: You mischaracterize utilitarianism in ways that are frankly incomprehensible, and become evasive when those characterizations are challenged. At the risk of reproducing exactly that pattern, hereâs an example:
In humanitarian action effectiveness is an instrumental value not an intrinsic value
...
EA is a form of utilitarianism, and when the word effective is used it has generally been in the sense of âcost effectiveâ. If you are not an effective altruist (which I am not), then cost effectivenessâwhile importantâis an instrumental value rather than an intrinsic value.
...
Iâm not a utilitarian, so I reject the premise of this question when presented in the abstract as it is here. Effectiveness for me is an instrumental value
As you have been more politely told many times in this comment section already: claiming that utilitarians assign intrinsic value to cost-effectiveness is absurd. Utilitarians value total well-being (though what exactly that means is a point of contention) and nothing else. I would happily incinerate all the luxury goods humanity has ever produced if it meant no one ever went hungry again. Others would go much further.
What I suspect youâre actually objecting to is aggregation of utility across personsâsince that, plus the grossly insufficient resources available to us, is what makes cost-effectiveness a key instrumental concern in almost all situationsâbut if so the objection is not articulated clearly enough to engage with.
3: Bafflingly, given (1), you also donât seem to feel the need to explain what your values are! You name them (or at least it seems these are yours) and move on, as if we all understood
humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence
in precisely the same way. But we donât. For example: utilitarianism is clearly âimpartialâ and âneutralâ as I understand them (i.e. agent-neutral and impartial with respect to different moral patients) whereas folk-morality is clearly not.
Iâm guessing, having just googled that quote, that you mean something like this
Humanity means that human suffering must be addressed wherever it is found, with particular attention to the most vulnerable.
Neutrality means that humanitarian aid must not favour any side in an armed conflict or other dispute.
Impartiality means that humanitarian aid must be provided solely on the basis of need, without discrimination.
Independence means the autonomy of humanitarian objectives from political, economic, military or other objectives.
in which case thereâs a further complication: youâre almost certainly using âintrinsic valueâ and âinstrumental valueâ in a very different sense from the people youâre talking to. The above versions of âindependenceâ and âneutralityâ are, by my lights, obviously instrumentalâthese are cultural norms for one particular sort of organization at one particular moment in human history, not universal moral law.
Thanks for your comment. Iâll try to address each of your points.
âYou seem to believe people who donât share your values are simply ignorant of them⊠If you think your beliefs are prima facie correct, fine, most people doâbut you still have to argue for them.â
In general, noâI do not believe that people who donât share my values are simply ignorant of them, and I have communicated poorly if that is your impression. Nor do I believe that my beliefs are prima facie correct, and I donât think Iâve claimed that in any of these comments. I did not post here to argue for my beliefsâI donât expect anybody on this forum to agree with themâbut to point out that the paper under discussion fails to deal with those beliefs adequately, which seemed to me a weakness.
âYou mischaracterize utilitarianism in ways that are frankly incomprehensible, and become evasive when those characterizations are challenged.â
I think itâs an exaggeration to say that my characterisation is âfrankly incomprehensibleâ and that I âbecome evasiveâ when challenged. My characterisation may be slightly inaccurate, but itâs not as if I am a million miles away from common understanding, and I have tried to be as direct as possible in my responses.
The confusion may arise from the fact that when I claim that effectiveness is an intrinsic value, I am making that claim for effective altruism specifically, rather than utilitarianism more broadly. And indeed effectiveness does appear to be an intrinsic value for effective altruismâbecause if what effective altruists proposed was not effective, it would not constitute effective altruism.
Your final point has the most traction:
âBafflingly, given (1), you also donât seem to feel the need to explain what your values are! You name them (or at least it seems these are yours) and move on, as if we all understood⊠Iâm guessing, having just googled that quote, that you mean something like thisâ
I was indeed referring to these principles, and youâre rightâI didnât explain them! This may have been a mistake on my part, but as I implied above, my intent was not to persuade anybody here to accept those principles. I am not expecting random people on a message board to even be aware of these principlesâbut I would expect an academic who writes a paper on the subject that in part intends to refute the arguments of organisations involved in humanitarian action to refer to these principles at least in passing, wouldnât you?
âyouâre almost certainly using âintrinsic valueâ and âinstrumental valueâ in a very different sense from the people youâre talking to.â
Yes, this may be the case. In another comment in this thread I reconsidered my position, and suggested that humanitarian principles are a curious mix of intrinsic and instrumental. But Iâm not sure my usage is that far away from the common usage, is it? I also raised the point that they are in fact contestedâpartly for the cultural reason you raiseâand the way in which they are viewed varies from organisation to organisation. Obviously this will cause more concern for people who prefer their principles much cleaner!
I donât think youâre understanding what EAs truly object to though. If the problem is the moral arbitrariness and moral luck of South Sudan vs. Bangladesh then you end up having to prioritise. EA works on the margins so the argument conditionally breaks at the point quantity has a quality all of its own.
If borders and the birth lottery are truly arbitrary I donât understand why it would be so bad to âabandonâ a country if there are equally needs for kids of each country. In the same way typical humanitarians are ok with donations moved from the first world to the developing world.
To put inversely your example, the argument that justifies funding every single country because they are distinct categories also justifies abandoning 1000 children in one country for 100 children in another country. If anything your example weighs on the fact South Sudan and Bangladesh feel worthy on both ends so it feels intuitive. But the categories of countries themselves are wonderfully arbitrary, South Sudan did not exist until 2011!
Moreover, I wish you defended another intrinsic value that could be isolated away from cost-effectiveness. Is it a desserts claim that the most difficult places to administer aid are also the most âneedyâ and therefore deserve it more even if it costs more?
The intrinsic values that I would point to in this context are the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence. (However I should note that these are the subject of continual debate, and neutrality in particular has come under serious pressure during the Ukraine war.)
Also to be clear, âhumanity, neutrality, impartiality and independenceâ arenât values as most philosophers know of them. Neutrality and impartiality are not ones you seem to defend above which is why people find you to be confused.
Yes, youâre absolutely right. Academic philosophy has largely failed to engage with contemporary humanitarianism, which is puzzling given that the field of humanitarianism provides plenty of examples of actual moral dilemmas. That failure is also what leads to the situation we have now, where an academic paper that wants to engage with that topic lacks the language to describe it accurately.
This might be because the ethics of humanitarian action is (broadly) a species of virtue ethics, in which those humanitarian principles are the values that need to be cultivated by individuals and organisations in order to make the sort of utilitarian, deontological or other ethical decisions that we are using as thought experiments here, guided by the sort of âpractical wisdomâ that is often not factored into those thought experiments.
I think the problem is actually reversed. Most humanitarian organisations do not have firm foundational beliefs and are about using poverty porn and feelings of the donor to guide judgements. The language you use of the value of âhumanityâ is a non-sequitur and doesnât provide informationâeven those with high status in humanitarian aid circles like Rory Stewart express a lot of regret over this fuzziness. Put sharply, I donât think contemporary humanitarianism has language to describe itself accurately and âhumanity, neutrality, impartiality and independenceâ are not values but rather buzzwords for charity reports and pamphlets.
From what Iâve inferred is that youâre some sort of Bernard Williams type moral particularism instead of virtue ethics in that you think there are morally salient facts everywhere on the ground in these cases and that the configuration of the morally relevant features of the action in a particular context. But the problem in this discourse is you wonât name the thing youâre defending because I donât think you know what exactly your moral system is beyond being against thought experiments and vibes of academic philosophy.
This is definitely an uncharitable reading of humanitarian action. The humanitarian principles are rarely to be found in âcharity reports and pamphletsâ (by which I assume you mean public-facing documents) and if they are found there, they are not the focus of those documents at all. The exception would be for the ICRC, for the obvious reason that the principles largely originated in their work and they act as stewards to some extent.
Your characterisation of humanitarian organisations as âusing poverty porn and feelings of the donor to guide judgementsâ and so onâwell, youâre welcome to your opinion, but that clearly obviates the hugely complex nature of decision-making in humanitarian action. Humanitarian organisations clearly have foundational beliefs, even if theyâre not sufficiently unambiguous for you. The world is unfortunately an ambiguous place.
(I should explain at this point that I am not a full-throated and unapologetic supporter of the humanitarian sector. I am in fact a sharp critic of the way in which it works, and I appreciate sharp criticism of it in general. But that criticism needs to be well-informed rather than armchair criticism, which I suppose is why Iâm in this thread!)
I do in fact practice virtue ethics, and while there is some affinity between humanitarian decision-making and moral particularism, there are clearly moral principles in the former which the latter might denyâthe principle of impartiality means that one is required to provide assistance to (for example) genocidaires from Rwanda when they find themselves in a refugee camp in Tanzania, regardless of what criminal actions they might have carried out in their own country.
Iâm not sure what you mean when you say that I wonât name the thing defending because I donât know what my moral system is. My personal moral framework is one of virtue ethics, taking its cue from classical virtue ethics but aware that the virtues of the classical age are not necessarily best for flourishing in the modern age; and my professional moral framework isâas you might have guessedâbased on the humanitarian principles.
You might not believe that either of these frameworks is defensible, but thatâs different from saying that I donât know what they are. Could you explain exactly what you meant, and why you believe it?
Ok to be clear, I am 100% certain you donât know what virtue ethics is because youâre literally describing principles of action not virtues. Virtues in virtues ethics are dispositions we cultivate in ourselves not in the consequence of the world. So taking your example of the âprinciple of impartialityâ is that if you are a virtue ethicist youâre trying to cultivate âimpartialityâ not duty bound by it. This is also why youâre confused when you name virtues because independence is a virtue in the person receiving aid not in you! Also these are canonically not virtues any well-known virtue ethicist would name!
Moreover, this impartiality is more a metaethical principle that you keep violating in your own examples. If Oxfam trades off 2:1 Bangladeshis to South Sudanese (replace the countries with whatever you want) that breaks impartiality because you are necessarily saying one life is worth more than another (there are morally particular facts that can change this obviously but you keep biting the bullet on any and just say the world is fuzzy!)
Overall, the world is fuzzy but the problem in this chain of logic is your fuzziness in understanding of what commonly used concepts like virtue ethics are. Itâs really frustrating when you keep excusing your mistaken understanding of concepts with the world being fuzzy. Please just go read Alastair McIntyreâs After Virtue.
âI am 100% certain you donât know what virtue ethics is because youâre literally describing principles of action not virtues⊠Virtues in virtues ethics are dispositions we cultivate in ourselves not in the consequence of the world.â
I fear that it may be you who do not know what virtue ethics is. You refer to McIntyre, who defines virtues as qualities requiring both possession *and* exercise. One does not become courageous by sitting at home thinking about how courageous one will become, but by practising acts of courage. Virtues are developed through such practice, which surely means that they are principles of action.
âAlso these are canonically not virtues any well-known virtue ethicist would name!â
I agree. I havenât claimed that they are, and Iâve referred to humanitarian ethics as a species of virtue ethics for that very reason. But one of the strengths of virtue ethics is that it is possibleâindeed necessaryâto update what the virtues mean in practice to account for the way in which the social environment has changedâand in fact thereâs no reason why one shouldnât introduce new virtues that may be more appropriate for human flourishing.
âThis is also why youâre confused when you name virtues because independence is a virtue in the person receiving aid not in you!⊠Moreover, this impartiality is more a metaethical principle that you keep violating in your own examples. If Oxfam trades off 2:1 Bangladeshis to South Sudanese (replace the countries with whatever you want) that breaks impartiality because you are necessarily saying one life is worth more than anotherâ
I believe you are confused here. Independence is not a virtue of the person receiving aid but of the organisation providing aidâand here Iâll use the ICRC as the exemplarâwhich âmust always maintain their autonomy so that they may be able at all times to act in accordance with the principlesâ.
Likewise you are confused about what is meant by impartiality, which requires that the organisation provides aid to individuals âguided solely by their needs, and to give priority to the most urgent cases of distress.â It does not break impartiality to say âWe should assist X rather than Yâ if X is in greater need, and does not imply that Xâs life is worth more than Yâs.
Letâs return to the Bangladeshi schoolchildren. If you allocate resources to support education for 800 girls instead of 1000 boys, it does not necessarily imply that you think girls are worth more than boys (although it might). The decision is being made on the basis that girlsâ need for support is greater because they face more barriers to access than boys.
I am not a philosopher by any means, but I simply cannot accept your criticism that I do not understand these concepts, or how they are applied in practice.
This is not how words work. You canât just say I believe X is a virtue because in humanitarian ethics (which is ill-defined). I truly donât think you understand the concept of virtue ethics at the end of the day. This sounds mean by itâs definitionally a misunderstanding you keep doubling down on like everything here. For instance you tried to use the red cross as an example but most virtue ethicists wouldnât abide by an entity holding a virtue (the ICRC canât cultivate a virtue itâs not a person) -- because thatâs definitionally not what a virtue is. You also misquoted Alasdair McIntyre and misrepresented it as shown by the fact your quoting all come from google book snippets from undergraduate classes.
I think you believe what you believe and Iâll leave it at that. This is not a productive conversation. Funnily enough I do not think the paper draft is charitable but I donât think you fully understand your axiomatic values (you probably are prioritarian not a virtue ethicist). I also think the educating girls example is a very strong prioritarian argument.
âYou canât just say I believe X is a virtue because in humanitarian ethics (which is ill-defined). I truly donât think you understand the concept of virtue ethics at the end of the day⊠You also misquoted Alastair MacIntyre and misrepresented it.â
Let me then quote MacIntyre in full, to avoid misrepresenting him.
1.
MacIntyre defines a practice as âany coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activityâ.
MacIntyre gives a range of examples of practices, including the games of football and chess, professional disciplines of architecture and farming, scientific enquiries in physics, chemistry and biology, creative pursuits of painting and music, and âthe creation and sustaining of human communitiesâof households, cities, nationsâ.
Humanitarian action meets this definition of a practice.
2.
MacIntyre defines a good with reference to their conception in the middle ages as âThe ends to which men as members of such a species move⊠and their movement towards or away from various goods are to be explained with reference to the virtues and vices which they have learned or failed to learn and the forms of practical reasoning which they employ.â
The humanitarian imperative âthat action should be taken to prevent or alleviate human suffering arising out of disaster or conflictâ meets this definition of a good.
3.
MacIntyre defines a virtue as âan acquired human quality the possession and exercise of which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices and the lack of which effectively prevents us from achieving any such goodsâ.
Humanitarian principles can be treated as virtues under this definition. They are acquired human qualities which enable us to achieve a good (the human imperative) which is internal to a practice (humanitarian action).
They should be seen as professional virtues in addition to any personal virtues (the more familiar virtues such as courage or patience) that aid workers might cultivate, in the same way that architects would cultivate different virtues to farmers.
4.
MacIntyre asserts that âA practice involves standards of excellence and obedience to rules as well as the achievement of goods. To enter into a practice is to accept the authority of those standards and the inadequacy of my own performance as judged by them.â
The institutions of humanitarian aidâwhether operational bodies such as the Red Cross/âRed Crescent movement, professional standards such as the Sphere Standards, or communities of practice such as the CALP Networkâprovide exactly this context.
You are correct to say that those institutions are not themselves possessed of the virtues, but they constitute the practice which is required to acquire these virtues, and within which the exercise of the virtue takes place.
*
This account is inadequateâit does not account for the wider swathe of humanitarian action happening outside the formal humanitarian sectorâbut it is sufficient to demonstrate that the concept of âhumanitarian virtuesâ is coherent with MacIntyreâs conception of virtue ethics.
I am perfectly happy with the fact that you are not a virtue ethicist, and therefore simply do not agree with this argument. Your accusation that I donât understand the concept of virtue ethics, however, simply does not hold water.
Youâre clear that you donât wish to continue this conversation because itâs not productive. Nevertheless I appreciate your engagement, so thank you for taking the time to comment over the past few days.
Iâm very puzzled by this comment. Your characterization of Goldringâs argument is precisely the argument Iâm responding to, so Iâm confused that you present this as though you think I am interpreting Goldring as saying something different. I argue that an objectionable implication of Goldringâs position (and yours) is that we should abandon a larger group of children because they are in a country (Bangladesh) for which we have already helped some other children. You havenât responded to my argument at all.
Thank you for replying, although I admit to being equally puzzled by your puzzlement.
What Goldring is paraphrased as saying is that âFor a certain cost, the charity might enable only a few children to go to school in a country such as South Sudan, where the barriers to school attendance are high, he says; but that does not mean it should work only in countries where the cost of schooling is cheaper, such as Bangladesh, because that would abandon the South Sudanese children.â
Goldring is not âimplying that so long as we help some children in each country, it does not matter how many children we end up abandoningâ. I simply donât see where you get that from. Itâs just not the argument that heâs making. His argument is that the needs of children in South Sudan and Bangladesh are equally important, that the foundation for Oxfamâs work is needs rather than costs, and that the accident of birth that placed a child in South Sudan and not Bangladesh is thus not a justification to abandon the former.
What Goldring does imply is that applying âEA principlesâ would require Oxfam to abandon all the children of South Sudanâand probably for every aid organisation to abandon the entire country, since South Sudan is a difficult and costly working environment. In this case âquantity has a quality all of its ownââthe argument that justifies abandoning 100 children in one country in favour of 1000 children in another looks markedly different when itâs used to justify withdrawing all forms of assistance from an entire country.
This highlights the conflict between EAâs approachâwhich takes âeffectivenessâ (specifically cost-effectiveness) as an intrinsic rather than instrumental valueâand the framework used by others, who have other intrinsic values. That conflict is the reason why we may be talking past each otherâI recognise that you probably wonât agree with this argument, and may continue to be puzzled. I would suggest to you that this is the fundamental weakness of the paperâthat you are not taking these criticisms of EA in good faith, and in some cases are addressing straw man versions of them.
How far are you willing to push this? Presumably, you wouldnât educate 1 child in South Sudan and 10 in Bangladesh, rather than 0 in Sudan and 10 000 in Bangladesh, just so that you can say South Sudan hasnât been abandoned? So exactly how many more children have to go without education before you say âthatâs too many moreâ and switch to one country? What could justify a particular cut-off?
Iâm not a utilitarian, so I reject the premise of this question when presented in the abstract as it is here. Effectiveness for me is an instrumental value, so I would need to have a clearer picture of the operating environments in both countries and the funding environment at the global level before I would be able to answer it.
Just because youâre not a utilitarian doesnât mean you can reject the premise of the question. Deontologists have the same problem with trade offs! The premise of the question is one even the Oxfam report accepts. I also donât think you know what an instrumental value is. I think you keep throwing the term out but donât understand what it means in terms of how it is frames the instrumental empirical question in a way that other values dissolve.
Can you give me an argument for why I canât reject the premise of the question, rather than just telling me I canât? Iâve explained why I reject it in these comments. Goldring âacceptsâ the premise only in the sense that heâs attending an event which is based entirely on that premise, and has had that premise forced onto him through the rhetorical trick which I described in my reply to Chappell.
I think youâre partly right about my confusion about instrumental values. Now that I reconsider, the humanitarian principles are a strange mix of instrumental and intrinsic values; regardless, effectiveness remains solely an instrumental value. Perhaps you could explain what you mean by âother values dissolveâ?
Reasons why you canât reject the premise:
Trade-offs inhere in all ethical systems so ârejecting utilitarianismâ doesnât do the work you think it does. The values you listed up in the thread that âinhereâ in
The actual premise youâre youâre rejecting is one you rely on, that of equal moral consideration of peoples. Each time you manipulate the ratio of tradeoff by rejecting âcost-effectivenessâ you are breaking treating people as morally equivalent.
Reasons you actually can reject the premise:
Actions that are upside bargains. E.g. break the trade off by having both options done but this is not the nature of aid as it currently is.
I think what you think youâre doing by saying youâre not a utilitarian is saying that you care about things EAs donât care about in the impact of aid. But even with other values you create different ratios of trade offs and Pareto Optimality such that youâre always trading off something even if itâs not utilitarianism. Itâs still something that is a cost and something that is a benefit. Thereâs no rhetorical trick here just the fungible nature of cash. The fact that cost effectiveness isnât an intrinsic value is what makes it a deciding force in the ratio of trade offs in other values.
Can you explain what you mean by âThereâs no rhetorical trick here just the fungible nature of cashâ? In practice cost effectiveness is a deciding force but not the deciding force.
I think what youâre saying. There are a plurality of values that EAs donât seem to care about that are deeply important and are skipped over through naive utilitarianism. These values cannot be measured through cost-effectiveness because they are deeply ingrained in the human experience.
The stronger version that I think youâre trying to elucidate but are unable to clearly is that cost-effectiveness can be inversely correlated with another value that is âmoreâ determinant on a moral level. E.g. North Koreans cost a lot more to help than Nigerians with malaria but their cost effectiveness difficulty inheres in their situation and injustice in and of itself.
What I am saying is that insofar as weâre in the realm of charity and budgets and financial tradeoffs it doesnât matter what your intrinsic value commitments are. There are choices that produce more of that value or less of that value which is what the concept of cost effectiveness is. Thus, it is a crux no matter what intrinsic value system you pick. Even deontology has these issues which I noted in my first response to you.
Thanks, yes. I think Iâm elucidating it pretty clearly, but perhaps Iâm wrong!
As Iâve said, Iâm not denying that cost effectiveness is a determinant in decision-makingâit plainly is a determinant, and an important one. What I am claiming is that it is not the primary determinant in decision-making, and simple calculus (as in the original thought experiment) is not really useful for decision-making.
The premise I reject is not that there are always trade-offs, but that a naive utilitarian calculus that abstracts and dehumanises individuals by presenting them as numbers in an equation unmoored from reality is a useful or ethical way to frame the question of how âbestâ to help people.
What is âthe premiseâ that you reject?
The premise that a naive utilitarian calculus that abstracts and dehumanises individuals by presenting them as numbers in an equation unmoored from reality is a useful or ethical way to frame the question of how âbestâ to help people. As Iâve said in another comment, the trolley problem was meant as a stimulus to discussion, not as a guide for making policy decisions around public transport systems.
EDIT: I realise that this description may come across as harsh on a forum populated almost entirely by utilitarians, but I felt that it was important to be clear about the exact nature of my objection. My position is that I agree that utilitarianism should be a tool in our ethical toolkit, but I disagree that it is the tool that we should reach for exclusively, or even first of all.
How can we discuss whether or not it makes sense to help more people over less without discussing cases where more/âless people are helped?
I suppose that part of my point is that we may not be discussing whether or not it makes sense to help more people over less. We may be discussing how we can help people who are most in need, who may cost more or less to help than other people.
Iâve claimed that naive utilitarian calculus is simply not that useful in guiding actual policy decisions. Those decisionsâwhich happen every day in aid organisationsâneed to include a much wider range of factors than just numbers.
If we keep it in the realm of thought experiments, itâs a simple question and an obvious answer. But do you really believe that the philosophical thought experiment maps smoothly and clearly to the real world problem?
âBut do you really believe that the philosophical thought experiment maps smoothly and clearly to the real world problem?â
No, of course not. But in assessing the real world problem, you seemed to be relying on some sort of claim that sometimes it better to help less people if it means a fairer distribution of help. So I was raising a problem for that view: if you think it is sometimes better to distribute money to more countries even though it helps less people, then either that is always better in any possible circumstance, realistic or otherwise or its sometimes better and sometimes not depending on circumstance. Then the thought experiment comes in to show that there are possible, albeit not very realistic circumstances where it clearly isnât better. So that shows one of the two options available to someone with your view is wrong.
Then, I challenged the other option that it is sometimes better and sometimes not, but the thought experiment wasnât doing any work there. Instead, I just asked what you think determines when it is better to distribute the money more evenly between countries versus when it is better to just help the most people, and implied that this is a hard question to answer. As it happens, I donât actually think that this view is definitely wrong, and you have hinted at a good answer, namely that we should sometimes help less people in order to prioritize the absolutely worst off. But I think it is a genuine problem for views like this that its always going to look a bit hazy what determines exactly how much you should prioritize the best of, and the view does seem to imply there must be an answer to that.
I think we need to get away from âcountriesâ as a frameâthe thought experiment is the same whether itâs between countries, within a country, or even within a community. So my claim is not that âit is sometimes better to distribute money to more countries even though it helps less peopleâ.
If we take the Bangladeshi school thought experimentâthat with available funding, you can educate either 1000 boys or 800 girls, because girls face more barriers to access educationâmy claim is obviously not that âit is sometimes better to distribute money to more genders even though it helps less peopleâ. You could definitely describe it that wayâjust as Chappell describes Goldringâs statementâbut that is clearly not the basis of the decision itself, which is more concerned with relative needs in an equity framework.
You are right to describe my basis for making decisions as context-specific. It is therefore fair to say that I believe that in some circumstances it is morally justified to help fewer people if those people are in greater need. The view that this is *always* better is clearly wrong, but I donât make that assessment on the basis of the thought experiment, but on the basis that moral decisions are almost always context-specific and often fuzzy around the edges.
So while I agree that it is always going to look a bit hazy what determines your priorities, I donât see it as a problem, but simply as the background against which decisions need to be made. Would you agree that one of the appeals of utilitarianism is that it claims to resolve at least some of that haziness?
âWould you agree that one of the appeals of utilitarianism is that it claims to resolve at least some of that haziness?â
Yes, indeed, I think I agree with everything in this last post. In general non-utilitarian views tend to capture more of what we actually care about at the cost of making more distinctions that look arbitrary or hard to justify on reflection. Itâs a hard question how to trade off between these things. Though be careful not to make the mistake of thinking utilitarianism implies that the facts about what empirical effects an action will have are simple: it says nothing about that at all.
Or at least, I think that, technically speaking, it is true that âit is sometimes better to distribute money to more genders even though it helps less peopleâ is something you believe, but thatâs a highly misleading way of describing your view: i.e. likely to make a reasonable person who takes it at face value believe other things about you and your view that are false.
I think the countries thing probably got this conversation off on the wrong foot, because EAs have very strong opposition to the idea that national boundaries ever have moral significance. But it was probably the fault of Richardâs original article that the conversation started there, since the charitable reading of Goldring was that he was making a point about prioritizing the worst off and using an example with countries to illustrate that, not saying that itâs inherently more fair to distribute resources across more countries.
As a further point: EAs who are philosophers likely are aware, when they are being careful and reflective, that some people reasonably think that it is better to help a person the worse off they are, since the philosopher Derek Parfit, who is one of the intellectual founders of EA, invented a particular famous variant of that view: https://ââoxfordre.com/ââpolitics/ââpolitics/ââview/ââ10.1093/ââacrefore/ââ9780190228637.001.0001/ââacrefore-9780190228637-e-232
My guess (though it is only a guess) is that if you ask Will MacAskill heâll tell you that at least in an artificial case where you can either help a million people who are very badly off, or a million and one people who are much better off by the same amount, you ought to help the worse off people. Itâs hard to see how he could deny that, given that he recommends giving some weight to all reasonable moral views in your decision-making, prioritizing the worse off is reasonable, and in this sort of case, helping the worse off people is much better if we ought to prioritize the worse off, while helping the million and one is only a very small amount better on the view where you ought just to help the most people.
Note by the way that you can actually have the âalways bring about the biggest benefit when distributing resources view, without worrying about prioritizing the worst offâ view and still reject utiltarianism overall. For example, its consistent with âhelp more people rather than less when the benefit per person is the same sizeâ that you value things other than happiness/âsuffering or preference satisfaction, that you believe it is sometimes wrong to violate rights in order to bring about the best outcome etc.
Likewise I think I agree with everything in this post. I appreciate that you took the time to engage with this discussion, and for finding grounds for agreement at least around the hazy edges.
Thanks to you and @Dr. David Mathers for this useful discussion.
Wait I just want to make an object level objection for the third party readers that most policy-making is guided by cost-benefit analysis and the assigning of value of statistical life (VSL) in most liberal democracies.
To clarify your objection: such policy-making is guided by, but not solely determined by, such approaches.
What do you mean by ânot⊠good faithâ? I take that to imply a lack of intellectual integrity, which seems a pretty serious (and insulting) charge. I donât take Goldring to be arguing in bad faithâI just think his position is objectively irrational and poorly supported. If you think my arguments are bad, youâre similarly welcome to explain why you believe that, but I really donât think anyone should be accusing me of failing to engage in good faith.
On to the substance: you (and Goldring) are especially concerned not to âwithdraw all⊠assistance from an entire country.â You would prefer to help fewer children, some in South Sudan and some in Bangladesh, rather than help a larger number of children in Bangladesh. When you help fewer people, you are thereby âabandoningâ, i.e. not helping, a larger number of people. Does it matter how many more we could help in Bangladesh? It doesnât seem to matter to you or Goldring. But that is just to say that it does not matter how many (more) children we end up abandoning, on your view, so long as we help some in each country. Thatâs the implication of your view, right? Can you explain why you think this isnât an accurate characterization?
ETA: I realize now thereâs a possible reading of the âit doesnât matterâ claim on which it could be taken to impute a lack of concern even for Pareto improvements, i.e. saving just one person in each country being no better than 10 people in each country. I certainly donât mean to attribute that view to Goldring, so will be sure to reword that sentence more carefully!
Thatâs not the implication of my view, no. It could matter how many more children we are abandoning, but this is not a purely utilitarian calculus. In humanitarian action effectiveness is an instrumental value not an intrinsic value, so prioritisation is not solely a question of cost-effectiveness, and neither the argument or the implication is âso long as we help some in each countryâ.
(This is also where my accusation of bad faith comes from. Either you do not know that there are other values at playâin which case you are not arguing properly, since you have not investigated sufficientlyâor you do know that there are other values at play, but are choosing not to point this out to your readerâin which case you are not arguing honestly.)
The simple addition of non-utilitarian values exposes how this sort of naive calculusâin which one child in one location can be exchanged directly for another child in a different locationâis fine as a thought experiment, but is largely useless as a basis for real-world decision-making, constrained as it is by a wider set of concerns that confound any attempt to apply such calculus.
My fundamental objection is that this thought experimentâand others like itâare an exercise in stacking the rhetorical deck, by building the conclusion that you are seeking into the framing of the question. This can be seen when you claim that I âwould prefer to help fewer children, some in South Sudan and some in Bangladesh, rather than help a larger number of children in Bangladesh.â
In fact I would prefer to help all of themâperhaps through the simple solution of seeking more funding. If you argue that this solution is not availableâthat there is no such additional fundingâthen you concede that the thought experiment only works in your favour because you have specifically framed it in that way. If you accept that this solution is available, then you should allow the full range of real-world factors that must be taken into account in such decision-making, in which case the utilitarian calculus becomes just one small part of the picture. In either case the experiment is useless to guide real-world decision-making.
Perhaps I could posit a similar thought experiment. In Bangladesh it is more expensive to educate girls than boys, because girls face additional barriers to access to education. You can educate 1000 boys or 800 girls. I assume that you would accept that your argument would conclude that we should focus all our spending on educating 1000 boys. But this conclusion seems obviously unjustifiable on any reasonable consideration of fairness, and in fact leads to worse outcomes for those who are already disadvantaged. The utilitarian calculus cannot possibly be the sole basis for allocating these resources.
I hope this clarifies my position.
Obviously Iâm engaging with a position on which there are believed to be âother values in playâ (e.g. a conception of fairness which prioritizes national representation over number of people helped), since Iâm arguing that those other values are ultimately indefensible.
Iâm going to leave the conversation at that. I can deal with polite philosophical ignorance (e.g. not understanding how to engage productively with thought experiments), or with arrogance from a sharp interlocutor who is actually making good points; but the combination of arrogance and ignorance is just too much for me.
Thanks for continuing to engageâI appreciate that it must be frustrating for you.
The other values at play are quite obviously not âprioritise national representation over number of people helpedâ. Thatâs why I proposed the parallel thought experiment of schoolboys and schoolgirls in Bangladeshâto show that your calculus is subject to the exact same objections without any implication of ânational representationâ, and therefore ânational representationâ is not part of this discussion.
The other values that I am referring to (as Iâve mentioned in other replies) might be the core humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence. These values are contested, and youâre obviously welcome to contest them, but they are the moral and to some extent legal basis of C20 humanitarian action.
They are not necessarily key to e.g. education provision, which although it is often delivered by âdual mandateâ organisations, is not strictly speaking a lifesaving activity, so you may wish to reject them on those grounds. However it seems to me that you believe that your cardinal value of effectiveness is applicable across all areas of altruism, so I think they are relevant to the argument.
You originally asked for any feedback, and I took you at your word. My feedback is simply that this paper is preaching to the choir, and it would be a stronger paper if you addressed these other value systemsâthe very basis of the topic that you are discussingârather than ignoring them completely. You can of course argue that theyâre indefensibleâand clearly we disagree thereâbut first you have to identify them correctly.
To the accusations of arrogance and ignorance. Obviously weâre all ignorantâitâs the human conditionâbut I try to alleviate my ignorance by e.g. reading papers and listening to viewpoints that I disagree with. Clearly you find me arrogant, but thereâs not much I can do about thatâIâve tried to be as polite as I can, but clearly that was insufficient.
If you can give me any tips on how to engage productively with thought experiments, I would welcome them. I would however note that Iâve always believed that the trolley problem was intended as a basis for discussion, rather than as a basis for policy decisions about public transport systems.
You come across as arrogant for a few reasons which are in principle fixable.
1: You seem to believe people who donât share your values are simply ignorant of them, and not in a deep âlooking for a black cat in an unlit room through a mirror darklyâ sort of way. If you think your beliefs are prima facie correct, fine, most people doâbut you still have to argue for them.
2: You mischaracterize utilitarianism in ways that are frankly incomprehensible, and become evasive when those characterizations are challenged. At the risk of reproducing exactly that pattern, hereâs an example:
As you have been more politely told many times in this comment section already: claiming that utilitarians assign intrinsic value to cost-effectiveness is absurd. Utilitarians value total well-being (though what exactly that means is a point of contention) and nothing else. I would happily incinerate all the luxury goods humanity has ever produced if it meant no one ever went hungry again. Others would go much further.
What I suspect youâre actually objecting to is aggregation of utility across personsâsince that, plus the grossly insufficient resources available to us, is what makes cost-effectiveness a key instrumental concern in almost all situationsâbut if so the objection is not articulated clearly enough to engage with.
3: Bafflingly, given (1), you also donât seem to feel the need to explain what your values are! You name them (or at least it seems these are yours) and move on, as if we all understood
in precisely the same way. But we donât. For example: utilitarianism is clearly âimpartialâ and âneutralâ as I understand them (i.e. agent-neutral and impartial with respect to different moral patients) whereas folk-morality is clearly not.
Iâm guessing, having just googled that quote, that you mean something like this
in which case thereâs a further complication: youâre almost certainly using âintrinsic valueâ and âinstrumental valueâ in a very different sense from the people youâre talking to. The above versions of âindependenceâ and âneutralityâ are, by my lights, obviously instrumentalâthese are cultural norms for one particular sort of organization at one particular moment in human history, not universal moral law.
Thanks for your comment. Iâll try to address each of your points.
âYou seem to believe people who donât share your values are simply ignorant of them⊠If you think your beliefs are prima facie correct, fine, most people doâbut you still have to argue for them.â
In general, noâI do not believe that people who donât share my values are simply ignorant of them, and I have communicated poorly if that is your impression. Nor do I believe that my beliefs are prima facie correct, and I donât think Iâve claimed that in any of these comments. I did not post here to argue for my beliefsâI donât expect anybody on this forum to agree with themâbut to point out that the paper under discussion fails to deal with those beliefs adequately, which seemed to me a weakness.
âYou mischaracterize utilitarianism in ways that are frankly incomprehensible, and become evasive when those characterizations are challenged.â
I think itâs an exaggeration to say that my characterisation is âfrankly incomprehensibleâ and that I âbecome evasiveâ when challenged. My characterisation may be slightly inaccurate, but itâs not as if I am a million miles away from common understanding, and I have tried to be as direct as possible in my responses.
The confusion may arise from the fact that when I claim that effectiveness is an intrinsic value, I am making that claim for effective altruism specifically, rather than utilitarianism more broadly. And indeed effectiveness does appear to be an intrinsic value for effective altruismâbecause if what effective altruists proposed was not effective, it would not constitute effective altruism.
Your final point has the most traction:
âBafflingly, given (1), you also donât seem to feel the need to explain what your values are! You name them (or at least it seems these are yours) and move on, as if we all understood⊠Iâm guessing, having just googled that quote, that you mean something like thisâ
I was indeed referring to these principles, and youâre rightâI didnât explain them! This may have been a mistake on my part, but as I implied above, my intent was not to persuade anybody here to accept those principles. I am not expecting random people on a message board to even be aware of these principlesâbut I would expect an academic who writes a paper on the subject that in part intends to refute the arguments of organisations involved in humanitarian action to refer to these principles at least in passing, wouldnât you?
âyouâre almost certainly using âintrinsic valueâ and âinstrumental valueâ in a very different sense from the people youâre talking to.â
Yes, this may be the case. In another comment in this thread I reconsidered my position, and suggested that humanitarian principles are a curious mix of intrinsic and instrumental. But Iâm not sure my usage is that far away from the common usage, is it? I also raised the point that they are in fact contestedâpartly for the cultural reason you raiseâand the way in which they are viewed varies from organisation to organisation. Obviously this will cause more concern for people who prefer their principles much cleaner!
I donât think youâre understanding what EAs truly object to though. If the problem is the moral arbitrariness and moral luck of South Sudan vs. Bangladesh then you end up having to prioritise. EA works on the margins so the argument conditionally breaks at the point quantity has a quality all of its own.
If borders and the birth lottery are truly arbitrary I donât understand why it would be so bad to âabandonâ a country if there are equally needs for kids of each country. In the same way typical humanitarians are ok with donations moved from the first world to the developing world.
To put inversely your example, the argument that justifies funding every single country because they are distinct categories also justifies abandoning 1000 children in one country for 100 children in another country. If anything your example weighs on the fact South Sudan and Bangladesh feel worthy on both ends so it feels intuitive. But the categories of countries themselves are wonderfully arbitrary, South Sudan did not exist until 2011!
Moreover, I wish you defended another intrinsic value that could be isolated away from cost-effectiveness. Is it a desserts claim that the most difficult places to administer aid are also the most âneedyâ and therefore deserve it more even if it costs more?
Iâm not sure what the last sentence of your first paragraph meansâcan you explain it for me?
For most of the rest of your comment, Iâd refer you to my other answer at https://ââforum.effectivealtruism.org/ââposts/ââShCENF54ZN6bxaysL/ââwhy-not-ea-paper-draft?commentId=o4q6AFoKt7kDpN5cD. I donât know if that answers your points, but it should clarify a little.
The intrinsic values that I would point to in this context are the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence. (However I should note that these are the subject of continual debate, and neutrality in particular has come under serious pressure during the Ukraine war.)
Also to be clear, âhumanity, neutrality, impartiality and independenceâ arenât values as most philosophers know of them. Neutrality and impartiality are not ones you seem to defend above which is why people find you to be confused.
Yes, youâre absolutely right. Academic philosophy has largely failed to engage with contemporary humanitarianism, which is puzzling given that the field of humanitarianism provides plenty of examples of actual moral dilemmas. That failure is also what leads to the situation we have now, where an academic paper that wants to engage with that topic lacks the language to describe it accurately.
This might be because the ethics of humanitarian action is (broadly) a species of virtue ethics, in which those humanitarian principles are the values that need to be cultivated by individuals and organisations in order to make the sort of utilitarian, deontological or other ethical decisions that we are using as thought experiments here, guided by the sort of âpractical wisdomâ that is often not factored into those thought experiments.
I think the problem is actually reversed. Most humanitarian organisations do not have firm foundational beliefs and are about using poverty porn and feelings of the donor to guide judgements. The language you use of the value of âhumanityâ is a non-sequitur and doesnât provide informationâeven those with high status in humanitarian aid circles like Rory Stewart express a lot of regret over this fuzziness. Put sharply, I donât think contemporary humanitarianism has language to describe itself accurately and âhumanity, neutrality, impartiality and independenceâ are not values but rather buzzwords for charity reports and pamphlets.
From what Iâve inferred is that youâre some sort of Bernard Williams type moral particularism instead of virtue ethics in that you think there are morally salient facts everywhere on the ground in these cases and that the configuration of the morally relevant features of the action in a particular context. But the problem in this discourse is you wonât name the thing youâre defending because I donât think you know what exactly your moral system is beyond being against thought experiments and vibes of academic philosophy.
This is definitely an uncharitable reading of humanitarian action. The humanitarian principles are rarely to be found in âcharity reports and pamphletsâ (by which I assume you mean public-facing documents) and if they are found there, they are not the focus of those documents at all. The exception would be for the ICRC, for the obvious reason that the principles largely originated in their work and they act as stewards to some extent.
Your characterisation of humanitarian organisations as âusing poverty porn and feelings of the donor to guide judgementsâ and so onâwell, youâre welcome to your opinion, but that clearly obviates the hugely complex nature of decision-making in humanitarian action. Humanitarian organisations clearly have foundational beliefs, even if theyâre not sufficiently unambiguous for you. The world is unfortunately an ambiguous place.
(I should explain at this point that I am not a full-throated and unapologetic supporter of the humanitarian sector. I am in fact a sharp critic of the way in which it works, and I appreciate sharp criticism of it in general. But that criticism needs to be well-informed rather than armchair criticism, which I suppose is why Iâm in this thread!)
I do in fact practice virtue ethics, and while there is some affinity between humanitarian decision-making and moral particularism, there are clearly moral principles in the former which the latter might denyâthe principle of impartiality means that one is required to provide assistance to (for example) genocidaires from Rwanda when they find themselves in a refugee camp in Tanzania, regardless of what criminal actions they might have carried out in their own country.
Iâm not sure what you mean when you say that I wonât name the thing defending because I donât know what my moral system is. My personal moral framework is one of virtue ethics, taking its cue from classical virtue ethics but aware that the virtues of the classical age are not necessarily best for flourishing in the modern age; and my professional moral framework isâas you might have guessedâbased on the humanitarian principles.
You might not believe that either of these frameworks is defensible, but thatâs different from saying that I donât know what they are. Could you explain exactly what you meant, and why you believe it?
Ok to be clear, I am 100% certain you donât know what virtue ethics is because youâre literally describing principles of action not virtues. Virtues in virtues ethics are dispositions we cultivate in ourselves not in the consequence of the world. So taking your example of the âprinciple of impartialityâ is that if you are a virtue ethicist youâre trying to cultivate âimpartialityâ not duty bound by it. This is also why youâre confused when you name virtues because independence is a virtue in the person receiving aid not in you! Also these are canonically not virtues any well-known virtue ethicist would name!
Moreover, this impartiality is more a metaethical principle that you keep violating in your own examples. If Oxfam trades off 2:1 Bangladeshis to South Sudanese (replace the countries with whatever you want) that breaks impartiality because you are necessarily saying one life is worth more than another (there are morally particular facts that can change this obviously but you keep biting the bullet on any and just say the world is fuzzy!)
Overall, the world is fuzzy but the problem in this chain of logic is your fuzziness in understanding of what commonly used concepts like virtue ethics are. Itâs really frustrating when you keep excusing your mistaken understanding of concepts with the world being fuzzy. Please just go read Alastair McIntyreâs After Virtue.
âI am 100% certain you donât know what virtue ethics is because youâre literally describing principles of action not virtues⊠Virtues in virtues ethics are dispositions we cultivate in ourselves not in the consequence of the world.â
I fear that it may be you who do not know what virtue ethics is. You refer to McIntyre, who defines virtues as qualities requiring both possession *and* exercise. One does not become courageous by sitting at home thinking about how courageous one will become, but by practising acts of courage. Virtues are developed through such practice, which surely means that they are principles of action.
âAlso these are canonically not virtues any well-known virtue ethicist would name!â
I agree. I havenât claimed that they are, and Iâve referred to humanitarian ethics as a species of virtue ethics for that very reason. But one of the strengths of virtue ethics is that it is possibleâindeed necessaryâto update what the virtues mean in practice to account for the way in which the social environment has changedâand in fact thereâs no reason why one shouldnât introduce new virtues that may be more appropriate for human flourishing.
âThis is also why youâre confused when you name virtues because independence is a virtue in the person receiving aid not in you!⊠Moreover, this impartiality is more a metaethical principle that you keep violating in your own examples. If Oxfam trades off 2:1 Bangladeshis to South Sudanese (replace the countries with whatever you want) that breaks impartiality because you are necessarily saying one life is worth more than anotherâ
I believe you are confused here. Independence is not a virtue of the person receiving aid but of the organisation providing aidâand here Iâll use the ICRC as the exemplarâwhich âmust always maintain their autonomy so that they may be able at all times to act in accordance with the principlesâ.
Likewise you are confused about what is meant by impartiality, which requires that the organisation provides aid to individuals âguided solely by their needs, and to give priority to the most urgent cases of distress.â It does not break impartiality to say âWe should assist X rather than Yâ if X is in greater need, and does not imply that Xâs life is worth more than Yâs.
Letâs return to the Bangladeshi schoolchildren. If you allocate resources to support education for 800 girls instead of 1000 boys, it does not necessarily imply that you think girls are worth more than boys (although it might). The decision is being made on the basis that girlsâ need for support is greater because they face more barriers to access than boys.
I am not a philosopher by any means, but I simply cannot accept your criticism that I do not understand these concepts, or how they are applied in practice.
This is not how words work. You canât just say I believe X is a virtue because in humanitarian ethics (which is ill-defined). I truly donât think you understand the concept of virtue ethics at the end of the day. This sounds mean by itâs definitionally a misunderstanding you keep doubling down on like everything here. For instance you tried to use the red cross as an example but most virtue ethicists wouldnât abide by an entity holding a virtue (the ICRC canât cultivate a virtue itâs not a person) -- because thatâs definitionally not what a virtue is. You also misquoted Alasdair McIntyre and misrepresented it as shown by the fact your quoting all come from google book snippets from undergraduate classes.
I think you believe what you believe and Iâll leave it at that. This is not a productive conversation. Funnily enough I do not think the paper draft is charitable but I donât think you fully understand your axiomatic values (you probably are prioritarian not a virtue ethicist). I also think the educating girls example is a very strong prioritarian argument.
[edited for tone]
âYou canât just say I believe X is a virtue because in humanitarian ethics (which is ill-defined). I truly donât think you understand the concept of virtue ethics at the end of the day⊠You also misquoted Alastair MacIntyre and misrepresented it.â
Let me then quote MacIntyre in full, to avoid misrepresenting him.
1.
MacIntyre defines a practice as âany coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activityâ.
MacIntyre gives a range of examples of practices, including the games of football and chess, professional disciplines of architecture and farming, scientific enquiries in physics, chemistry and biology, creative pursuits of painting and music, and âthe creation and sustaining of human communitiesâof households, cities, nationsâ.
Humanitarian action meets this definition of a practice.
2.
MacIntyre defines a good with reference to their conception in the middle ages as âThe ends to which men as members of such a species move⊠and their movement towards or away from various goods are to be explained with reference to the virtues and vices which they have learned or failed to learn and the forms of practical reasoning which they employ.â
The humanitarian imperative âthat action should be taken to prevent or alleviate human suffering arising out of disaster or conflictâ meets this definition of a good.
3.
MacIntyre defines a virtue as âan acquired human quality the possession and exercise of which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices and the lack of which effectively prevents us from achieving any such goodsâ.
Humanitarian principles can be treated as virtues under this definition. They are acquired human qualities which enable us to achieve a good (the human imperative) which is internal to a practice (humanitarian action).
They should be seen as professional virtues in addition to any personal virtues (the more familiar virtues such as courage or patience) that aid workers might cultivate, in the same way that architects would cultivate different virtues to farmers.
4.
MacIntyre asserts that âA practice involves standards of excellence and obedience to rules as well as the achievement of goods. To enter into a practice is to accept the authority of those standards and the inadequacy of my own performance as judged by them.â
The institutions of humanitarian aidâwhether operational bodies such as the Red Cross/âRed Crescent movement, professional standards such as the Sphere Standards, or communities of practice such as the CALP Networkâprovide exactly this context.
You are correct to say that those institutions are not themselves possessed of the virtues, but they constitute the practice which is required to acquire these virtues, and within which the exercise of the virtue takes place.
*
This account is inadequateâit does not account for the wider swathe of humanitarian action happening outside the formal humanitarian sectorâbut it is sufficient to demonstrate that the concept of âhumanitarian virtuesâ is coherent with MacIntyreâs conception of virtue ethics.
I am perfectly happy with the fact that you are not a virtue ethicist, and therefore simply do not agree with this argument. Your accusation that I donât understand the concept of virtue ethics, however, simply does not hold water.
Youâre clear that you donât wish to continue this conversation because itâs not productive. Nevertheless I appreciate your engagement, so thank you for taking the time to comment over the past few days.