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!
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!