I think you’re quite right to identify this as an important distinguishing feature of effective altruism.
I wonder about terminology. The feature that we care about motivates people to care about everyone in the world, but also to care about non-humans and future generations. We could try to claim the term “cosmopolitan” to mean that, but it’s more of a departure from traditional usage. On the other hand I don’t immediately see great alternatives (I agree that “impartiality” doesn’t convey the right impression). Can anyone do better?
When I was writing this post, I meant to define cosmopolitanism as something that does not take a position either way on nonhumans or future generations. Two reasons for this:
My goal was to increase self-awareness about concern for people in other countries being a distinctive feature of effective altruism. Whereas people who are especially concerned about animals or future generations tend to already be pretty self-aware that not everyone shares their position.
As Robert Wiblin noted in his summit talk, the effective altruism community does have a few people who dissent from the majority view on animals and the far future. Whereas I literally don’t know of anyone who disagrees about cosmopolitanism regarding humans.
That’s fair. Though in that case I’d have liked to have seen some explicit contrast with these other questions (if only to say that you didn’t mean that, so that readers didn’t immediately start thinking on those lines).
Agreed. If you used cosmopolitanism to mean a citizen of the cosmos, then you would be getting closer to that original definition. I note the following comment on definitions on Wikipedia:
‘Definitions of cosmopolitanism usually begin with the Greek etymology of “citizen of the world”. However, as Appiah points out, “world” in the original sense meant “cosmos” or “universe”, not earth or globe as current use assumes.’
We could break down ‘impartiality’ into multiple doctrines, e.g.:
cosmopolitanism—we should improve the welfare of sentient beings, regardless of where or when they exist.
egalitarianism—we should improve the welfare of sentient beings, regardless of what kind of being they are (e.g., regardless of sex, species, and cultural background)
We could also break it down further—e.g., say that all EAs accept spatial cosmopolitanism, but some reject temporal cosmopolitanism.
I think you’re quite right to identify this as an important distinguishing feature of effective altruism.
I wonder about terminology. The feature that we care about motivates people to care about everyone in the world, but also to care about non-humans and future generations. We could try to claim the term “cosmopolitan” to mean that, but it’s more of a departure from traditional usage. On the other hand I don’t immediately see great alternatives (I agree that “impartiality” doesn’t convey the right impression). Can anyone do better?
When I was writing this post, I meant to define cosmopolitanism as something that does not take a position either way on nonhumans or future generations. Two reasons for this:
My goal was to increase self-awareness about concern for people in other countries being a distinctive feature of effective altruism. Whereas people who are especially concerned about animals or future generations tend to already be pretty self-aware that not everyone shares their position.
As Robert Wiblin noted in his summit talk, the effective altruism community does have a few people who dissent from the majority view on animals and the far future. Whereas I literally don’t know of anyone who disagrees about cosmopolitanism regarding humans.
That’s fair. Though in that case I’d have liked to have seen some explicit contrast with these other questions (if only to say that you didn’t mean that, so that readers didn’t immediately start thinking on those lines).
Agreed. If you used cosmopolitanism to mean a citizen of the cosmos, then you would be getting closer to that original definition. I note the following comment on definitions on Wikipedia:
‘Definitions of cosmopolitanism usually begin with the Greek etymology of “citizen of the world”. However, as Appiah points out, “world” in the original sense meant “cosmos” or “universe”, not earth or globe as current use assumes.’
We could break down ‘impartiality’ into multiple doctrines, e.g.:
cosmopolitanism—we should improve the welfare of sentient beings, regardless of where or when they exist.
egalitarianism—we should improve the welfare of sentient beings, regardless of what kind of being they are (e.g., regardless of sex, species, and cultural background)
We could also break it down further—e.g., say that all EAs accept spatial cosmopolitanism, but some reject temporal cosmopolitanism.