“The fact there seems to be missing the way by which effective altruism determines which moral goals are worth pursuing … That seems to be the role of meta-ethics in effective altruism.”
Maybe the answer is not to be found in meta-ethics or in analysis generally, but in politics, that is, the raw realities of what people believe and want any given moment, and how consensus forms or doesn’t.
In other words, I think the answer to “what goals are worth pursuing” is, broadly, ask the people you propose to help what it is they want. Luckily, this happens regularly in all sorts of ways, including global scale surveys. This is part of what the value of “democracy” means to me.
I’m not averse to such an approach. I think the criticism how effective altruism determines a consensus of what defines or philosopically grounds “the good” comes from philosophers or other scholars who are weary of populist consensus on ethics when it’s in no way formalized. I’m bringing in David Moss to address this point; he’ll know more.
<Maybe the answer is not to be found in meta-ethics or in analysis generally, but in politics, that is, the raw realities of what people believe and want any given moment, and how consensus forms or doesn’t.
In other words, I think the answer to “what goals are worth pursuing” is, broadly, ask the people you propose to help what it is they want. Luckily, this happens regularly in all sorts of ways, including global scale surveys.>
I guess it depends on what you mean by “what people believe and want any given moment.” If you interpret this as: the results of a life satisfaction survey or maximising preferences or something, then the result will look pretty much like standard consequentialist EA.
If you mean something like: the output of people’s decisions based on collective deliberation, e.g. what a community decides they want collectively as the result of a political process, then it might be (probably will be) something totally different to what you would get if you were trying to maximise preferences.
“The fact there seems to be missing the way by which effective altruism determines which moral goals are worth pursuing … That seems to be the role of meta-ethics in effective altruism.”
Maybe the answer is not to be found in meta-ethics or in analysis generally, but in politics, that is, the raw realities of what people believe and want any given moment, and how consensus forms or doesn’t.
In other words, I think the answer to “what goals are worth pursuing” is, broadly, ask the people you propose to help what it is they want. Luckily, this happens regularly in all sorts of ways, including global scale surveys. This is part of what the value of “democracy” means to me.
A man named Horst Rittel—who also coined “wicked problem”—wrote a wonderful essay on the relationship between planning for solving social problems and politics which seems appropriate here http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~ellendo/rittel/rittel-reasoning.pdf
tl;dr some kinds of knowledge are instrumental, but visions for the future are unavoidably subjective and political.
I’m not averse to such an approach. I think the criticism how effective altruism determines a consensus of what defines or philosopically grounds “the good” comes from philosophers or other scholars who are weary of populist consensus on ethics when it’s in no way formalized. I’m bringing in David Moss to address this point; he’ll know more.
<Maybe the answer is not to be found in meta-ethics or in analysis generally, but in politics, that is, the raw realities of what people believe and want any given moment, and how consensus forms or doesn’t.
In other words, I think the answer to “what goals are worth pursuing” is, broadly, ask the people you propose to help what it is they want. Luckily, this happens regularly in all sorts of ways, including global scale surveys.>
I guess it depends on what you mean by “what people believe and want any given moment.” If you interpret this as: the results of a life satisfaction survey or maximising preferences or something, then the result will look pretty much like standard consequentialist EA.
If you mean something like: the output of people’s decisions based on collective deliberation, e.g. what a community decides they want collectively as the result of a political process, then it might be (probably will be) something totally different to what you would get if you were trying to maximise preferences.
Which of these is closest to the thing meant?