I am not considering what Bostrom/Grace/Besinger/ do philosophy strictu sensu in this question.
After repleaceability considerations have been used at Ben Todd and Will Mac Askill’s theses at Oxford, and Nick Beckstead made the philosophical case for the far future, is there still large marginal return to be had on doing research on something that is philosophy strictu sensu?
I ask this because my impression is that after Parfit, Singer, Unger, Ord, Mac Askill and Todd we have run out of efforts that have great consequential impacts in philosophical discourse. Not because improvements cannot be made, but because they would be minor in relation to using that time for other less strictu sensu endeavours.
Personally, I wouldn’t feel bad if we left technical philosophy to MacAskill and Ord for a while, as they’re surely going to keep doing it. But maybe you want to get professorship somehow, and if so, then your choices are reduced.
I’ve left the field of philosophy (where I was mostly so I could research what seemed interesting and not what the university wanted, as Chalmers puts it “studying the philosophy of x” where x is what interests me at any time) and am now in biological anthropology.
It seems that being a professor in non-philosophy fields is much easier than in philosophy, from my many years researching the topic. Also switching fields between undergrad and grad school is easy, in case someone reading this does not know.
Interesting. I’m sure you could carve out an interesting niche in that area. One immediately obvious issue in that area is how modern humans use various environmental resources. More distantly relevant issues that you might still be closer to than any other current EA academics would be different examples of the culture of science, or innovation, and human views on our place in relation to evolution, including transhumanism. I’m sure there are others.
It seems like you may have more insight than anyone else on whether you should go into philosophy. If you have a high-impact idea or set of ideas that you think you can contribute, perhaps you can go in. Before MacAskill and Ord, I don’t think many people thought there was an applicable and useful argument to be made in philosophy, but they proved that wrong.
The returns of philosophy are often not seen immediately. It was philosophers, after all, who brought us consequentialism. Without consequentialism, it is doubtful that EA exists. However, there is still a remaining question as to whether future philosophical breakthroughs will have as wide of an impact or if the insight will be far more technical in nature.
I am not considering what Bostrom/Grace/Besinger/ do philosophy strictu sensu in this question.
After repleaceability considerations have been used at Ben Todd and Will Mac Askill’s theses at Oxford, and Nick Beckstead made the philosophical case for the far future, is there still large marginal return to be had on doing research on something that is philosophy strictu sensu?
I ask this because my impression is that after Parfit, Singer, Unger, Ord, Mac Askill and Todd we have run out of efforts that have great consequential impacts in philosophical discourse. Not because improvements cannot be made, but because they would be minor in relation to using that time for other less strictu sensu endeavours.
Personally, I wouldn’t feel bad if we left technical philosophy to MacAskill and Ord for a while, as they’re surely going to keep doing it. But maybe you want to get professorship somehow, and if so, then your choices are reduced.
I’ve left the field of philosophy (where I was mostly so I could research what seemed interesting and not what the university wanted, as Chalmers puts it “studying the philosophy of x” where x is what interests me at any time) and am now in biological anthropology. It seems that being a professor in non-philosophy fields is much easier than in philosophy, from my many years researching the topic. Also switching fields between undergrad and grad school is easy, in case someone reading this does not know.
Interesting. I’m sure you could carve out an interesting niche in that area. One immediately obvious issue in that area is how modern humans use various environmental resources. More distantly relevant issues that you might still be closer to than any other current EA academics would be different examples of the culture of science, or innovation, and human views on our place in relation to evolution, including transhumanism. I’m sure there are others.
It seems like you may have more insight than anyone else on whether you should go into philosophy. If you have a high-impact idea or set of ideas that you think you can contribute, perhaps you can go in. Before MacAskill and Ord, I don’t think many people thought there was an applicable and useful argument to be made in philosophy, but they proved that wrong.
The returns of philosophy are often not seen immediately. It was philosophers, after all, who brought us consequentialism. Without consequentialism, it is doubtful that EA exists. However, there is still a remaining question as to whether future philosophical breakthroughs will have as wide of an impact or if the insight will be far more technical in nature.