On your account, as you say, bringing people into a life of suffering doesn’t harm them and preventing someone from dying doesn’t benefit them. So, you could also have said “lots of EA activities are devoted to preventing people from dying and preventing lives of suffering, but neither activity benefits anyone, so the definition is wrong”. This is a harder sell, and it seems like you’re just criticising the definition of EA on the basis of a weird account of the meaning of ‘benefitting others’.
I would guess that the vast majorty of people think that preventing a future life of suffering and saving lives both benefit somebody. If so, the vast majority of people would be committed to something which denies your criticism of the definition of EA.
weird account of the meaning of ‘benefitting others’.
The account might be uncommon in ordinarly langauge, but most philosophers accept creating lives doesn’t benefit the created person. I’m at least being consistent and I don’t think that consistency is objectionable. Calling it the view weird is unhelpful.
But suppose people typically think it’s odd to claim you’re benefiting someone by creating them. Then the stated definition of what’s EAs about will be at least somewhat misleading to them when you explain EA in greater detail. Consistent with other things I’ve written on this forum, I think EA should take avoiding being misleading very seriously.
I’m not claiming this is a massive point, it just stuck out to me.
I suppose there are two ways of securing neutrality—letting people pick their own meaning of ‘doing good’, and letting people pick their own meaning of ‘benefiting others’
On your account, as you say, bringing people into a life of suffering doesn’t harm them and preventing someone from dying doesn’t benefit them. So, you could also have said “lots of EA activities are devoted to preventing people from dying and preventing lives of suffering, but neither activity benefits anyone, so the definition is wrong”. This is a harder sell, and it seems like you’re just criticising the definition of EA on the basis of a weird account of the meaning of ‘benefitting others’.
I would guess that the vast majorty of people think that preventing a future life of suffering and saving lives both benefit somebody. If so, the vast majority of people would be committed to something which denies your criticism of the definition of EA.
The account might be uncommon in ordinarly langauge, but most philosophers accept creating lives doesn’t benefit the created person. I’m at least being consistent and I don’t think that consistency is objectionable. Calling it the view weird is unhelpful.
But suppose people typically think it’s odd to claim you’re benefiting someone by creating them. Then the stated definition of what’s EAs about will be at least somewhat misleading to them when you explain EA in greater detail. Consistent with other things I’ve written on this forum, I think EA should take avoiding being misleading very seriously.
I’m not claiming this is a massive point, it just stuck out to me.
Agreed, weirdness accusation retracted.
I suppose there are two ways of securing neutrality—letting people pick their own meaning of ‘doing good’, and letting people pick their own meaning of ‘benefiting others’