William MacAskill says the following in a chapter in The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy:
As defined by the leaders of the movement, effective altruism is the use of evidence and reason to work out how to benefit others as much as possible and the taking action on that basis. So defined, effective altruism is a project rather than a set of normative commitments. It is both a research project—to figure out how to do the most good—and a practical project, of implementing the best guesses we have about how to do the most good.
But then he continues to highlight various normative commitments, which indicate that it is, in addition to being a question, an ideology:
The project is: • Maximizing. The point of the project is to try to do as much good as possible. • Science-aligned. The best means to figuring out how to do the most good is the scientific method, broadly construed to include reliance on both empirical observation and careful rigorous argument or theoretical models. • Tentatively welfarist. As a tentative hypothesis or a first approximation, goodness is about improving the welfare of individuals. • Impartial. Everyone’s welfare is to count equally.
Normative commitments aren’t sufficient to show that something is an ideology. See my comment. Arguably ‘science-aligned’ is methodological instead but it’s very vague and personally I would not include it as part of the definition of EA.
William MacAskill says the following in a chapter in The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy:
But then he continues to highlight various normative commitments, which indicate that it is, in addition to being a question, an ideology:
Normative commitments aren’t sufficient to show that something is an ideology. See my comment. Arguably ‘science-aligned’ is methodological instead but it’s very vague and personally I would not include it as part of the definition of EA.