Will: Thanks for posting this! I look forward to more posts in the series. To expand on a question from another commenter:
What has it been like to engage the broader philosophical community with arguments based on effective altruism? Do you feel as though EA is generally taken seriously as a philosophical perspective, even when people don’t agree with it?
I’d guess that the people you’re trying to persuade are mostly bystanders rather than direct opponents; have you had good results in...
...moving either type of philosopher closer to your position?
Convincing philosophers to start donating/examine EA-relevant-topics? (Recently, that is—since it seems clear that you were influential in getting a lot of philosophers on board with EA in the early days.)
It seems to me like EA has changed and adapted new ideas reasonably often over the last ten years, but I’m not sure how much of this change came out of conversations with philosophers and other intellectuals who were generally opposed to the movement or the ideas. Have you gotten any especially useful feedback from people who disagreed with EA’s core arguments? (Say, people who were as critical or more critical than Temkin?)
1. Yes, it’s definitely taken seriously but it’s currently widely misunderstood—associated very closely with Peter Singer’s views.
2. I think that Larry himself is more sympathetic to what EA is doing after my and others’ conversations with him, or at least has a more nuanced view. But in terms of bystanders—yes, from my impressions at the lectures I think the audience came out more EA-sympathetic than when they went in. And especially at the graduate level there’s a lot of recent interest, driven primarily by GPI, and for that purpose it’s important to engage with critiques, especially if they are high-profile.
3. Honestly, not really. Outsiders usually have some straw man perception of EA, and so the critiques aren’t that helpful. The best critiques I’ve found have tended to come from insiders, but I’m hoping that will change as more unsympathetic academics better understand what EA is and isn’t claiming. I do find engaging with philosophers who have very different views of morality (e.g. that there’s just no such thing as ‘the good’) very helpful though.
Will: Thanks for posting this! I look forward to more posts in the series. To expand on a question from another commenter:
What has it been like to engage the broader philosophical community with arguments based on effective altruism? Do you feel as though EA is generally taken seriously as a philosophical perspective, even when people don’t agree with it?
I’d guess that the people you’re trying to persuade are mostly bystanders rather than direct opponents; have you had good results in...
...moving either type of philosopher closer to your position?
Convincing philosophers to start donating/examine EA-relevant-topics? (Recently, that is—since it seems clear that you were influential in getting a lot of philosophers on board with EA in the early days.)
It seems to me like EA has changed and adapted new ideas reasonably often over the last ten years, but I’m not sure how much of this change came out of conversations with philosophers and other intellectuals who were generally opposed to the movement or the ideas. Have you gotten any especially useful feedback from people who disagreed with EA’s core arguments? (Say, people who were as critical or more critical than Temkin?)
In order:
1. Yes, it’s definitely taken seriously but it’s currently widely misunderstood—associated very closely with Peter Singer’s views.
2. I think that Larry himself is more sympathetic to what EA is doing after my and others’ conversations with him, or at least has a more nuanced view. But in terms of bystanders—yes, from my impressions at the lectures I think the audience came out more EA-sympathetic than when they went in. And especially at the graduate level there’s a lot of recent interest, driven primarily by GPI, and for that purpose it’s important to engage with critiques, especially if they are high-profile.
3. Honestly, not really. Outsiders usually have some straw man perception of EA, and so the critiques aren’t that helpful. The best critiques I’ve found have tended to come from insiders, but I’m hoping that will change as more unsympathetic academics better understand what EA is and isn’t claiming. I do find engaging with philosophers who have very different views of morality (e.g. that there’s just no such thing as ‘the good’) very helpful though.