A recent post at the Blog of the APA claims so. Here's why I disagree... It's worth distinguishing three features of utilitarianism (only...| www.philosophyetc.net
While new substantive posts go on the substack, I plan to keep (cross-)posting annual review posts here, for ease of archiving.| Philosophy, et cetera
I started this blog 18 years ago, as a second-year undergraduate philosophy major. The first couple years were... very undergrad-y... but I think by 2006 or so I was doing some pretty interesting philosophy on here, much (but not all) of which I would still stand by. The next few years (heading into early grad school) were probably the peak years for the blog in terms of audience engagement, commonly getting dozens of comments per post.| Philosophy, et cetera
Matthew Adelstein kindly invited me & Michael Huemer to hash out our disagreements about utilitarianism over on his YouTube channel. The resulting discussion was fun and wide-ranging. In this post, I just want to highlight a couple of major themes that seemed fairly central to our dispute: (1) which intuitions we place the most weight on, and (2) the inferential role of wrongness.| Philosophy, et cetera
At Daily Nous, there's a discussion of Tech Advice for a New Philosophy Grad Student. There's some dispute about whether or not it's worth learning LaTeX. I recommend pandoc instead for those who are on the fence. You write in markdown, a simpler and more readable plain text syntax (compare *markdown italics* to \emph{LaTeX italics}, for example!). But it subsequently uses LaTeX to produce good-looking PDFs. Or it can just as easily convert into other document formats, such as Word .d...| Philosophy, et cetera
Epiphenomenalism and Idealism are two of the most maligned views in philosophy of mind. So it's kind of funny that Helen defends both. Something I really like about her papers is that they really bring out why these views are much more defensible -- or even appealing -- than others usually realize. This comes through especially strongly in her two latest papers:| Philosophy, et cetera
Those put-off by the putative counterexamples to Act Consequentialism may consider Rule Consequentialism a more appealing alternative. Michael Huemer goes so far as to suggest that it is "not a crazy view." In this post, I'll explain why I think Rule Consequentialism is not well-supported -- and, at least as standardly formulated, may even be crazy.| Philosophy, et cetera
Evan Dawson-Baglien wrote to me with some interesting thoughts on the challenge of incorporating non-persons into (non-total views of) population ethics. I asked him if he'd be willing to compose and share his thoughts as a guest post, and he generously agreed. Here's the result. Enjoy!* * *| Philosophy, et cetera
In 'Why I Am Not a Utilitarian', Michael Huemer objects that "there are so many counter-examples, and the intuitions about these examples are strong and widespread, it’s hard to see how utilitarianism could be justified overall." But I think it's actually much easier to bring utilitarianism (or something close to it) into reflective equilibrium with common sense intuitions than it would be for any competing deontological view. That's because I think the clash between utilitarianism and...| Philosophy, et cetera
In 'Emergence and Incremental Impact', I argued (contra Kingston and Sinnott-Armstrong) that emergent properties do nothing to undermine the basic case for individual impact: they're just another kind of threshold case, and thresholds are compatible with difference-making increments.| Philosophy, et cetera
In 'Against Longtermism', Eric Schwitzgebel writes: "I accept much of Ord's practical advice. I object only to justifying this caution by appeal to expectations about events a million years from now." He offers four objections, which are interesting and well worth considering, but I think ultimately unpersuasive. Let's consider them in turn.| Philosophy, et cetera
[Past annual reviews: 2020, 2019 & '18, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, and 2004.]| Philosophy, et cetera
My latest paper, 'Pandemic Ethics and Status Quo Risk', has just been accepted for publication in Public Health Ethics. Here's the abstract:| Philosophy, et cetera
Ethical theories are typically formulated as centrally concerning the concept of right action. Introductory ethics classes may define competing theories as offering different completions of the sentence: "An act is right iff...". And that probably works well enough for deontological theories, which are centrally concerned with delineating the boundaries of permissibility and obligation. But I think it's very misleading to treat consequentialist theories as seeking to answer this questi...| Philosophy, et cetera
An updated version of this post is now available at Good Thoughts.| Philosophy, et cetera
Reasonable people may disagree about the justifiability of early-pandemic lockdowns (while awaiting the availability of vaccines), but this is just nuts:| Philosophy, et cetera
Back in July, I mentioned our new introduction to population ethics. Since then, I've also added a chapter on Theories of Well-being, and -- brand new as of today -- Arguments for Utilitarianism.| Philosophy, et cetera
If you make a promise (and haven't been released from it), then you're obliged to keep your promise. The obligation is, in a sense, conditional. Note that you've no moral reason to go around making extra promises just so that you can keep them. Keeping promises isn't a good to be promoted in this way. (We might instead think that keeping a promise is neutral, while breaking one is bad.)| Philosophy, et cetera
Joe Carlsmith asks: is it possible you should maximize helium? Robust realism per se places no constraints on what the normative truths might end up being. So, in particular, there's no guarantee that what we objectively ought to do would hold any appeal whatsoever to us, even on ideal reflection -- the objective requirements could be anything! (Or so you might assume.)| Philosophy, et cetera
Three new-ish blogs (from the past year or so) that I figure are worth highlighting:| Philosophy, et cetera
One fundamental reason for favouring consequentialism is the basic teleological intuition that the primary purpose of agency is to realize preferable outcomes. If you have a choice between a better state of affairs and a worse one, it's very natural to think that the better state of affairs would be the better option to choose.| Philosophy, et cetera
In a rare online appearance, Helen is interviewed on Mind Chat by Philip Goff and Keith Frankish about her book-in-progress, The View From Everywhere: Realist Idealism Without God.| Philosophy, et cetera
This is terrible journalism:While [donating $1 billion to protect forests] is certainly notable, Bezos’s commitment to protecting the environment serves as a stark reminder that much of his legacy and largely untaxed fortune was built by companies that have staggering carbon footprints. Amazon’s carbon emissions have grown every year since 2018, and last year alone, when global carbon emissions fell roughly 7 percent, Amazon’s carbon emissions grew 19 percent.| Philosophy, et cetera
In 'The Means and the Good' (Analysis, forthcoming) Matthew Oliver argues that pluralist consequentialists can accommodate intuitions against using others as a means, on the model of how they can accommodate intuitions about desert:| Philosophy, et cetera
The UK's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation recently recommended against vaccinating children under 16 against Covid, despite granting that "the benefits from vaccination are marginally greater than the potential known harms." (Of course, aggregated over a subpopulation of millions, even "marginal" improvements in risk profile can result in several saved lives and scores or hundreds fewer hospitalizations. And, as Deepti Gurdasani makes clear in this thread,* all the evidence ...| Philosophy, et cetera
The Texas anti-abortion law enshrines the idea that others' interests legally trump an individual's right to bodily integrity. Of course, many would question whether a six-week embryo really has morally significant interests yet, but put such worries aside for now. I'm interested in how broadly this principle should be applied. For there are many needy individuals out whose moral status is much clearer than that of an embryo. Just consider any dialysis patient, for example. If bodil...| Philosophy, et cetera
Providing the questions for all of life's answers.| www.philosophyetc.net
[Part One in a series: Reading Benkler's Wealth of Networks .] How does information production differ from the production of material goods?...| www.philosophyetc.net
Over at Cato Unbound , Daniel Klein draws on the traditional conception of coercion as "the initiation of physical aggression" to argue that...| www.philosophyetc.net
My previous post established a conflict within libertarianism, in that enforcing property rights will involve coercive interference agains...| www.philosophyetc.net
It's generally recognized that our (American) response to the Covid-19 pandemic was disastrous. But I think far fewer appreciate the full sc...| www.philosophyetc.net
Is methodological individualism a stable position? It's atomistic in the sense that the value of society as a whole is reducible to the val...| www.philosophyetc.net
I find it helpful to think about the challenge of skepticism from the perspective of Bayesian confirmation . We begin with (i) a space of '...| www.philosophyetc.net
There's an interesting post over at the EA forums advocating live kidney donation as an effective way to do a lot of good. The authors est...| www.philosophyetc.net