Hi all, I'm currently working on a contribution to a special issue of Public Affairs Quarterly on the topic of "philosophical issues in effective altruism". I'm hoping that my contribution can provide a helpful survey of common philosophical objections to EA (and why I think those objections fail)—the sort of thing that might be useful to assign in an undergraduate philosophy class discussing EA.
The abstract:
Effective altruism sounds so innocuous—who could possibly be opposed to doing good, more effectively? Yet it has inspired significant backlash in recent years. This paper addresses some common misconceptions, and argues that the core ideas of effective altruism are both excellent and widely neglected. Reasonable people may disagree on details of implementation, but every decent person should share the basic goals or values underlying effective altruism.
I cover:
- Five objections to moral prioritization (including the systems critique)
- Earning to give
- Billionaire philanthropy
- Longtermism; and
- Political critique.
Given the broad (survey-style) scope of the paper, each argument is addressed pretty briefly. But I hope it nonetheless contains some useful insights. For example, I suggest the following "simple dilemma for those who claim that EA is incapable of recognizing the need for 'systemic change'":
Either their total evidence supports the idea that attempting to promote systemic change would be a better bet (in expectation) than safer alternatives, or it does not. If it does, then EA principles straightforwardly endorse attempting to promote systemic change. If it does not, then by their own lights they have no basis for thinking it a better option. In neither case does it constitute a coherent objection to EA principles.
On earning to give:
Rare exceptions aside, most careers are presumably permissible. The basic idea of earning to give is just that we have good moral reasons to prefer better-paying careers, from among our permissible options, if we would donate the excess earnings. There can thus be excellent altruistic reasons to pursue higher pay. This claim is both true and widely neglected. The same may be said of the comparative claim that one could easily have more moral reason to pursue "earning to give" than to pursue a conventionally "altruistic" career that more directly helps people. This comparative claim, too, is both true and widely neglected. Neither of these important truths is threatened by the deontologist's claim that one should not pursue an impermissible career. The relevant moral claim is just that the directness of our moral aid is not intrinsically morally significant, so a wider range of possible actions are potentially worth considering, for altruistic reasons, than people commonly recognize.
On billionaire philanthropy:
EA explicitly acknowledges the fact that billionaire philanthropists are capable of doing immense good, not just immense harm. Some find this an inconvenient truth, and may dislike EA for highlighting it. But I do not think it is objectionable to acknowledge relevant facts, even when politically inconvenient... Unless critics seriously want billionaires to deliberately try to do less good rather than more, it's hard to make sense of their opposing EA principles on the basis of how they apply to billionaires.
I still have time to make revisions -- and space to expand the paper if needed -- so if anyone has time to read the whole draft and offer any feedback (either in comments below, or privately via DM/email/whatever), that would be most welcome!
I think this paper is weak from the outset in similar ways to the entire philosophical project of EA overall. You start with the definition of EA as "the project of trying to find the best ways of helping others, and putting them into practice". In that definition "the best" means "the most effective", which is one of the ways in which EA arguments rhetorically load the dice. If I don't agree that the most effective way to help people (under EA definitions) is always and necessarily the best way to help people, then the whole paper is weakened. Essentially, one ends up preaching to the choir - which is fine if that's what one wants to do, of course.
I take issue with a number of the arguments in the paper, but I have no desire to respond to the entire thing. However I will focus on the part of the Moral Prioritisation section that quotes Mark Goldring of Oxfam - not because I'm a fan of him or Oxfam, which I am not, but because your misinterpretation of his position is quite illustrative. You claim that "Goldring seems to be implying that so long as we help some children in each country, it does not matter how many children we end up abandoning", but this is not the argument or an implication of the argument.
First, Goldring is referring to Oxfam's country portfolio rather than a specific group of children, and he obviously believed that applying EA principles to Oxfam's portfolio would require the organisation simply to cease working in South Sudan because the cost of getting children into education is higher in South Sudan than e.g. Bangladesh. It seems to me that his belief was correct, and that it is morally unjustifiable to abandon the people of South Sudan because somebody sitting in a comfortable office somewhere has done some calculations and decided that those people are not worth it.
You may object to my characterisation of EA in this way, but as far as I can tell that is the fundamental argument. Oxfam claims to, tries to and perhaps even does operate on the basis of need, and the need of children in South Sudan is at least equal to the need of children in Bangladesh. In fact it might be greater, since as Goldring points out, the barriers to school attendance are high in South Sudan compared to Bangladesh. This also highlights (to me, at least) that these situations are sufficiently complex that the type of utilitarian calculus applied by EA is largely self-defeating in many real-world attempts to help people.
Anticipating the downvotes, hoping for discussion.
That's a non-sequitur. There's no inconsistency between holding a certain conclusion -- that "every decent person should share the basic goals or values underlying effective altruism" -- and "honestly engaging with criticisms". I do both. (Specifically, I engage with criticisms of EA principles; I'm very explicit that the paper is not concerned with criticisms of "EA" as an entity.)
I've since reworded the abstract since the "every de... (read more)