It is certainly an important disagreement. There are loads of literatures in political theory that aim to shed light on the way different political problems and practical contexts might properly shape our normative conclusions. Longtermists seem to ignore those debates, which might be fine if their view wasn’t, as I try and show in the paper, deeply political.
Views that take seriously political concepts, constraints and contexts do not indulge in 'uncritical vibes and bias’. It’s partly effective altruism’s tendency to ignore questions about politics - for example, about power, democracy and the processes which produce social deprivation - that make it a fundamentally conservative movement, as many critics have pointed out.
I'm not sure whether I fully understand what 'low decoupling' is, as I came across the idea for the first time in your post and have looked at it only briefly. But yeah, I don't think it will be a useful concept around which to locate disagreements between longtermists and critics, although that will depend on the specifics. I'm not sure there is a straightforward term that will carve up the field. The safest approach is to engage with the substantive details of particular arguments - that's what I at least try to do in the paper!
Again, I’m worried - and I think people with feminist commitments in general will be worried – about an influential view about our collective priorities which inculcates in people the belief that people can do something morally good by having kids. That’s a concern about the politics of longtermism, which I characterise (in passing!) in terms of moralising procreative choice. Longtermists clearly don’t share this concern, nor do you.
I don’t take a view on the “evaluative fact” of whether the intuition of neutrality is correct; rather, my general argument in the paper is that longtermists have been unwilling to engage with political thought and as a result arrive at political positions that are both ambiguous and unattractive. Your original post and subsequent comments seem illustrative in this regard. Attempting to construe some disagreement about longtermism in terms of a simple logical fallacy serves, in my view, to conceal lots of the detail relevant to criticisms of the view, as I have alluded to in my responses. Likewise, to disparagingly characterise positions as ‘low-decoupling’ looks like asserting the abstract and impartial perspective as the authority for making claims about the social world, which is precisely what is at stake in debates between longtermism and its critics.
Probably we should leave it here, although feel free to send me your future writing on the topic, as I’d be interested in taking a look.
Thanks for responding and clarifying. You might be right that I overstate the point when I describe the commitment as ‘basic’, at least in the sense that an opposition to this particular claim in population ethics is not central to feminist writing or activism. But given the role moralised views about procreation have played in the subordination of women, there does seem to be a tension between this feature of longtermism and feminism as a political project, and that’s what I was trying to get at.
I’m still worried about the moralism of longtermism here, even in light of the fallacy you formulate against my weaker claim. This isn’t necessarily because I think longtermists will subject individuals to criticism for their choices. It’s more because I understand longtermism as a view about our ‘collective priorities’ which is supposed to have a range of practical upshots. If rejecting the intuition of neutrality is central to that project, then it’s hard to see how it can avoid a moralism about procreation. Longtermists should want people to think and act as if having kids is a morally good thing to do, and MacAskill, as I recall anyway, is pretty open about this.
(Note there’s plenty more to say about moralism than I say in my previous comment and, as I suggested before, about all of this than I say in that passage of the paper.)
I’m your first and only example of a ‘low-decoupling academic’. You mischaracterise my view though. I don’t think longtermism implies we have duties ‘to have as many kids as possible’, nor do I say that in the paper. What I say, as you make clear in your footnote, is that longtermism ‘seems to entail a moralism about procreative choice that is in tension with basic feminist commitments’. Those two claims are quite different.
To moralise about something, in the pejorative sense, is (roughly) to subject a decision or domain to moral evaluation in a way that is inappropriate or out of place. By rejecting the intuition of neutrality, longtermists seem to believe there is a prior moral reason, independent of the circumstances, preferences and plans of those considering procreation, which bears on the decision about whether to have a child. I suspect - though note the offending sentence is an aside in the paper and not central to any of the arguments - that feminists will think the decision about whether to procreate is not one which should be subject to moral evaluation in this way. That might be wrong about what feminists think, or otherwise implausible as a view about procreative choice, but it’s not a claim about a putative duty to procreate.
It’s at least good to see that someone has read my paper!
It is certainly an important disagreement. There are loads of literatures in political theory that aim to shed light on the way different political problems and practical contexts might properly shape our normative conclusions. Longtermists seem to ignore those debates, which might be fine if their view wasn’t, as I try and show in the paper, deeply political.
Views that take seriously political concepts, constraints and contexts do not indulge in 'uncritical vibes and bias’. It’s partly effective altruism’s tendency to ignore questions about politics - for example, about power, democracy and the processes which produce social deprivation - that make it a fundamentally conservative movement, as many critics have pointed out.
I'm not sure whether I fully understand what 'low decoupling' is, as I came across the idea for the first time in your post and have looked at it only briefly. But yeah, I don't think it will be a useful concept around which to locate disagreements between longtermists and critics, although that will depend on the specifics. I'm not sure there is a straightforward term that will carve up the field. The safest approach is to engage with the substantive details of particular arguments - that's what I at least try to do in the paper!
Again, I’m worried - and I think people with feminist commitments in general will be worried – about an influential view about our collective priorities which inculcates in people the belief that people can do something morally good by having kids. That’s a concern about the politics of longtermism, which I characterise (in passing!) in terms of moralising procreative choice. Longtermists clearly don’t share this concern, nor do you.
I don’t take a view on the “evaluative fact” of whether the intuition of neutrality is correct; rather, my general argument in the paper is that longtermists have been unwilling to engage with political thought and as a result arrive at political positions that are both ambiguous and unattractive. Your original post and subsequent comments seem illustrative in this regard. Attempting to construe some disagreement about longtermism in terms of a simple logical fallacy serves, in my view, to conceal lots of the detail relevant to criticisms of the view, as I have alluded to in my responses. Likewise, to disparagingly characterise positions as ‘low-decoupling’ looks like asserting the abstract and impartial perspective as the authority for making claims about the social world, which is precisely what is at stake in debates between longtermism and its critics.
Probably we should leave it here, although feel free to send me your future writing on the topic, as I’d be interested in taking a look.
Hi Richard,
Thanks for responding and clarifying. You might be right that I overstate the point when I describe the commitment as ‘basic’, at least in the sense that an opposition to this particular claim in population ethics is not central to feminist writing or activism. But given the role moralised views about procreation have played in the subordination of women, there does seem to be a tension between this feature of longtermism and feminism as a political project, and that’s what I was trying to get at.
I’m still worried about the moralism of longtermism here, even in light of the fallacy you formulate against my weaker claim. This isn’t necessarily because I think longtermists will subject individuals to criticism for their choices. It’s more because I understand longtermism as a view about our ‘collective priorities’ which is supposed to have a range of practical upshots. If rejecting the intuition of neutrality is central to that project, then it’s hard to see how it can avoid a moralism about procreation. Longtermists should want people to think and act as if having kids is a morally good thing to do, and MacAskill, as I recall anyway, is pretty open about this.
(Note there’s plenty more to say about moralism than I say in my previous comment and, as I suggested before, about all of this than I say in that passage of the paper.)
I hope this does something to clarify!
Hi Richard,
I’m your first and only example of a ‘low-decoupling academic’. You mischaracterise my view though. I don’t think longtermism implies we have duties ‘to have as many kids as possible’, nor do I say that in the paper. What I say, as you make clear in your footnote, is that longtermism ‘seems to entail a moralism about procreative choice that is in tension with basic feminist commitments’. Those two claims are quite different.
To moralise about something, in the pejorative sense, is (roughly) to subject a decision or domain to moral evaluation in a way that is inappropriate or out of place. By rejecting the intuition of neutrality, longtermists seem to believe there is a prior moral reason, independent of the circumstances, preferences and plans of those considering procreation, which bears on the decision about whether to have a child. I suspect - though note the offending sentence is an aside in the paper and not central to any of the arguments - that feminists will think the decision about whether to procreate is not one which should be subject to moral evaluation in this way. That might be wrong about what feminists think, or otherwise implausible as a view about procreative choice, but it’s not a claim about a putative duty to procreate.
It’s at least good to see that someone has read my paper!