Dec 29, 2023·edited Dec 29, 2023Liked by Richard Y Chappell
The beneficentrism concept has actually slightly improved my life, unironically. It's helped me see what I have in common with e.g. religious views on ethics more clearly and feel more like we're all in this together. Also, I think that I now finally properly understand the point Sam Harris was making in the Moral Landscape which got panned by a lot of professional philosophers because it was interpreted as making baseless claims about meta ethics. But it wasn't, Sam Harris was (less precisely than you) pointing out the truth of Beneficentrism!
Thanks, that's nice to hear! And an interesting charitable interpretation of Harris. (I, too, always thought he was making baseless claims about metaethics...)
It's a bit complicated. If you read the entire book, and the arguments and intuition pumps that he brings up, I think it's clear that he is pushing towards a conclusion that morality always, in some shape or form, cares about the well-being of conscious beings, which is basically beneficentrism, but because at the time he didn't really get metaethics, he sometimes also makes baseless metaethical claims about what this normative ethical fact means. And he's since gotten wiser about all of this, and spoken to serious moral philosophers. So I think with some edits, the book is basically a very good persuasive argument for the undeniable truth of beneficentrism.
Dec 29, 2023·edited Jan 1Liked by Richard Y Chappell
Why don't more moral/political philosophers have a substack or blog about their topic and engage with comments? [Three others I know of are Michael Huemer, Eric Schitzgibel, RICHARD PETTIGREW. "New Work in Philosophy" is another but has very little engagement. Huemer also doesn't really engage comments.]
One possibility is that utilitarians have a stronger motive to evangelize than proponents of "agent-relative" views under which getting others to act ethically is not necessarily a priority.
But is it true in general that utilitarian philosophers have more blogs about ethics than non-utilitarians?
As an outsider, sometimes I wonder if the formal editorial process is the only place moral/political philosophers engage across the aisle (since it's by force). But the turnaround time of formal journals is much too slow to facilitate efficient dialogue. I think blogs could help with that.
I also find it odd that more philosophers don't blog! And I agree more engagement would seem an obvious boon for the discipline.
Some people say to me things like, "I just don't have that many ideas." Others might be more focused on just doing the sort of work that's professionally rewarded. (Though this raises the question of why philosophers aren't professionally rewarded for (i) having a proven track record of regularly generating lots of interesting ideas & engagement, and (ii) demonstrated passion for their work. It's probably hard to formalize this for purposes of tenure & promotion. But if someone like Huemer or Schwitzgebel ever applied for a job at my institution, I'd be very swayed by the knowledge that they have lots of interesting ideas and like to discuss them -- I would expect that to make them a better colleague. If my evaluative dispositions were more widely shared, it seems like that could provide some professional incentive...)
Just noticed your Footnote 4 in "Bleeding-Heart Consequentialism":
"If anything, I might slightly prefer my death to be useful rather than to be mere collateral damage."
I was just arguing yesterday that the "Doctrine of Double Effect" would imply that a cosmetic company testing on animals would be *morally better* if it knows the tests are completely useless and does them anyway, than if it knows they're useful for reducing harm to customers. I don't imagine that a rabbit or beagle would be able to share your intuition there, but the straightforward implication from DDE is insane nonetheless.
I don't think the best versions of DDE would have that implication: gratuitous intended harm should come out worst of all, as I understand the view. Gratuitous harming in general should probably count as "intending" (not merely "foreseeing") harm. And the loss of any benefit makes it impossible to justify causing any harm whatsoever, whether intended or merely foreseen.
But the view does seem to violate Pareto: we can imagine cases where collaterally harming S comes out as permissible, but a Pareto-superior alternative that only does half the harm to S, but does it as a means, is not permissible. (Maybe some would just make special exceptions to permit the means-harm in such cases? I imagine Kamm must discuss this somewhere.)
Dec 30, 2023·edited Dec 30, 2023Liked by Richard Y Chappell
I was thinking of the "unnecessary" testing as something that was an unavoidable part of the process (e.g. mandated by government, crucial for marketing purposes) but not inherent to the stated goal (ensuring that the product is safe).
But then they're back to harming the animals *as a means* (to getting government approval, or whatever). The fact that the intermediate goal is "not inherent to the stated goal" doesn't preclude the agent's harmful involvement of their victims from being instrumental and hence "intended" in the relevant sense.
Dec 31, 2023·edited Dec 31, 2023Liked by Richard Y Chappell
Oh, I very much agree with your understanding of the morally relevant feature here; I'm drawing my analogy upon the concept that seems to be invoked by deontologists in the applied contexts where I encounter DDE.
In the vegan advocacy context, DDE is typically invoked in defense of animal deaths in plant agriculture, which are clearly instrumental but claimed to be "not inherent" because some idealized process of producing plant foods need not involve any such harm to sentients. I don't see how an instrumental consideration like economic necessity would be taken to differ deontically from an instrumental consideration like legal requirement. If poisoning of rodents in vegetable production isn't "inherent" to vegetable production, then animal testing to meet scientifically useless government demands shouldn't count as "inherent" to producing safe cosmetics, either.
Returning to my original claim, there does seem to be a kind of animal testing that would seem to fit this deontic concept of "inherent" (scientifically necessary to establish safety for humans), and the claim that such testing is worse than mandated but useless testing, is absurd.
The beneficentrism concept has actually slightly improved my life, unironically. It's helped me see what I have in common with e.g. religious views on ethics more clearly and feel more like we're all in this together. Also, I think that I now finally properly understand the point Sam Harris was making in the Moral Landscape which got panned by a lot of professional philosophers because it was interpreted as making baseless claims about meta ethics. But it wasn't, Sam Harris was (less precisely than you) pointing out the truth of Beneficentrism!
Thanks, that's nice to hear! And an interesting charitable interpretation of Harris. (I, too, always thought he was making baseless claims about metaethics...)
It's a bit complicated. If you read the entire book, and the arguments and intuition pumps that he brings up, I think it's clear that he is pushing towards a conclusion that morality always, in some shape or form, cares about the well-being of conscious beings, which is basically beneficentrism, but because at the time he didn't really get metaethics, he sometimes also makes baseless metaethical claims about what this normative ethical fact means. And he's since gotten wiser about all of this, and spoken to serious moral philosophers. So I think with some edits, the book is basically a very good persuasive argument for the undeniable truth of beneficentrism.
Why don't more moral/political philosophers have a substack or blog about their topic and engage with comments? [Three others I know of are Michael Huemer, Eric Schitzgibel, RICHARD PETTIGREW. "New Work in Philosophy" is another but has very little engagement. Huemer also doesn't really engage comments.]
One possibility is that utilitarians have a stronger motive to evangelize than proponents of "agent-relative" views under which getting others to act ethically is not necessarily a priority.
But is it true in general that utilitarian philosophers have more blogs about ethics than non-utilitarians?
As an outsider, sometimes I wonder if the formal editorial process is the only place moral/political philosophers engage across the aisle (since it's by force). But the turnaround time of formal journals is much too slow to facilitate efficient dialogue. I think blogs could help with that.
I also find it odd that more philosophers don't blog! And I agree more engagement would seem an obvious boon for the discipline.
Some people say to me things like, "I just don't have that many ideas." Others might be more focused on just doing the sort of work that's professionally rewarded. (Though this raises the question of why philosophers aren't professionally rewarded for (i) having a proven track record of regularly generating lots of interesting ideas & engagement, and (ii) demonstrated passion for their work. It's probably hard to formalize this for purposes of tenure & promotion. But if someone like Huemer or Schwitzgebel ever applied for a job at my institution, I'd be very swayed by the knowledge that they have lots of interesting ideas and like to discuss them -- I would expect that to make them a better colleague. If my evaluative dispositions were more widely shared, it seems like that could provide some professional incentive...)
Just noticed your Footnote 4 in "Bleeding-Heart Consequentialism":
"If anything, I might slightly prefer my death to be useful rather than to be mere collateral damage."
I was just arguing yesterday that the "Doctrine of Double Effect" would imply that a cosmetic company testing on animals would be *morally better* if it knows the tests are completely useless and does them anyway, than if it knows they're useful for reducing harm to customers. I don't imagine that a rabbit or beagle would be able to share your intuition there, but the straightforward implication from DDE is insane nonetheless.
I don't think the best versions of DDE would have that implication: gratuitous intended harm should come out worst of all, as I understand the view. Gratuitous harming in general should probably count as "intending" (not merely "foreseeing") harm. And the loss of any benefit makes it impossible to justify causing any harm whatsoever, whether intended or merely foreseen.
But the view does seem to violate Pareto: we can imagine cases where collaterally harming S comes out as permissible, but a Pareto-superior alternative that only does half the harm to S, but does it as a means, is not permissible. (Maybe some would just make special exceptions to permit the means-harm in such cases? I imagine Kamm must discuss this somewhere.)
I was thinking of the "unnecessary" testing as something that was an unavoidable part of the process (e.g. mandated by government, crucial for marketing purposes) but not inherent to the stated goal (ensuring that the product is safe).
But then they're back to harming the animals *as a means* (to getting government approval, or whatever). The fact that the intermediate goal is "not inherent to the stated goal" doesn't preclude the agent's harmful involvement of their victims from being instrumental and hence "intended" in the relevant sense.
Oh, I very much agree with your understanding of the morally relevant feature here; I'm drawing my analogy upon the concept that seems to be invoked by deontologists in the applied contexts where I encounter DDE.
In the vegan advocacy context, DDE is typically invoked in defense of animal deaths in plant agriculture, which are clearly instrumental but claimed to be "not inherent" because some idealized process of producing plant foods need not involve any such harm to sentients. I don't see how an instrumental consideration like economic necessity would be taken to differ deontically from an instrumental consideration like legal requirement. If poisoning of rodents in vegetable production isn't "inherent" to vegetable production, then animal testing to meet scientifically useless government demands shouldn't count as "inherent" to producing safe cosmetics, either.
Returning to my original claim, there does seem to be a kind of animal testing that would seem to fit this deontic concept of "inherent" (scientifically necessary to establish safety for humans), and the claim that such testing is worse than mandated but useless testing, is absurd.