Questioning Beneficence: Excerpts
Introducing the Roundtable debate book
Questioning Beneficence: Four Philosophers on Effective Altruism and Doing Good—by Sam Arnold, Jason Brennan, Ryan Davis, and me—is now available from Routledge. It introduces a new “roundtable” format for debate books: each of us chose three questions relating to beneficence, wrote a “starter essay” on our own questions, wrote responses to each of the others’ starter essays, and then wrote a wrap-up response to the responses. The result is a lot of constructive engagement between our different viewpoints. I hope it’s as edifying to the reader as it was for me as an author!
As a nice bonus, the publisher has allowed me to publicly share some of my contributions to the volume (my introduction & starter essays, plus three of my responses to others’ questions). My plan is to share one essay a week, starting with the introduction today. If you’re impatient to read more, feel free to order the book!
Series contents
I’ll update the below list with links as I publish each post in the series.
Introduction (below)
Response to Brennan: Can We Exercise Beneficence through Business?
Response to Davis: Can Effective Altruism be Part of a Meaningful Moral Life?
Introduction: Three Questions Exploring Beneficence
Something I find exciting about Effective Altruism is the way that it exemplifies a deliberate, rational attempt to do more good as such. This is surprisingly rare. Many people are drawn to particular good causes. But strikingly few have pursued the project of moral prioritization, weighing the tradeoffs between all the various worthy causes out there, to try to determine which should be our top priority. Such judgments are always fallible, of course, and open to revision in light of new evidence and arguments. But rationally pursuing a difficult goal seems likely to get us closer to achieving it than would not even trying, so I consider it a good and worthy project.
An implicit assumption of Effective Altruism is that reasons of beneficence—or doing good—are among our strongest moral reasons. And Effective Altruists tend to have a distinctive, “utilitarian-esque” understanding of what our reasons of beneficence involve: roughly, improving global well-being. As someone with strong utilitarian sympathies myself, I’ve crafted my three questions with an eye to clarifying and exploring this distinctive conception of beneficence.
My first question asks whether EAs are right to ascribe such importance to our reasons of beneficence. I argue that they are, and more radically that we can assess how morally good a person is (to a first approximation) simply by looking at how much they (want to) do to improve global well-being.
My second question, on beneficence and self-sacrifice, looks at how acting to promote the good can diverge from ordinary conceptions of “altruistic” behavior (which place more weight on self-sacrifice than on actually helping others). In my essay, I argue that the ordinary conception illicitly conflates being good with looking good. So I think the EA conception is a clear improvement.
Finally, my third question asks how much we should care about future generations. The “longtermist” branch of EA has courted controversy by suggesting that slight reductions to the risk of human extinction can morally outweigh saving lives for certain. This is a departure from ordinary assumptions about how we should help others. But again, I argue that these revisionary verdicts are well warranted in principle.
"My second question, on beneficence and self-sacrifice, looks at how acting to promote the good can diverge from ordinary conceptions of “altruistic” behavior (which place more weight on self-sacrifice than on actually helping others). In my essay, I argue that the ordinary conception illicitly conflates being good with looking good. So I think the EA conception is a clear improvement."
Perhaps your book gets into more detail on this, and already answers the issue I see with your argument here. In case it doesn't, though, I feel I should raise it now.
It is certainly possible to be altruistic without being significantly self-sacrificing. An obvious example is a wealthy altruist giving millions of dollars to charities, such charitable donations can make a big difference even as the wealthy altruist doesn't experience any negative impact from losing this small portion of their wealth.
Still, your phrasing of *promote the good* makes me think of words rather than actions. I think promoting good with words without an equally strong measure of good actions can cause a lot of cynicism and sometimes even backlash. I think of how many people react to very wealthy celebrities asking people to give money to a certain cause - many react by essentially saying "You're far more wealthy than I am, why aren't *YOU* giving?"
I also think of how a lot of conservatives react to the climate change movement. Now, I believe the scientific evidence for climate change is strong. I think there are legitimate concern here. That being said, I very much *get* the conservative criticism of some prominent climate change activists who get on private jets, travelling around the world a lot, to go to various conferences, *greatly enlarging their carbon footprint through this travel.* In contrast, think of Greta Thunberg. From what I've read, Thunberg made real personal sacrifices to try to lower her own carbon footprint, and I think that this really helped her environmental activism and contributed to her becoming something of a star.
In any event, I think moral promotion without similarly strong moral action can be self-defeating. A lot of people do care if someone "practices what they preach", so to speak. Hypocrisy is one of the most common criticisms in the world of politics precisely because it's often an effective criticism. Someone who is perceived to be a hypocrite will tend to lose at least some support because of it.
If you're promoting a particular moral code or moral practice, I think it's very helpful if you can point to some form of evidence that you yourself are following that code/practice, whatever it may be. (I'm using 'you' in a general sense here, not you personally). If that code/practice calls for some level of self-sacrifice, then self-sacrifice *is* important, in and of itself.
Can't wait for the book and the series! By the way, would your book/series be approaching it from a Beneficentrist angle or a more full-blooded Utilitarian angle?
Also: how do you distinguish between the weak/minimal Beneficentrist claim from the Rossian prima facie duty (or pro tanto reason) of Beneficence? Seems to me they are practically equivalent.
Also: taking the minimal Beneficentrist/Rossian claim, plus the empirical claim that there are large/enormous numbers of global poor/future generations, plus an aggregative view of how reasons (and their weights) add up together, it seems to me that one arrives at a stronger Beneficentrism strong enough to support Effective Altruism and Longtermism, yeah? Or am I utterly misguided by the whole thing?