I've had a very quick skim of your article (apologies I'm short on time). I think it is useful to distinguish two criticisms of EA. 1) criticism of their objectives (normative), and 2) criticism of their strategies for pursuing those objectives (positive). Your passage below seems to fall within #2.
I've had a very quick skim of your article (apologies I'm short on time). I think it is useful to distinguish two criticisms of EA. 1) criticism of their objectives (normative), and 2) criticism of their strategies for pursuing those objectives (positive). Your passage below seems to fall within #2.
> "Today we find these same asocial assumptions embedded in EA discourse as well. MacAskill’s morally repugnant call for an increase in the number of sweatshops in the Third World (2016, 128–132) is merely the artifact of a utilitarian ideology incapable of recognizing exploitation as a moral or social problem."
You think that EA should add reducing exploitation to its list of objectives. You may also want them to give extra weight to avoiding actively supporting exploitation as opposed to simply failing to prevent it. So for example, if hypothetically, sweatshops would decrease exploitation in the long run, it might not be worth supporting them because of this doing/allowing distinction.
Can you recommend what you think is the best approximate conceptual analysis of exploitation or at least of aspects thereof? [I know John Roemer had an early book on this sort of thing; I hope to read it sometime.] I think some such analysis would be very useful when deciding how to best to allocation billions of dollars and thousands of people's careers towards the prevention of exploitation.
Do you also have criticisms along the lines of #2? I view 1 and 2 as totally separate; do you see them as more interlinked? I'm aware that those in the tradition of G.E.M. Anscombe often deny that there is a sharp distinction between positive and normative issues.
Professor Sanbonmatsu,
I've had a very quick skim of your article (apologies I'm short on time). I think it is useful to distinguish two criticisms of EA. 1) criticism of their objectives (normative), and 2) criticism of their strategies for pursuing those objectives (positive). Your passage below seems to fall within #2.
> "Today we find these same asocial assumptions embedded in EA discourse as well. MacAskill’s morally repugnant call for an increase in the number of sweatshops in the Third World (2016, 128–132) is merely the artifact of a utilitarian ideology incapable of recognizing exploitation as a moral or social problem."
You think that EA should add reducing exploitation to its list of objectives. You may also want them to give extra weight to avoiding actively supporting exploitation as opposed to simply failing to prevent it. So for example, if hypothetically, sweatshops would decrease exploitation in the long run, it might not be worth supporting them because of this doing/allowing distinction.
Can you recommend what you think is the best approximate conceptual analysis of exploitation or at least of aspects thereof? [I know John Roemer had an early book on this sort of thing; I hope to read it sometime.] I think some such analysis would be very useful when deciding how to best to allocation billions of dollars and thousands of people's careers towards the prevention of exploitation.
Do you also have criticisms along the lines of #2? I view 1 and 2 as totally separate; do you see them as more interlinked? I'm aware that those in the tradition of G.E.M. Anscombe often deny that there is a sharp distinction between positive and normative issues.