Comments on: Tensions between moral anti-realism and effective altruism

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 22:31:33 +0000

Many of your responses to the possibilities seem to hinge on the thing under discussion being arbitrary. However, I don’t see why this is a problem. Unless one believes in moral truth, what reason could there be for one’s basic values (which themselves are often reasons for action)? I’m not quite sure what precisely you mean by intrinsic values, but it seems you mean ‘those things which your brain assigns terminal value to’. Given this, one could for example train one’s brain to stop (or reduce) such assigning. If I grow up in a sexist household, I may assign terminal value to men, but would hopefully wish to train my brain out of this habit. Perhaps my choice to do so really is ultimately arbitrary, but what does this matter? If I’m not aligning with moral truth when I train my brain towards a more utilitarian psychology, then maybe I’m just making an arbitrary choice to do so – but what philosophically would the issue with this be?

By: SarahD

SarahD — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 20:23:08 +0000

Huh. When I say “the only thing I care about is maximizing utility” I am referring to a social construction of utility, not something objective about the world.

There’s no territory, but it’s useful for humans to have a shared map.

By: Jared

Jared — Sat, 27 Aug 2022 14:48:02 +0000

Is this an accurate representation of your view?: Moral anti-realists can’t endorse any value or set of values other than the complete set of values they actually have. They cannot use reason and logic to choose a different axiology than what they actually have. If a moral anti-realist has two values which contradict or are incompatible, the anti-realists must endorse both anyways and cannot choose between them. If they use reason and logic in any way to choose between values, then they are in fact moral realists.

By: SarahW

SarahW — Sat, 20 Aug 2022 20:44:17 +0000

I don’t identify with the combination of views that is at issue here (utilitarian effective altruist and anti-realist), but also don’t think that it’s an inconsistent or illogical stance. Here’s how I imagine an anti-realist utilitarian EA would (or could) justify their views:

“I derive morality (”what you should do”) from my subjective values. When I sit down to reflect on my values, I notice that I care deeply about the utility of conscious beings and that I rank that more highly than any other abstract value. It is true that I have all sorts of preferences that pull me strongly towards one or another action in any given situation, but when I have time and energy to think about these preferences, I find that either they pale in comparison to the more fundamental value encapsulated in utilitarianism [a desire to have a fancy car might be an example of such a preference], or that I actually only value them instrumentally [e.g., I think many utilitarian EAs will say that they care about inequality because of the suffering endured and not because of something intrinsic to the inequality]. I want to live in accordance with the values I find myself caring about in my more reflective moments, and I want to do so consistently.
This doesn’t mean that only utility maximization is a logical value and is therefore superior to the others; rather, it is the fact that I care so deeply about utility maximization upon reflection which makes me rank this above any other conceivable value.”

Another thing, which can but doesn’t have to go together with the above, is related to your possibility 2: My impression is that EAs, including anti-realist ones, mostly don’t claim that everything ought to be subsumed to the utility maximization imperative. Several of them, in my experience, consider utility maximization sufficiently important (given their subjective values) to do many EA-ish things but not so important that they will give up on all of their other pursuits and preferences.

By: Morally Uncertain

Morally Uncertain — Sat, 20 Aug 2022 03:49:54 +0000

I’d like to suggest another possibility. I think that some people who don’t identify as moral realists might nevertheless assign *some non-zero probability* to moral realism. (I am one of those people – I don’t think there’s any way to prove that objective moral truth exists, but neither is there any way to disprove it, so I can’t rule out the possibility.) _____________________________________________________________________________________

If there’s a non-zero probability that there’s such a thing as moral truth, it follows (in my view) that one should try to live morally to the extent that that’s possible. That’s what I aspire to do, and for that reason, the general principles of effective altruism happen to be the principles I’ve been aspiring to live by for years now. _____________________________________________________________________________________

So, in my case, even though the label of moral realist doesn’t fit, the reason that I nevertheless feel very strongly motivated to create moral value (and to reduce disvalue) – to the best of my ability, anyway – is my belief that there’s a non-zero probability (even if it’s small in magnitude) of there being such a thing as moral truth. (This reasoning doesn’t help me to decide *which* things are morally valuable, of course! But it does motivate me to be very curious about what *might* be morally valuable.)