Bullet Points on Metaethics, Utilitarianism and Effective Altruism

Brief points to set out my views on metaethics, utilitarianism and effective altruism

My starting point is that we need to make choices about how to act to navigate the world. Choices range from trivial individual matters to momentous government decisions.

Reasoning can be divided into theoretical reason – understanding the world – and practical reason – choosing how to act. Human understanding of the world and of how to act have both advanced by a cumulative process that includes applying reason to improve on instincts.

Practical decisions are commonly made by evaluating ends and the means to achieve them. Practical evaluations have a normative end-relational nature. This is shown by the semantics of normative words such as ‘good’ and ‘ought.’

Practical judgements ask how to achieve ends we value and answer using facts about the world. They are both constructions (human questions) and real (giving answers grounded in the world.)

Practical reason is a broad and essential domain while morality is an element within it which is variable, contingent, optional and often confused. Philosophical ethics has concentrated excessively on morality: practical reason is what matters and is more straightforward.

Practical reason (and morality) have a simple metaphysic as human judgements about obtaining ends.They have a simple epistemology as discoverable by reasoning about ends and means (we reason about ends as well as means.) Judgements can range from the certain to the unknowable.

This contrasts with views that see ethics as having an objective independent existence. Such views reflect our evolved instincts, underly our language and are seen in theist, natural law and intuitionist approaches. But for a naturalist, objective values do not exist in the world.

It also contrasts with various non-cognitivist, emotivist and relativist views that see ethics as a matter of taste rather than reason. These views dominated philosophical ethics in the early and mid 20^th Century.

I want to bolster the ‘grounded’ view of practical reason and morality against the objectivist and non-cognitivist alternatives. I believe this may be done by concentrating on practical reason’s essential function, its end-relational nature and its primacy over morality. The aim is to clear away metaethical confusions to allow a clear focus on the task of making good practical choices.

While individual practical decisions are made relative to proximate ends, philosophical normative ethics more concerns systematic views of how to act. Utilitarian-style theories take a particular approach to trying to make practical reason systematic.

Utilitarianism is primarily a theory of ultimate ends. Its starting point is that sentient welfare, or perhaps more narrowly happiness, is the sole or main ultimate end.

We are directly aware that our own happiness matters. It is a feature of our consciousness that elements of our experience are valenced with degrees of attractiveness. Value came into the world with creatures with valenced experience. The difference between the extremes of good and bad experience gives a gradient of value. Happiness is a summary evaluation of the balance of valenced experience in a period. But our evaluations of our happiness are commonly vague.

A second feature of utilitarian approaches is impartiality. Similar suffering or enjoyment has the same value from the point of view of the universe whether it happens to me now or in the future, whether to a friend or a stranger, perhaps whether to future people and perhaps whether to non-human animals. This expanding of the circle to aggregate impartially is against our instinct but seems to be rationally required.

The third utilitarian feature is consequentialism, that actions should be evaluated by their effect on the general happiness. Act utilitarianism is the view that this should be the sole criteria, but this is extreme. We cannot look solely to general happiness as a decision procedure as social coordination is needed among individuals with limited sympathies. Also, general happiness is probably indeterminate and commonly hard to estimate and predict. Although it is aggregate happiness that actually matters, decision-making should commonly not be act utilitarian.

But utilitarianism is very relevant in certain domains. Governments at their best can direct their actions to maximise welfare. Similarly, philanthropy can concentrate on doing the most good, as it is less constrained by social obligations and can systematically evaluate outcomes. For individual decisions making, utilitarian thinking can be an important check on societal expectations.

Many issues arise within utilitarian thinking that merit further work. What precisely is happiness? To what extent are measures of happiness indeterminate and what does this imply?

But the biggest uncertainty from a utilitarian perspective arises from our limited knowledge of the value of the conscious experience of non-human animals. We do not know whether the affective lives of animals are net positive or negative so do not know whether it would be better to help them breed or to kill them. There is much to research here.

Within utilitarianism there are different views on the nature of ultimate value, the scope of impartiality and the degree of use as a decision procedure. Utilitarianism has been unfairly criticised for what it is not – a decision procedure or a morality – when instead it should be thought of as a framework for thinking about what matters.

Confusions can arise from not distinguishing (1) Good states of the world, (2) Good actions, (3) Blameworthy actions and (4) Motivation to act. Practical reason concentrates on (2), moralistic thinking prioritises (3), utilitarianism links (2) to (1) and (4) is psychological rather than normative.

Applying reason and a broadly utilitarian perspective can suggest new priorities that differ from our instincts, particularly due to our greater modern power, knowledge and interconnectedness.

Effective Altruism is in the lead in systematically considering new priorities. It aims to research how to do good and to take action accordingly. I see it at looking at both the narrower question of how to to employ philanthropic funds, and the broader question of what our global priorities should be. EA has a unique perspective with its radical, rationalist, universalist approach and has the resources to address the big questions.

Effective Altruism has already produced a number of very valuable ideas: altruism can be very effective; charity in the developing world can be one hundred times more benefical; mental health matters; factory farming is a great evil; the long-run future may be very valuable; and extinction risk is a great threat. It may be that EA’s work on such ideas will be its most valuable contribution.