Consequentialism, Cluelessness, Clumsiness, and Counterfactuals
Alan Hájek (Australian National University)
GPI Working Paper No. 4-2024
According to a standard statement of objective consequentialism, a morally right action is one that has the best consequences. More generally, given a choice between two actions, one is morally better than the other just in case the consequences of the former action are better than those of the latter. (These are not just the immediate consequences of the actions, but the long-term consequences, perhaps until the end of history.) This account glides easily off the tongue—so easily that one may not notice that on one understanding it makes no sense, and on another understanding, it has a startling metaphysical presupposition concerning counterfactuals. I will bring this presupposition into relief. Objective consequentialism has faced various objections, including the problem of “cluelessness”: we have no idea what most of the consequences of our actions will be. I think that objective consequentialism has a far worse problem: its very foundations are highly dubious. Even granting those foundations, a worse problem than cluelessness remains, which I call “clumsiness”. Moreover, I think that these problems quickly generalise to a number of other moral theories. But the points are most easily made for objective consequentialism, so I will focus largely on it.
Other working papers
Will AI Avoid Exploitation? – Adam Bales (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
A simple argument suggests that we can fruitfully model advanced AI systems using expected utility theory. According to this argument, an agent will need to act as if maximising expected utility if they’re to avoid exploitation. Insofar as we should expect advanced AI to avoid exploitation, it follows that we should expected advanced AI to act as if maximising expected utility. I spell out this argument more carefully and demonstrate that it fails, but show that the manner of its failure is instructive…
Existential risk and growth – Leopold Aschenbrenner (Columbia University)
Human activity can create or mitigate risks of catastrophes, such as nuclear war, climate change, pandemics, or artificial intelligence run amok. These could even imperil the survival of human civilization. What is the relationship between economic growth and such existential risks? In a model of directed technical change, with moderate parameters, existential risk follows a Kuznets-style inverted U-shape. …
The scope of longtermism – David Thorstad (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
Longtermism holds roughly that in many decision situations, the best thing we can do is what is best for the long-term future. The scope question for longtermism asks: how large is the class of decision situations for which longtermism holds? Although longtermism was initially developed to describe the situation of…