In defence of fanaticism
Hayden Wilkinson (Australian National University)
GPI Working Paper No. 4-2020, published in Ethics
Which is better: a guarantee of a modest amount of moral value, or a tiny probability of arbitrarily large value? To prefer the latter seems fanatical. But, as I argue, avoiding such fanaticism brings severe problems. To do so, we must (1) decline intuitively attractive trade-offs; (2) rank structurally identical pairs of lotteries inconsistently, or else admit absurd sensitivity to tiny probability differences;(3) have rankings depend on remote, unaffected events (including events in ancient Egypt); and often (4) neglect to rank lotteries as we already know we would if we learned more. Compared to these implications, fanaticism is highly plausible
Other working papers
Population ethical intuitions – Lucius Caviola (Harvard University) et al.
Is humanity’s existence worthwhile? If so, where should the human species be headed in the future? In part, the answers to these questions require us to morally evaluate the (potential) human population in terms of its size and aggregate welfare. This assessment lies at the heart of population ethics. Our investigation across nine experiments (N = 5776) aimed to answer three questions about how people aggregate welfare across individuals: (1) Do they weigh happiness and suffering symmetrically…
How to neglect the long term – Hayden Wilkinson (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
Consider longtermism: the view that, at least in some of the most important decisions facing agents today, which options are morally best is determined by which are best for the long-term future. Various critics have argued that longtermism is false—indeed, that it is obviously false, and that we can reject it on normative grounds without close consideration of certain descriptive facts. In effect, it is argued, longtermism would be false even if real-world agents had promising means…
Meaning, medicine and merit – Andreas Mogensen (Global Priorities Institute, Oxford University)
Given the inevitability of scarcity, should public institutions ration healthcare resources so as to prioritize those who contribute more to society? Intuitively, we may feel that this would be somehow inegalitarian. I argue that the egalitarian objection to prioritizing treatment on the basis of patients’ usefulness to others is best thought…