William MacAskill: Effective Altruism
Forthcoming in The Norton Introduction to Ethics
Other 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…
Cassandra’s Curse: A second tragedy of the commons – Philippe Colo (ETH Zurich)
This paper studies why scientific forecasts regarding exceptional or rare events generally fail to trigger adequate public response. I consider a game of contribution to a public bad. Prior to the game, I assume contributors receive non-verifiable expert advice regarding uncertain damages. In addition, I assume that the expert cares only about social welfare. Under mild assumptions, I show that no information transmission can happen at equilibrium when the number of contributors…
Future Suffering and the Non-Identity Problem – Theron Pummer (University of St Andrews)
I present and explore a new version of the Person-Affecting View, according to which reasons to do an act depend wholly on what would be said for or against this act from the points of view of particular individuals. According to my view, (i) there is a morally requiring reason not to bring about lives insofar as they contain suffering (negative welfare), (ii) there is no morally requiring reason to bring about lives insofar as they contain happiness (positive welfare), but (iii) there is a permitting reason to bring about lives insofar as they…