Migration and Sustainability

In 'The Environmental Argument for Reducing Immigration Into the United States', Philip Cafaro and Winthrop Staples III argue that, given Americans' disproportionate "environmental footprint", environmentalists should want to halt population growth in the U.S., and hence to severely restrict immigration into the U.S.

Despite the authors' constant mentions of "population growth", migration of course doesn't (in itself) alter the global population. So what they're really objecting to is allowing poor people from dysfunctional countries the opportunity to increase their wealth (and hence consumption) through hard work in a place where their hard work will be better rewarded. Because material consumption is bad for the environment. So we should do what we can to keep people poor, including blocking their access to countries with better infrastructure, institutions, etc. After all, if they're stuck in a failed state, with no roads and barely enough reward from their work to put food on their family's plates, they'll use less gas! Yay! (Right?)

Parfit on Philosophical Waste

It seems strangely common for commentators to misrepresent Parfit as claiming that a mistaken philosophical project (e.g. exploring and defending a false theory) lacks all value. Eric Schliesser previously attributed to Parfit the view "that there is no philosophic value (pure waste) in failure." (Sadly, Eric refused to correct this misattribution even when prompted.) More recently, Philip Kitcher writes:

If Naturalism is true, then many of Parfit’s claims are indeed wrong and his perspective is indeed askew. Does it follow that his efforts (and consequently much of his life) have been wasted? I do not think so. Almost all those who have engaged in any form of inquiry have been wrong and misguided...

2011: My Web of Beliefs

Time for another year-end summary! (Cf. 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, and 2004.) I'm posting it a little earlier this year because right after Christmas I'm off to the APA in search of a job. [If anyone happens to have a spare one lying around that they'd like to give me, that'd be most welcome!] So anyway, I expect this to be my final post of the year...

Welfarism vs. Appreciating Beauty

An interesting trilemma...

(1) Welfarism: Only the welfare of sentient beings has intrinsic (non-instrumental) value.
(2) Fitting Attitudes: It's fitting to have non-instrumental pro-attitudes towards just those things that have non-instrumental value.
(3) Direct Appreciation of Beauty: It's fitting to directly appreciate objects of beauty -- great art, music, natural wonders, etc. (Where "direct appreciation" is a kind of non-instrumental pro-attitude.)

I take (2) to be analytic, so the question is which of (1) or (3) to give up. Both strike me as initially quite plausible, so it's not an easy choice.

Scalar Consequentialism and Constructed Permissibility

I take Consequentialism to suggest a fundamentally scalar picture. The most fundamental assessment of actions simply ranks them on a scale of better to worse, indicating our having more or less reason to perform them. That's what centrally matters.

But we may also be interested in other moral questions, such as whether we would be blameworthy for performing some act. Consequentialists traditionally haven't been much interested in questions of blameworthiness (as distinct from, say, whether it would promote utility to express blame in some circumstances), but I think there are real normative questions here, besides those that consequentialism addresses. For example, there are rational norms governing emotions and reactive attitudes, which we may reasonably theorize about. So we may ask whether certain negative emotional responses towards others are warranted, in light of their actions. This is to ask whether they are blame-worthy.

Satisficing by Effort

Satisficing Consequentialism aims to capture the intuitive idea that we're not morally obligated to do the best possible, we merely need to do "good enough" (though of course it remains better to do better!). Ben Bradley, in 'Against Satisficing Consequentialism', argues convincingly against forms of the view which introduce the baseline as some utility level n that we need to meet. Such views absurdly condone the act of gratuitously preventing boosts to utility over the baseline n. But I think there is a better form that satisficing consequentialism can take. Rather than employing a baseline utility level, a better way to "satisfice" is to introduce a level of maximum demanded effort below which one straightforwardly maximizes utility. That is:

(Effort-based Satisficing Consequentialism) An act is permissible iff it produces no less utility than any alternative action the agent could perform with up to X effort.

Philosophers' Carnival Submission Method Update

Since the BlogCarnival submission form no longer works, the Philosophers' Carnival is upgrading to an all new, more reliable system: Email!

From now on, to submit a post to the carnival, just send along the URL and post title (and preferably a short description) to r.chappell+carnival@gmail.com, with "Philosophers' Carnival submission" in the subject line, and it'll be automatically forwarded along to the next carnival host.

Update: I've also added a new submission form (powered by google docs) to the Philosophers' Carnival homepage that you can use if you prefer.

Virtue and Anonymous Donation

It's commonly thought (following, e.g., Jesus and Maimonides) that it's better -- more virtuous -- to give to charity anonymously rather than publicly flouting one's generosity. Nobody likes a braggart, after all, and ostentatiously trumpeted donations may suggest that the donor is more motivated to boost his reputation than to actually help others.

I agree that actions motivated by genuine concern for others are thereby more virtuous than actions motivated by petty reputational concerns. But I don't think this is any reason to hide one's philanthropic activities. Here's why:

Epiphenomenal Explanations

Explanations come in various different forms. Sometimes we are interested in strictly causal "actual sequence" explanations, which tell us which particular causal forces happened to bring about the outcome in question. Other times we want a higher-level, "robust process" explanation, identifying the broader patterns that secure similar outcomes across nearby possible worlds (though the particular "sequence" details may vary, compatibly with maintaining the same high-level pattern). These explanatory patterns might be considered 'causes' in a weaker sense -- they're certainly eligible to feature in true "because" claims, though there's an obvious sense in which such abstracta lack the direct causal "oomph" of their particular physical constituents. Further, I think we sometimes appeal -- esp. regarding ethics and phenomenal consciousness -- to what might be called "correlative" explanations, when we speak of some familiar epiphenomenal byproduct as being explanatory, even when strictly speaking it is a correlated physical state that provides the causal "oomph".

Why Consequentialism?

People sometimes ask me why I'm a consequentialist. This is a difficult question to answer productively, since direct introspection merely reveals my deep-rooted sense that non-consequentialist views just don't make sense. There's probably no single argument that's responsible for this intuitive response. But it might at least be fun to brainstorm a few considerations that could plausibly lead one to favour consequentialism...