2021 in review

[Past annual reviews: 2020, 2019 & '18, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, and 2004.]

Off the blog:

The biggest development for me was joining utilitarianism.net as lead editor.  I then completed their chapters on population ethics and theories of well-being, and wrote a new chapter outlining some basic arguments for utilitarianism.  More to come soon!

For more traditional academic publications:

* Parfit's Ethics appeared in print with Cambridge University Press. (Summary here.)

* 'Pandemic Ethics and Status Quo Risk' (summarized here) was accepted by Public Health Ethics.

* 'Negative Utility Monsters' was published in Utilitas.

I'm also pretty excited about various works-in-progress that are currently under review, especially my new paradox of deontology...

Blog posts:

Normative Ethics

* The Cost of Contraints -- sets out the core of my "new paradox of deontology".  Further developed in Preferring to Act Wrongly, Why Constraints are Agent Neutral, and Discounting Illicit Benefits.

* The Most Important Thing in the World -- is plausibly the trajectory of the long-term future.

* The Paralysis of Deontology

* Three Dogmas of Utilitarianism -- (i) Confusing value with what's valuable; (ii) Neglecting fittingness; and (iii) Treating all interests as innocent.

* Agency as a Force for Good -- and the appeal of consequentialism.

* Learning from Lucifer -- If Satan would be a consequentialist, should the good guys be likewise (just, you know, with better goals)?  Or is there a deeper asymmetry between right and wrong?

* Tendentious Terminology in Ethics -- against common uses of "mere means" and "separateness of persons" talk.

* Is Effective Altruism Inherent Utilitarian?  I suggest not.  There's a weaker normative principle in the vicinity, potentially shareable by any other sensible view, which should be difficult to deny. In a later post, I call this: Beneficentrism: The view that promoting the general welfare is deeply important.

* Consequentialism's Central Concept may be importance rather than rightness.

* What's at Stake in the Objective/Subjective Wrongness Debate? Seems terminological.  Appeal to "what a morally conscientious agent would be concerned about" doesn't help, because (my Moral Stunting Objection shows) a morally conscientious agent wouldn't be concerned about right or wrong per se.

Welfare and Population Ethics

* Is Conscientious Sadism still bad?

* Is Objective List Theory "Spooky"?

* Parsimony in Theories of Welfare -- is it really a relevant consideration at all?

* The Limits of Defective Character Solutions -- and why they don't help with the non-identity problem.

* Stable Actualism and Asymmetries of Regret -- actualist partiality is defensible once you subtract the possibility of elusive permissions.

Pandemic Ethics

* Lessons from the Pandemic: blocking innovation is bad.

* The Risk of Excessive Conservatism.  See also Pandemic Paralysis and JCVI endorses Status Quo Bias.

* Epistemic Calibration Bias and Blame Aversion -- we're often too scared of being wrong, and not sufficiently attuned to the risks of failing to be right (e.g. by instead remaining non-committal) when it matters.

* There's No Such Thing as "Following the Science" -- normative principles are needed to bridge the is/ought gap.  Better slogan: Follow Decision Theory!

* Appeasing Anti-Vaxxers -- and why it's wrong.

* The Ethics of Off-Label Vaccinations for Kids

* Imagining an Alternative Pandemic Response -- with vaccine challenge trials, targeted immunity via variolation, and immunity passports to spare many (e.g. healthy young people) from lockdowns.

* The Indefensibility of Post-Vaccine Lockdowns

Applied Ethics

* Companies, Cities, and Carbon -- blaming large corporations for proportionately large carbon emissions makes no more sense than blaming large cities. 

* Five Fallacies of Collective Harm -- Critiquing the five main reasons why people falsely believe that collective difference-making doesn't require individual difference-making.

* The Absurdity of "Undue Inducement" argues that there's no in-principle basis for objecting to monetary incentives to (e.g.) research participants.  If concerned that an offer might be exploitative, the solution is to pay more, not less.

* Against Anti-Beneficent Paternalism - as a general rule, we shouldn't prevent people from doing good (even if we aren't entirely certain of the quality of their understanding or consent).

* Puzzling Conditional Obligations -- if positively good to comply with, then you ought to have unconditional reason to get yourself into position to meet the putative obligation.

Metaethics

* The Parochialism of Metaethical Naturalism - the basic moral facts should not differ depending on our location in modal space (i.e. which world is actual).  But synthetic metaethical naturalism, with its 2-D semantic asymmetry, violates this principle.

* Ruling out Helium-Maximizing -- without giving up robust realism. 

* Why Belief is No Game - pragmatists (like Maguire & Woods) are wrong about what people are rationally criticizable for, and hence wrong about what reasons there are.

Other

* Philosophical Pluralism and Modest Dogmatism - On why we should welcome philosophical dissensus.

* Querying vs Dismissive Objections - are you aiming to create a dialectical opening (to which you'd like to hear a response), or simply shutting things down?  When is the latter appropriate?

* Commonsense Epiphenomenalism - could the view be less weird than everyone tends to assume?

* Helen interviewed on Idealism -- including why Idealism might warrant up to 30% credence.

* New Blogs of Note -- three recommendations.

* Zach Barnett's guest post on 'Meeting Taurek's Challenge'.

* Philosophy Spotlight posts from Eden Lin, Jess Flanigan, and Hrishikesh Joshi.  I'm still waiting for other blogs to join in!

Happy New Year!