Philosophy, et cetera

An updated version of this post is now available at Good Thoughts . Philosophical discussion of utilitarianism  understandably focuses on it...

A recent post at the Blog of the APA claims so.  Here's why I disagree... It's worth distinguishing three features of utilitarianis...

Sometimes we may dismiss a problem as "not the most important thing in the world".  Which raises the (surprisingly neglected!) que...

Probably everyone reading this (myself included!) ought to donate more to effective charities.  But, as non-experts in the field, most of us...

This semester, I got my 'Effective Altruism' class to decide how to allocate $5000 in donations between the four EA funds . (Half th...

It's interesting to compare the ways we talk and think about political vs non-political (civic/philanthropic or market) agents, advocacy...

People sometimes object to the charitable tax deduction on grounds that it is "undemocratic", incentivizing wealthy individuals to...

The whole paper is great, but I especially wanted to share his concluding remarks: Often, critics of Peter Singer focus on whether or n...

This past week I ran a 'Giving Game' for my Effective Altruism class, letting each student decide (after class discussion) how to al...

Compare five seriously bad things: (1) Unjust discrimination along the lines of racism, sexism, etc., in Western countries. (2) War and t...

It can sometimes be difficult to discern precisely what's in dispute between Effective Altruists and their (leftist) critics. This is p...

This seems a lamentably common way of thinking : [Chief Executive of Oxfam GB] Goldring says it would be wrong to apply the EA philosophy ...

In my Effective Altruism class this past week I've run a "giving game", getting the students, in small groups, to discuss ...

It's been almost a decade since my evil twin Ricardo last posted on this blog . I invite him back today to share a horribly misguided ...

Judith Lichtenberg has a pretty misguided -- and often misleading -- hit piece on the Effective Altruism movement , which concludes: The e...

The Washington Post is discussing Effective Altruism .  There are two critical contributions, neither of which I find very compelling: (1)...

"Talk is cheap."  So we're told to "put our money where our mouth is," to ensure intellectual integrity.  On the (es...

Alexander Dietz (USC) has put together a new website  promoting effective altruism amongst philosophers : Are you a philosopher who wants ...

Robin Hanson notes that people generally don't like " ranking the sacred " (his example: "fighting cancer" vs. ...

Happily, I was in a position this year to make donations worth around 8 kidneys , mostly split between SCI (deworming: most cost-effective ...