LeftNebula1226

Hi Will,

Is a utilitarian (or more broadly consequentialist) worldview necessary for longtermism and effective altruism? What reason do those with a more deontological or virtue ethical approach toward morality have to support your philosophy?

How do you deal with moral fanaticism in effective altruism? What reason do you have to spend time with family or friends, when that time could be used more effectively generating future utility by any number of methods?

And finally, what are your thoughts on moral non-realism? Is effective altruism undermined by the possibility of an error theory or other non-cognivitist metaethics?

If there are other sources that deal with these issues, I would love for you or anyone else to share them. Thank you!

Interesting! Thank you for sharing!

I suppose I should have engaged more with Will's normative ethics before asking, but I'm fascinated and will be sure to add a few of those books to my reading list.

As for metaethics, I just read through his article "The Infectiousness of Nihlism" (http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/669564) and briefly skimmed through Moral Uncertainty. It's very possible that I missed something, but Will didn't seem to ever agree with or propound arguments against error theory, except for once in the book where he says "for the purpose of the project in this book, we must assume that error theory is false (otherwise there would be no subject matter for us to investigate."

I understand his point, but I have difficulty accepting it as a satisfactory rationale for denying non-realism. I wonder how Will would respond to evolutionary debunking arguments or Mackie's arguments from relativity and queerness.

Thanks again for the response!