New substack on utilitarian ethics: Good Thoughts

By Richard Y Chappell🔸 @ 2022-05-09T16:00 (+50)

This is a linkpost to https://rychappell.substack.com/

Hi everyone, I just wanted to introduce my new substack as of possible interest to folks here.  I see that Pablo has already shared my post on 'beneficentrism', which is the one most explicitly relevant to EA.  Some might also enjoy my latest post on Theory-Driven Applied Ethics, which is basically my attempt to make sense of how utilitarians can do bioethics (or applied ethics more broadly) in an interesting, non-trivial way.  You can also see my debate with Michael Huemer on utilitarianism, with associated reflections on the role of intuitions in moral philosophy.

Future plans include series on (i) Parfit's ethics, (ii) metaethical non-naturalism, and (iii) intuitions and philosophical methodology.  (I won't be cross-posting any of that stuff here, because it seems too off-topic from EA.  But I mention it now in case it is of interest to some.)

Anyway, feel free to subscribe if it sounds of interest to you.  (And I hope this brief announcement isn't too bothersome for those to whom it's not of interest.)

John G. Halstead @ 2022-05-09T16:19 (+29)

these posts are very good. I do feel there is a lack of simple and effective arguments for utilitarianism that get missed even by professional philosophers. Most glaringly, there are clear and to my eyes fatal problems for most stated deontological theories which people just ignore when talking about utilitarianism. Deontology seems much less well-developed than utilitarianism on so many fronts

Dylan Matthews @ 2022-05-09T19:13 (+12)

I wonder how much of this is explained by utilitarians selecting out of professional philosophy because of the theory's implications.

I seriously considered philosophy grad school and was discouraged by some mentors who thought that if I took consequentialism seriously, other career options were more promising avenues to impact.

If enough people do that, though, the academy's going to be left leaning against consequentialism.

MichaelDickens @ 2022-05-09T22:31 (+5)

Sounds plausible. Some data: The PhilPapers survey found that 31% of philosophers accept or lean toward consequentailism, vs. 32% deontology and 37% virtue ethics. The ratios are about the same if instead of looking at all philosophers, you look at just applied ethicists or normative ethicists.

I don't know of any surveys on normative views of philosophy-adjacent people, but I expect that (e.g.) economists lean much more consequentialist than philosophers. Not sure what other fields one would consider adjacent to philosophy. Maybe quant finance?

James Aitchison @ 2022-05-27T09:00 (+10)

Thank you for introducing your site which I am finding very valuable.   I am enjoying both your archive of  articles and your most recent posts and have subscribed to your newsletter.  Thank you also for utilitarianism.net which is great to have as a public resource.

Bella @ 2022-05-09T16:39 (+7)

Can't wait for the issue on metaethical non-naturalism! Subscribed :)

Sam Glover @ 2022-05-09T17:14 (+1)

Looks good - but how come when I subscribed to this I also seem to have been signed up to another newsletter called 'Bentham's Bulldog'? Not that I'm necessarily opposed to being signed up to this other substack, but I didn't opt into it so it seems slightly weird that I've been (seemingly) added to the email list.

Richard Y Chappell @ 2022-05-10T18:50 (+5)

Having looked into it more, I gather that after subscribing, you're presented with the list of other substacks that I recommend, and a highlighted option to subscribe to them (selected by default). It's bad form on substack's part that the button to decline ("maybe later") is not so prominent, so you may be led to accidentally over-subscribe to other newsletters.  Sorry about that!

(Though it's easy enough to unsubscribe at any time, at least.)

Sam Glover @ 2022-05-16T12:12 (+1)

Thanks, yeah I think this was an error on my part rather than anything to do with you. I should have looked more carefully, thought I skipped past the recommendations but the default option of subscribing caught me off guard. This is a shame because I'm now more hesitant about recommending other substacks on my own site.

Richard Y Chappell @ 2022-05-09T18:45 (+1)

That's odd!  Is it possible that you clicked this commenter's profile (or a blogroll link) by mistake?  If anyone else is having this issue, let me know and I'll try looking into it further.