Advocates of longtermism point out that interventions which focus on improving the prospects of people in the very far future will, in expectation, bring about an astronomical amount of good (or agent-neutral value). As such, longtermists claim we have compelling moral reason to engage in long-term interventions. In this paper, I show that longtermism is in conflict with plausible deontic scepticism about aggregation. I do so by demonstrating that, from both the ex-ante and ex-post perspectives, longtermist interventions generate (...) extremely weak claims of assistance from future people. (shrink)

According to Longtermism, our acts’ expected influence on the expected value of the world is mainly determined by their effects in the far future. There is, given total utilitarianism, a straightforward argument for Longtermism due to the enormous number of people that might exist in the future, but this argument does not work on person-affecting views. In this paper, we will argue that these views might also lead to Longtermism if Prudential Longtermism is true. Prudential (...) class='Hi'>Longtermism holds for a person if and only if our acts’ overall influence on that person’s expected well-being is mainly determined by the acts’ effects in the far future. We argue that (due to a small chance of anti-ageing and uploading) there could be an enormous amount of prudential value for some contemporary person in the far future and that value may be so large that it dominates their overall expectation of lifetime well-being. (shrink)

The case for longtermism depends on the vast potential scale of the future. But that same vastness also threatens to undermine the case for longtermism: If the universe as a whole, or the future in particular, contain infinite quantities of value and/or disvalue, then many of the theories of value that support longtermism (e.g., risk-neutral total utilitarianism) seem to imply that none of our available options are better than any other. If so, then even apparently vast effects (...) on the far future cannot in fact make the world morally better. On top of this, some strategies for avoiding this problem of “infinitarian paralysis” (e.g., exponential pure time discounting) yield views that are much less supportive of longtermism. In this chapter, we explore how the potential infinitude of the future affects the case for longtermism. We argue that (i) there are reasonable prospects for extending risk-neutral totalism and similar views to infinite contexts and (ii) many such extension strategies will still support the case for longtermism, since they imply that when we can only effect (or only predictably affect) a finite, bounded part of an infinite universe, we can ignore the unaffectable rest of the universe and reason as if the finite, affectable part were all there is. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have argued that if you care about how much goodness your actions generate, or how good the state-of-affairs you actions bring about are, then your attention should be directed towards the very far future. But many don’t care about how much goodness their actions generate, nor do they care about things like “states-of-affairs”. Amongst a multitude of things, many people care about how their actions impact individuals. And they also care about the sorts of justifications they (...) are able to offer for those actions. One moral theory which captures this moral viewpoint is contractualism. In this chapter, I argue that contractualism is, in large part, incompatible with longtermism – the view that, in many contexts, we ought to do that which will most improve the prospects of future people. I then discuss what advice, if any at all, contractualism can offer to the longtermist. (shrink)

A social planner who evaluates risky public policies in light of the other risks with which their society will be faced should judge favourably some such policies even though they would deem them too risky when considered in isolation. I suggest that a longtermist would—or at least should—evaluate risky polices in light of their prediction about future risks; hence, longtermism supports social risk-taking. I consider two formal versions of this argument, discuss the conditions needed for the argument to be (...) valid, and briefly compare these conditions to some risky policy options with which actual public decision-makers are faced. (shrink)

Longtermism is the thesis that in a large class of decision situations, the best thing we can do is what is best for the long-term future. The scope question for longtermism asks: how large is the class of decision situations for which this is true? In this paper, I suggest that the scope of longtermism may be narrower than many longtermists suppose. I identify a restricted version of longtermism: swamping axiological strong longtermism (swamping ASL). I (...) identify three scope-limiting factors - probabilistic and decision-theoretic phenomena which, when present, tend to reduce the prospects for swamping ASL. I argue that these scope-limiting factors are often present in human decision problems, then use two case studies from recent discussions of longtermism to show how the scope-limiting factors lead to a restricted, if perhaps nonempty, scope for swamping ASL. (shrink)

Longtermists claim that what we ought to do is mainly determined by how our actions might affect the very long-run future. A natural objection to longtermism is that these effects may be nearly impossible to predict — perhaps so close to impossible that, despite the astronomical importance of the far future, the expected value of our present actions is mainly determined by near-term considerations. This paper aims to precisify and evaluate one version of this epistemic objection to longtermism. (...) To that end, I develop two simple models for comparing ‘longtermist’ and ‘neartermist’ interventions, incorporating the idea that it is harder to make a predictable difference to the further future. These models yield mixed conclusions: if we simply aim to maximize expected value, and don’t mind premising our choices on minuscule probabilities of astronomical payoffs, the case for longtermism looks robust. But on some prima facie plausible empirical worldviews, the expectational superiority of longtermist interventions depends heavily on these ‘Pascalian’ probabilities. So the case for longtermism may depend either on plausible but non-obvious empirical claims or on a tolerance for Pascalian fanaticism. (shrink)

The standard case for longtermism focuses on a small set of risks to the far future, and argues that in a small set of choice situations, the present marginal value of mitigating those risks is very great. But many longtermists are attracted to, and many critics of longtermism worried by, a farther-reaching form of longtermism. According to this farther-reaching form, there are many ways of improving the far future, which determine the value of our options in all (...) or nearly all choice situations, and will continue to do so over the coming decades even if we make substantial investments in longtermist priorities. This chapter highlights the gap between the minimal form of longtermism established by standard arguments and this more expansive view, and considers (without reaching any firm conclusions) which form of longtermism is more plausible. (shrink)

We are constantly making choices about how to invest our time and resources. From a moral perspective, we must ask which moral concerns are most deserving of our attention. Longtermism, as e.g. defined by Greaves and MacAskill, holds that our moral focus should be on the long-term future, and that current and medium-term moral problems are comparatively insignificant. This theory is centrally based on the assumption that the moral importance of individuals can be aggregated. Since the number of individuals (...) of future generations far exceeds the number of current individuals and those closer in time, future generations are to bemorally prioritised, according to longtermism. This paper explores the implications of rejecting the premise of moral aggregation of individuals and adopting a strongly non-aggregationist position instead. It is argued that, according to strong non-aggregationism, the magnitude of the probability with which our intervention actually make a difference, as well as whether we look at the available interventions from an ex ante or ex post perspective, are relevant factors in their moral assessment. Ultimately, the conclusion is reached that strong non-aggregationism does likely not support strongly longtermist conclusions. (shrink)

Longtermists such as William MacAskill maintain that if we are concerned about human well-being and the longterm future, we should embrace continued technological advancement and development, and that, indeed, one of the most significant threats to longterm human well-being and the well-being of other sentient creatures is technological stagnation – remaining at roughly the present technological level. This paper argues that we should be much more skeptical regarding claims that link continued technological development with positive contributions to well-being. We should (...) take seriously that even if technological development has contributed significantly to improvements in well-being in the past, that we may reach or have already reached a point at which future technological development no longer does so, and that, in that event, thinking about longterm ethical concerns actually recommends developing the capability to slow down, stop, or even roll back (some) technological development. (shrink)

Longtermism should not be wrongly defined as the view that we should act so that the future is as good as possible for human beings and their descendants; rather, longtermists should be concerned with what the long-term future may be like for all sentient beings. This includes nonhuman animals, as different risks of future suffering may afflict them. Indifference toward their interests could lead to the worsening of their use as resources, quantitatively and qualitatively. It could also help expand (...) wild animal suffering, a process that may have already begun. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a flurry of interest in longtermism: roughly, the view that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time. Familiar calls to take a long-term view towards global problems such as climate change and poverty typically urge us to plan on a scale of decades or perhaps a century. By contrast, longtermism asks us to take seriously the idea that what we should do right now may depend on the effects (...) of our actions thousands or even millions of years hence. This volume brings together leading scholars to discuss four sets of overlapping questions raised by longtermism. First, should we accept some version of longtermism? Second, to what extent can we predict and control the far future? Third, which ethical priorities are recommended by longtermism, and how revisionary are they? Finally, what implications would longtermism have for the design or reform of social, political, and legal institutions? Contributors include both supporters and critics of longtermism, and are drawn from a range of disciplines including philosophy, economics, psychology, law, political science, and mathematics, and from private industry. (shrink)

This article objects to two arguments that William MacAskill gives in What We Owe the Future in support of optimism about the prospects of longtermism, that is, the prospects of positively influencing the longterm future. First, it grants that he is right that, whereas humans sometimes benefit others as an end, they rarely harm them as an end, but argues that this bias towards positive motivation is counteracted by the fact that it is practically easier to harm than to (...) benefit. For this greater easiness makes it likely both that accidental effects will be harmful rather than beneficial and that the means or side‐effects of the actions people perform with the aim of benefiting themselves and those close to them will tend to be harmful to others. Secondly, while our article agrees with him that values could lock‐in, it contends that the value of longtermism is unlikely to lock in as long as human beings have not been morally enhanced but remain partial in favor of themselves and those near and dear. (shrink)

Strong longtermism maintains that how we should act morally is determined almost entirely by the expected effects on the welfare of our descendants existing thousands if not millions of years into the future, who might include both other humans and any artificial agents with a comparable or higher moral status that we end up creating. It is based on three key assumptions: (i) that our descendants will have a moral status that is at least as high as ours and (...) therefore should not have their welfare discounted by us; (ii) that there is a good chance that these individuals will vastly outnumber us; and (iii) that we can do things here and now that can be expected to positively shape the long-term trajectory of humanity. The aim of this contribution is to suggest that authors such as Will MacAskill and Hilary Greaves have been too optimistic about all these assumptions as a result of having ignored evidence that the populations of postindustrial countries are becoming less intelligent due mostly to the negative relationship that has emerged within these societies between intelligence and fertility and to the proclivity of intelligent people to delay parenthood. (shrink)

Longtermists have argued that humanity should significantly increase its efforts to prevent catastrophes like nuclear wars, pandemics, and AI disasters. But one prominent longtermist argument overshoots this conclusion: the argument also implies that humanity should reduce the risk of existential catastrophe even at extreme cost to the present generation. This overshoot means that democratic governments cannot use the longtermist argument to guide their catastrophe policy. In this paper, we show that the case for preventing catastrophe does not depend on (...) class='Hi'>longtermism. Standard cost-benefit analysis implies that governments should spend much more on reducing catastrophic risk. We argue that a government catastrophe policy guided by cost-benefit analysis should be the goal of longtermists in the political sphere. This policy would be democratically acceptable, and it would reduce existential risk by almost as much as a strong longtermist policy. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that the field of cultural evolution can usefully inform attempts to understand and influence the long-term future. First, I provide an overview of cultural evolution, covering what it means for culture to evolve, the mechanisms by which it happens, the crucial importance of cumulative cultural evolution for hunan history, and how cultural evolution (and in particular intergroup competition) has driven the rise of large-scale cooperation. Second, I draw out some possible lessons from cultural evolution for (...) thinking about the long-term future. In particular, I suggest we should be careful not to prematurely ”lock in” certain values or other cultural features, and instead aim for a society open to variation and competition. I also consider whether the future will bring greater selection pressure for particular kinds of values, such as patience. (shrink)

The term ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) was introduced in 1956 by American mathematician and computer scientist John McCarthy, who used it in a funding proposal for a summer research project at Dartmouth College (McCarthy et al., 1955). AI is myriad technologies that mutate and evolve, yet both the academic field devoted to its study and the industry that aims to realize it in its multiplicity are often said to have the nebulous aim, intimated already in McCarthy’s proposal, of making machines capable (...) of displaying human-level, intelligent activity in all or most domains.1 The history of AI is narrated as a sequence of alternating ‘springtimes’ and ‘winters’ in which an approach is supposedly made to this vague goal, then falters (e.g., Bostrom 2014, pp. 6–8; Kurzweil, 2005, 263–266). In 2022, the year chatbots based on large language models (LLMs) seized the world’s attention, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT became for many identical to all AI, a massive springtime broke out, with a small cohort of companies securing unprecedented funding while their leaderships told stories about how general machine intelligence at the human level or, to use the current jargon, artificial general intelligence (AGI), was just around the corner. (shrink)

In this critique of longtermism, I attack its Heart, the idea that there is intrinsic value in the addition of each new happy being to the world. I provide new responses to longtermists' two main arguments for the Heart (The Argument from Extinction and The Argument from Miserable Beings). I then sketch an alternative view to longtermism, which I call Future Sentimentalism, a view that does a better job of explaining our future-regarding reasons. Finally, I consider an important (...) objection to my critique. (shrink)

We cannot justifably believe that any currently available actions will have a non-negligible positive influence a billion or more years in the future. I offer three arguments for this thesis. According to the Infinite Washout Argument, given the non-zero chance that your actions will produce infinitely many effects, any finite effects will wash out in expectation. According to the Cluelessness Argument, we cannot justifiably guess what actions are likely to have positive effects in a billion-plus years. We cannot be justified, (...) for example, in thinking that nuclear war or human extinction would be more likely to have bad than good consequences that far into the future. According to the Negligibility Argument, even if we could justifiably guess that some particular action is likelier to have good than bad consequences that far in the future, the odds of good consequences would be negligible due to the compounding of probabilities over time. (shrink)

Longtermism is the view that positively influencing the long-term future is one of the key moral priorities of our time. Longtermists generally focus on humans, and neglect animals. This is a mistake. In this paper I will show that the basic argument for longtermism applies to animals at least as well as it does to humans, and that the reasons longtermists have given for ignoring animals do not withstand scrutiny. Because of their numbers, their capacity for suffering, and (...) our ability to influence their futures, animals ought to be a central concern of longtermists. Furthermore, I will suggest that longtermism is a fruitful framework for thinking about the wellbeing of animals, as it helps us to identify actions we can take now that have a reasonable chance of improving the wellbeing of animals over the very long term. (shrink)

Despite advancing strong claims about our collective priorities, longtermism has received little attention in debates in political philosophy. I first provide an account of longtermism that highlights the way it departs from established work on intergenerational justice. The view offers a novel account of the value of the future and is concerned about existential risks that might curtail that value. I then argue that longtermism's focus on existential risk is implausible, leading proponents to adopt unattractive political positions. (...) In particular, I show that Toby Ord’ “grand strategy” for humanity is antidemocratic and elitist, and that William MacAskill's “political experimentalism” implies a crude libertarianism. Longtermists are uninterested in political thought and often seem unaware of the strength of the positions they adopt, or indeed of how those positions depart from those of fellow advocates. (shrink)

This paper focuses on two arguments William MacAskill discusses with approval in What We Owe the Future. Both arguments support the existentially unrestricted form of longtermism that MacAskill favors, and both rely on moral principles that reflect a particular way of resolving the decades-old, Narveson-inspired, value of existence controversy. But it is questionable whether that way of resolving the controversy — i.e., against Narveson — has ever in fact been entirely grounded. Instead, many in the population ethics mainstream have (...) simply assumed that the controversy was happily put to bed soon after it first gained attention. Once we identify that assumption as mere assumption, we can see that the principles in question work, not as the solid underpinnings of an insightful resolution of the value of existence controvery, a resolution we ourselves are compelled to accept, but rather as dogma – thus the two dogmas of population ethics. That insight opens the door to an existentially restricted form of longtermism, a form that is arguably more attractive than MacAskill’s own. (shrink)

In "Is Power-Seeking AI an Existential Risk?" Joe Carlsmith provides an intriguing analysis of the potential pathways from advanced artificial intelligence to existential catastrophe. This essay contends that while the report's framework offers a fundamental contribution to AI safety, its application of longtermist principles is incomplete. By focusing almost exclusively on catastrophic failure modes, it overlooks the symmetrical potential for "uber-beneficence" i.e., outcomes of profound and durable positive value. This critique deconstructs Carlsmith's model of the power-seeking AI, arguing that it (...) relies on a monolithic conception of agency that does not sufficiently appreciate insights from recent research into diverse agent architectures and emergent goals. Ultimately, a more complete longtermist strategy must not only build guardrails against catastrophe but also actively chart a course toward a flourishing, AI-assisted future. An overriding focus on downside risk alone may inadvertently preclude the most positive outcomes humanity could achieve. (shrink)

Longtermists prioritize the far future. They think that when we donate to relieve suffering, we should donate to longtermist charities that lower existential risk—the risk that humanity is wiped out, or locked into an oppressive equilibrium. This chapter tries to resist the longtermist focus on the far future. It suggests that we do not hold each other accountable for addressing the kinds of risks that longtermists describe—and more importantly, that we’re correct to not hold each other accountable for those risks. (...) Longtermists sometimes argue that all defensible moral theories converge on prioritizing the far future. This chapter offers one defensible theory that does not converge. The theory gives a principled way of adjudicating which risks we hold each other accountable for mitigating. The theory does allow that certain actions can be required because of their longterm effects; for instance, we might be required to spend a certain amount on scientific research. But the ultimate justification for that requirement is very different from the justifications that the longtermists emphasize. (shrink)

Longtermism is the view that the most urgent global priorities, and those to which we should devote the largest portion of our resources, are those that focus on (i) ensuring a long future for humanity, and perhaps sentient or intelligent life more generally, and (ii) improving the quality of the lives that inhabit that long future. While it is by no means the only one, the argument most commonly given for this conclusion is that these interventions have greater expected (...) goodness per unit of resource devoted to them than each of the other available interventions, including those that focus on the health and well-being of the current population. In this paper, I argue that, even if we grant the consequentialist ethics upon which this argument depends, and even if we grant one of the axiologies that are typically paired with that ethics to give the argument, we are not morally required to choose an option that maximises expected utility; indeed, we might not even be permitted to do so. Instead, I will argue, if the argument's consequentialism is correct, we should choose using a decision theory that is sensitive to risk, and allows us to give greater weight to worse-case outcomes than expected utility theory does. And, I will show, such decision theories do not always recommend longtermist interventions. Indeed, sometimes, they recommend exactly the opposite: sometimes, they recommend hastening human extinction. Many, though not all, will take this as a reductio of the consequentialism or the axiology of the argument. I remain agnostic on the conclusion we should draw. (shrink)

The standard argument for longtermism assumes that we should care as much about far future people as about our contemporaries. I challenge this assumption. I first consider existing interpretations of ‘temporal discounting’, and argue that such discounting seems either unwarranted or insufficient to block the argument. I then offer two alternative reasons to care less about far future people: caring as much about them as about our contemporaries would make our lives less authentic and less meaningful. If I’m right, (...) this undermines at least the strongest versions of longtermism. Plausibly, we should do much more for the far future than we’re currently doing. Still, we often ought to act for contemporaries’ sakes, even if longtermist actions would expectably do more good. (shrink)

We set out longtermist political philosophy as a research field by exploring the case for, and the implications of, ‘institutional longtermism’: the view that, when evaluating institutions, we should give significant weight to their very long-term effects. We begin by arguing that the standard case for longtermism may be more robust when applied to institutions than to individual actions or policies, both because institutions have large, broad, and long-term effects, and because institutional longtermism can plausibly sidestep various (...) objections to individual longtermism. We then address points of contact between longtermism and some central values of mainstream political philosophy, focusing on justice, equality, freedom, legitimacy, and democracy. While each value initially seems to conflict with institutional longtermism, we find that these conflicts are less clear-cut upon closer inspection, and that some political values might even provide independent support for institutional longtermism. We end with a grab bag of related questions that we lack space to explore here. (shrink)

We argue that even if you accept that the future matters just as much as the present from a moral point of view, there are important reasons to focus on the near-term consequences of our actions for the purpose of decision-making. These reasons include causal diffusion of our action’s consequences, epistemic diffusion of our action’s predictable consequences, and both optimism and pessimism about existential risk and moral uncertainty. It follows that the practical consequences of not discounting the future are less (...) revisionary than they might initially appear. We concede that we are not entirely sure ourselves whether this chapter constitutes an attack on or defense of longtermism, and leave it for the reader to decide. (shrink)

This chapter makes the case for strong longtermism: the claim that, in many situations, impact on the long-run future is the most important feature of our actions. Our case begins with the observation that an astronomical number of people could exist in the aeons to come. Even on conservative estimates, the expected future population is enormous. We then add a moral claim: all the consequences of our actions matter. In particular, the moral importance of what happens does not depend (...) on when it happens. That pushes us toward strong longtermism. We then address a few potential concerns, the first of which is that it is impossible to have any sufficiently predictable influence on the course of the long-run future. We argue that this is not true. Some actions can reasonably be expected to improve humanity’s long-term prospects. These include reducing the risk of human extinction, preventing climate change, guiding the development of artificial intelligence, and investing funds for later use. We end by arguing that these actions are more than just extremely effective ways to do good. Since the benefits of longtermist efforts are large and the personal costs are comparatively small, we are morally required to take up these efforts. (shrink)

According to longtermism, present persons ought to promote the value of the far future. While this view has so far been primarily discussed within a consequentialist normative framework, less has been said about what longtermism entails from a deontological perspective. This paper aims to address this shortcoming. I argue that, from a deontological standpoint, distant future people have a present moral status qua “expected persons”. Therefore, they have at least some present rights qua moral status-holders. But distant future (...) people do not have equal moral status at the present time. Therefore, their present rights are not as stringent as those of present persons, other things being equal. However, I demonstrate that the most fundamental longtermist concerns do not rest on a commitment to intergenerational moral equality: even if distant future people are not our moral equals, respecting their present rights should be a key moral priority of our time. (shrink)

Why, if at all, should we object to economic inequality? Some central arguments – the argument from decreasing marginal utility for example – invoke instrumental reasons and object to inequality because of its effects. Such instrumental arguments, however, often concern only the static effects of inequality and neglect its intertemporal conse- quences. In this article, we address this striking gap and investigate income inequality’s intertemporal consequences, including its potential effects on humanity’s (very) long-term future. Following recent arguments around future generations (...) and so-called longtermism, those effects might arguably matter more than inequality’s short-term con- sequences. We assess whether we have instrumental reason to reduce economic inequality based on its intertemporal effects in the short, medium, and the very long term. We find a good short and medium-term instrumental case for lower economic inequality. We then argue, somewhat speculatively, that we have instrumental reasons for inequality reduction from a longtermist perspective too, primarily because greater inequality could increase existential risk. We thus have instrumental reasons to reduce inequality, regardless of which time-horizon we take. We then argue that from most consequentialist perspectives, this pro tanto reason also gives us all-things-considered reason. And even across most non-consequentialist views in philosophy, this argument gives us either an all-things-considered or at least weighty pro tanto reason against inequality. (shrink)

This paper defends the claim that mere temporal proximity always and without exception strengthens certain moral duties, including the duty to save – call this view Robust Temporalism. Although almost all other moral philosophers dismiss Robust Temporalism out of hand, I argue that it is prima facie intuitively plausible, and that it is analogous to a view about special obligations that many philosophers already accept. I also defend Robust Temporalism against several common objections, and I highlight its relevance to a (...) number of practical policy debates, including longtermism. My conclusion is that Robust Temporalism is a moral live option, that deserves to be taken much more seriously in the future. (shrink)

Living in Anthropocene times entails living in relation to two seemingly separate temporalities – the microtime of digital operations and the deep time of geological upheaval. Though divergent, these temporalities are united by their unavailability to perception; microtime proceeds too fast to perceive directly, while deep time is too vast to apprehend. Taking these temporalities as a point of departure, this paper develops three arguments. First, it asserts that the temporalities of deep time and microtime increasingly impact contemporary existence, complicating (...) familiar categorizations of temporal experience. Second, it argues that these ostensibly separate temporalities are ontologically connected through the operations of the tech industry, which is constructing a microtemporal system that extracts the planet’s deep time resources to delimit the future both materially and cognitively. Third, it suggests that Silicon Valley legitimizes these processes by funding the philosophy of longtermism, which appeals to distant timescales to marginalize injustices in the present. (shrink)

This thesis is about the moral reasons we have to do less than best. It consists of six chapters. Part I of the thesis proposes, extends, and defends reasons to do less than best. In Chapter One (“The Conditional Obligation”) I outline and reject two recent arguments from Joe Horton and Theron Pummer for the claim that we have a conditional obligation to bring about the most good. In Chapter Two (“Agglomeration and Agent-Relative Costs”) I argue that agent-relative costs can (...) justify permissions to less than best in a far greater range of decisions contexts than we currently believe. In Chapter Three (“Risk and Aggregation”) I discuss how anti-aggregative moral theories deal with risk, whilst proposing an argument in favour of ex-post moral theories. In Part II of the thesis, I discuss longtermism, presenting a series of reasons to believe we have both significant permissions and obligations to prioritise those in the short-term. In Chapter Four (“Listening to Future People”) I criticise a recent argument presented by Andreas Mogensen for the claim we cannot have obligations grounded in the wellbeing of future people. I then show that, even permitting the existence of obligations to future people, we still have significant reasons to resist longtermism on the grounds of partiality. In Chapter Five (“The Complaints of Future People”) I argue that scepticism about aggregation is inconsistent with an obligation, or indeed even a permission, to help far future people. In Chapter Six (“Leaving the Present Behind”) I explore the moral significance of “dooming”, whilst arguing that we have a pro tanto reason of fairness to prioritise aiding those currently in existence. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the logical and practical flaws of Effective Altruism (EA) and its extension into Longtermism from the perspective of Confucian ethics. EA is an ethical theory that has developed since the late 2000s, centered on Peter Singer and William MacAskill, which argues that altruistic actions should exclude emotions and psychological distance, calculating efficiency to generate greater good. Chapter III demonstrates three intrinsic contradictions within EA. First, EA universalizes emergency disaster ethics into everyday ethics, thereby justifying both (...) “neglect” and “triage”. Second, quantification for efficiency calculations results in discrimination against the elderly, disabled persons, and the severely ill. Third, while EA claims to advocate “altruism without sacrifice”, it actually demands austere giving based on marginal utility while applying a double standard to the wealthy. Chapter IV examines EA’s core value of “efficiency” from multiple perspectives. EA’s utilitarianism distorts, in three ways:first, the foundation of altruism; second, the operative mechanism of altruism; and third, the meaning of altruistic practice. EA ultimately collapses into “efficiency totalitarianism”, which hierarchizes everything under efficiency, and advances toward “monetarism”, which reduces altruistic action solely to donation. Chapter V analyzes two fundamental flaws in “long-termism”. First, methodological fragility. Second, Longtermism proposes an “integrative theory” claiming that lives with well-being levels below 5 would be better not to exist, which could lead to the logic of tolerating famines in impoverished nations. While EA pursues abstract equality and quantified efficiency, Confucianism emphasizes the directness of relationships, the immediacy of practice, and the extensibility of empathy. While EA instrumentalizes the present based on vast numbers of future people, Confucianism takes the concrete relationships and timely judgments of the present as the foundation of moral practice. Despite possessing clear slogans, global influence, and astronomical financial resources, EA harbors logical contradictions and real dangers. Confucian ethics offers an alternative model of altruism capable of overcoming these problems. The integrative norm of “near-thinking and far-planning” (近思-遠慮) combines concrete relational focus [near-thinking] with long-term responsibility [far-planning], simultaneously addressing pressing current issues while preparing for the future. The purpose of this paper is to alert society to the spread of EA and to explore, from the perspective of Confucian ethics, a superior model of altruism. (shrink)

Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics is an annual forum for new work in normative ethical theory. Leading philosophers present original contributions to our understanding of a wide range of moral issues and positions. Volume 16 comprises essays on a variety of topics including kindnesses by Cheshire Calhoun, non-consequentialist axiology by Ralph Wedgwood, self-improvement by Zoë Johnson King, heteronomy and autonomy by Tamar Schapiro, moral worth and backgrounding “ought” by Sarah McGrath, forgiveness and risk by Hannah Tierney, excuses by Julie Tannenbaum, (...) time and the duty of beneficence by Douglas W. Portmore, the comparative claims of victims by Helen Frowe, longtermism by Caleb Perl, and directly collectively self-defeating morality and other forms of normativity by Mark Budolfson. (shrink)

Longtermism, the view that emphasizes the importance of the long-term consequences of our actions, has predominantly been focused on humans. Gary O’Brien (2024) argues that this is a mistake and instead, longtermism should be animal inclusive. While I find merit in O’Brien’s core argument, I offer critiques to certain aspects of it in this article. Moreover, in the spirit of extending the sphere of moral considerability, I believe that we should also consider longtermism for environmental values more (...) widely. This article proposes a non-anthropocentric approach to longtermism that acknowledges not only sentient animals but also ecological systems and all forms of life to invoke a more diverse discussion about longtermism. It also explores potentially effective interventions that such an extended perspective might yield. (shrink)

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 51, Issue 4, Page 373-412, Fall 2023.

A guide for making the future go better. Humanity’s written history spans only five thousand years. Our yet-unwritten future could last for millions more – or it could end tomorrow. Staggering numbers of people will lead lives of flourishing or misery or never live at all, depending on what we do today.

According to longtermism, the future involves very high stakes, so society should reallocate resources towards improving the far-future. This would, however, comes at the expense of systematically neglecting present or near-future individuals who are in need. This paper argues that given normative uncertainty and reasonable disagreement about the stakes, resource allocations toward the future should be justified to present individuals who would be harmed by these reallocations, on terms that they can accept from their own moral perspectives. I develop (...) the principle of Resource-Use Justification, on the model of public justification, to explain the conditions under which such justification is provided. (shrink)