Nick Gabrieli: Effective Altruism and Theories of Welfare: a Philosophical Analysis
One of the key philosophical tenets of the Effective Altruist movement is “welfarism,” the moral theory that the well-being of people is the sole or at least a major component of what is morally desirable. Intuitively, most of us have a rough notion of what “well being” consists of: physical and mental health, enjoyable leisure activities, professional success, close personal relations, etc. Nevertheless, at a more theoretical level, philosophers have some disagreements about what constitutes well being. Philosophical theories about what well being is can be divided into three major kinds: hedonistic theories, desire theories, and objective list theories. There is currently a lively philosophical debate about which of these theories is correct. However, I will not aim to answer this question. Instead, in this post I will evaluate the three most major cause-areas of effective altruism (global health and development, animal welfare, and existential risk) from the perspective of each of these theories. While this analysis will not answer the question of which cause areas are in fact the most important, it will both shed light on the amount of certainty that we can have about the importance of different cause areas, and point towards questions in the theory of well being that require further investigation.
Defining the theories
For the purpose of applying the different theories of well being to the aforementioned cause areas, defining the different theories is necessary. “Hedonistic” theories of well being define well being as the net “balance” of pleasure over pain; a person’s well being is maximized when they are experiencing as much pleasure and as little pain as possible. Under hedonistic theories, “pleasure” and “pain” are understood as properties of our subjective experiences, including physical sensations such as physical pain, emotional feelings such as joy or excitement, as well as any other qualities of our experiences that make them pleasurable or painful. In contrast, desire-based theories of well being define well being as the satisfaction of desires. Thus, like hedonistic theories, desire-based theories imply that well-being is subjective, as different people desire different things. However, desire-based theories differ from hedonistic theories in that people may desire things that are not subjectively experienced as “pleasant.” For example, someone may desire to climb Mount Everest, even though they know that the experience of climbing it will involve great physical pain, and that this physical pain might “outweigh” the pleasure caused by satisfying their desire to climb the mountain. Finally, according to “objective list” theories, a person’s well being consists in their life satisfying as many items on an “objective list” to the greatest extent possible. Different objective list theorists disagree about what should be on the list, but common candidates include artistic, intellectual, or athletic achievements and close personal relationships in addition to the satisfaction of basic human needs such as having enough food and being physically healthy.
Global Health and Development
Global health and development is arguably the central cause area of the Effective Altruist movement, or at least the highest visibility one. However, global health and development may be of varying importance depending on which theory of welfare is accepted. Intuitively, global health and development seems important from a hedonistic perspective. From relieving people of the necessity to engage in physically painful, back-breaking labor, to curing them of painful and demoralizing illnesses like malaria, progress in global health and development clearly helps to relieve large amounts of human suffering. Moreover, both physical health and material wealth enables people to pursue ways of life that focus less on mere subsistence and survival and more on enjoyment and leisure, making their lives more pleasurable. The same intuitions apply to desire-based theories of welfare; health (by allowing people to survive) and wealth (by giving people more consumption opportunities, in addition to more leisure time) seem to allow people to satisfy more of their desires. However, these intuitions are somewhat challenged by data in the emerging field of “happiness studies,” which suggests that economic development makes a relatively small impact on peoples’ well being as measured by surveys. While the scholarly debate about the effects of economic development on happiness continues, there does seem to be an overall link between economic development and self-reported happiness, though it could be confounded by other variables such as the level of social trust being higher in wealthier incomes. However, there may also be methodological issues with using survey data to gauge peoples’ level of well being; perhaps people cannot tell how happy they “truly” are, and (as such) our intuitions about the effects of economic development on both hedonistic and desire-based well-being should be trusted over complex survey data. It is likewise unclear whether these surveys measure hedonistic or desire based welfare or some combination of both. In contrast to this uncertainty, objective list theories almost certainly bode well for global health and development. Not only is health itself a common item on objective lists, but economic development allows humans to more easily pursue the various human excellences that are also commonly placed on objective lists. For example, because economic development makes education more broadly available, it allows people to pursue the specific excellence of intellectual achievement far more easily. Thus, while global health and development is at least somewhat important according to all three theories, happiness research and its methodological problems throw some uncertainty on how important it is under hedonistic and desire based theories.
Animal Welfare
The moral status of animals is hotly debated among philosophers. However, from the perspective of a hedonistic, welfarist moral theory, promoting animal welfare is clearly important. While the ability of “less complex” animals such as insects to feel pain is debated among scientists, most scientists agree that “more complex” animals such as chickens, cows, and pigs can experience pleasure and pain; as such, animal welfare could be an extremely important cause area due to the large number of animals and the immense suffering they experience from factory farming. The implications of desire-based theories for animal welfare are more complicated. This is because, unlike experiencing pleasure and pain, having stable and coherent desires requires some intellectual capacities. Thus, desire-based theories may exclude more animals from moral consideration than hedonistic theories, and may grant lesser moral weight to others, though more intelligent animals would certainly be granted at least some moral status. Finally, objective list theories pose somewhat of a challenge to the cause area of animal welfare. This is because objective list theories are usually theories about what constitutes well being for humans specifically, rather than sentient beings more generally. In principle, different species of animals could each have different objective lists for what constitute their well-being. However, animals are incapable of achieving many items that are usually considered central to lists for humans, such as intellectual achievement. How this fact affects the moral status of animals is unclear in the absence of more developed objective list theories.
Existential Risk
The importance of mitigating existential risk is largely orthogonal to the theory of well being used by effective altruists. Instead, the importance of existential risk largely turns on questions in “population ethics,” or the study of our moral obligations to future people and potential future people. If we have obligations to these future people, and specifically to securing their welfare, then regardless of what theory of well-being is correct, existential risk is almost certainly an important cause area due to the sheer number of future lives that would be prevented by an existential catastrophe. However, that does not mean that the theory of well being has no implications for the importance of existential risk. Proponents of combatting existential risk often point to the fact that due to human progress across a wide variety of domains (scientific, artistic, etc.), future lives may be even better than lives in the present. The question of how much better these future lives will be, however, depends on what theory of happiness effective altruists employ. Depending on advances in , future humans could be biologically engineered to be capable of experiencing much more subjective pleasure, making existential risk a particularly important cause area from the perspective of hedonistic theories of well being. However, this conclusion depends on the scientific feasibility of engineering such people. Nevertheless, independently of such speculation, it seems likely that in terms of material prosperity, health, and safety, the future will be substantially better, so we can expect that future humans will probably experience more pleasure and less pain. The same logic can be applied to desire-based theories; thus, both theories suggest that future lives may be even more valuable than ours, making our obligations to the future all the more important. Finally, the question of how much better future lives will be under objective list theories depends on what items are considered part of the objective list. Future people’s lives may be much better with regards to some items, such as intellectual or athletic achievement (due to human advancement), but may be similar in other domains (for example, close personal relations). However, as with hedonistic and desire based theories, it seems likely that future humans will have at least somewhat better lives as measured by an objective list theory,
Conclusions
In the final analysis, all of the cause areas seem at least important under all of the major theories of well being, with the possible exception of animal welfare according to objective list theories. However, there is variation as to the certainty and degree of this importance. According to my analysis, both global health and development and animal welfare are of varying importance depending on which theory is used, with objective list theories particularly supporting global health and development, and hedonistic theories particularly supporting animal welfare. In contrast, combatting existential risk is immensely important independently of which theory is chosen, if the premise that we have moral obligations to future people is accepted. Thus, if the arguments that we have such obligations are strong, mitigating existential risk seems to be the most certainly important cause area.
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Nick is a freshman from Harvard, tentatively planning on studying philosophy. He is passionate about longtermism and avoiding existential risk, and likes to play piano and video games in his spare time.