St Andrews Research Repository

St Andrews University Home
View Item 
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  • Login
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

Each-we dilemmas and effective altruism

Thumbnail
View/Open
Pummer_2019_JPE_Each_We_CCBYNCND_VOR.pdf (75.34Kb)
Date
02/07/2019
Author
Clark, Matthew
Pummer, Theron Gene
Keywords
B Philosophy (General)
BJ Ethics
T-NDAS
Metadata
Show full item record
Abstract
In his interesting and provocative article ‘Being Good in a World of Need’, Larry Temkin argues for the possibility of a type of Each-We Dilemma in which, if we each produce the most good we can individually, we produce a worse outcome collectively. Such situations would ostensibly be troubling from the standpoint of Effective Altruism, the project of finding out how to do the most good and doing it, subject to not violating side-constraints (MacAskill, forthcoming, p. 5). We here show that Temkin’s argument is more controversial than it may appear initially regarding both impartiality and goodness. This is because it is both inconsistent with (i) a plausible conception of impartiality (Anonymity) and inconsistent with (ii) the standard view of goodness (the Internal Aspects View). Moreover, because (i) and (ii) are entailed by the sense of ‘impartial goodness’ that Effective Altruism tentatively adopts, Temkin’s argument is less relevant to Effective Altruism than he suggests.
Citation
Clark , M & Pummer , T G 2019 , ' Each-we dilemmas and effective altruism ' , Journal of Practical Ethics , vol. 7 , no. 1 , pp. 24-32 . < http://www.jpe.ox.ac.uk/papers/each-we-dilemmas-and-effective-altruism/ >
Publication
Journal of Practical Ethics
Status
Peer reviewed
Type
Journal article
Rights
© University of Oxford 2013 except as otherwise explicitly specified. The material in this journal is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported licence. The full text of the licence is available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URL
http://www.jpe.ox.ac.uk/papers/each-we-dilemmas-and-effective-altruism/
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/18034

Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Advanced Search

Browse

All of RepositoryCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateNamesTitlesSubjectsClassificationTypeFunderThis CollectionBy Issue DateNamesTitlesSubjectsClassificationTypeFunder

My Account

Login

Open Access

To find out how you can benefit from open access to research, see our library web pages and Open Access blog. For open access help contact: openaccess@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Accessibility

Read our Accessibility statement.

How to submit research papers

The full text of research papers can be submitted to the repository via Pure, the University's research information system. For help see our guide: How to deposit in Pure.

Electronic thesis deposit

Help with deposit.

Repository help

For repository help contact: Digital-Repository@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Give Feedback

Cookie policy

This site may use cookies. Please see Terms and Conditions.

Usage statistics

COUNTER-compliant statistics on downloads from the repository are available from the IRUS-UK Service. Contact us for information.

© University of St Andrews Library

University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland, No SC013532.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter