The Parfit Memorial Lectures

    Professor Theron Pummer (University of St. Andrews)

Wednesday 12 June 2024

'Future Suffering and the Non-Identity Problem'

Abstract: If we dramatically reduced our carbon emissions, the quality of life of future people would be much higher than it would be if we carried on with business as usual. Nonetheless, because adopting a widespread policy of reducing emissions would affect the timings of conceptions and thus the identities of who would come to exist, it is likely that after a century or so none of the particular people who would exist if we carried on as usual would exist if we instead dramatically reduced our emissions. Reducing emissions may therefore be better for no particular future person. Are we nonetheless morally required to reduce our emissions, and, if so, on what basis? This is one instance of the non-identity problem, made famous by Derek Parfit. Drawing upon the distinction between morally requiring reasons and morally justifying reasons, I provide a new solution to the non-identity problem. According to my solution, we can be morally required to ensure that the quality of life of future people is higher rather than lower insofar as this involves reducing future suffering (negative welfare). Indeed, we are often morally required to do this. We can be morally required to reduce future suffering in this way even when it is not better for any particular future person and even when future people would have lives worth living regardless of what we do. However, we are never morally required to ensure that the quality of life of future people is higher rather than lower insofar as this involves merely increasing future happiness (positive welfare). My solution to the non-identity problem captures the procreation asymmetry while avoiding implausible forms of antinatalism. It has important implications for global priority setting.

Parfit Memorial Lecture 2023 - Katie Steele (Australian National University)

Tuesday 13 June 2023

A recording of the lecture is now available to view here.

Reasons and Caution in Moral Deliberation

Abstract

Many think moral decisions should err on the safe side: that caution provides a moral reason for choice. Under what reading(s) of ‘caution’ is that convincing? If ‘caution’ stands for describing and valuing the consequences of actions in the morally right way, then it provides a moral reason for choice, but trivially so.  What about a more distinct version of ‘caution’– to do with decision making under uncertainty? The prime candidate is risk aversion. I argue, however, that risk aversion in the various ways it is ordinarily understood is not a convincing moral reason for choice. This has important implications for personal deliberations and public debate. I develop an alternative way to understand ‘caution’ under uncertainty as a moral reason for choice. It depends on there being an aspirational benchmark or reference point which rightly transforms the relative expected gains and losses of our actions.

About the speaker

Katie Steele studied mathematics at the University of Queensland (BSc 1999). She later pursued an MA in philosophy at the University of Queensland (MA 2003), followed by a PhD in philosophy at the University of Sydney (PhD 2007). Katie was subsequently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Australian Centre of Excellence for Risk Analysis at the University of Sydney. She then took up a position in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics and remained there from 2008 to 2016, when she joined the School of Philosophy at the ANU. Katie presently holds a 4-year ANU Futures Scheme grant and is a co-investigator on the 'Ethics and Risk' ARC Discovery Project as well as a co-investigator on the 'Climate Change and Future Generations' grant based at the Institute for Futures Studies, Stockholm. More information can be found here.

Selected Publications

Moral Uncertainty, Noncognitivism, and the Multi-Objective Story (with Robinson, P. ), 2022. Nous, online 25 September 2022.

Transformative experience, awareness growth and the limits of rational planning (with Stefánsson, H.O.), 2022. Philosophy of Science, online.

Belief Revision for Growing Awareness (with Stefánsson, H.O. ), 2021. Mind 130(4): 1207-1232.

The distinct moral importance of acting together, 2022. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 104(2): 505-510

Why time discounting should be exponential: A reply to Callender. Forthcoming in Australian Philosophical Review.

Levelling counterfactual scepticism (with Sandgren, A.), 2021. Synthese, 199: 927-947.

How to be imprecise and yet immune to sure loss, 2021. Synthese, 199: 427-444.

The problem of evaluating automated large-scale evidence aggregators (with Wüthrich, N. ), 2017. Synthese, online 28 November 2017.

The Diversity of Model Tuning Practices in Climate Science (with Charlotte Werndl), 2016. Philosophy of Science 83(5), 1133–1144.

Can free evidence be bad? Value of information for the imprecise probabilist (with Bradley, S. ), 2016. Philosophy of Science 83, 1–28.

Full list available here.

Parfit Memorial Lecture 2022 - Jeffrey Sanford Russell (University of Southern California)

16 June 2022

A recording of the lecture is now available to view here.

The handout for the lecture can be found here.

Problems for Intergenerational Equity

Abstract

The principle of Intergenerational Equity says (roughly) that benefits to future generations count morally for just as much as benefits to people who are alive today. This principle is widely accepted by philosophers, and the alternative has been called "outrageous" and "reprehensible"; the principle is also an important part of the case for prioritizing actions that affect the very long-term future. But Intergenerational Equity has weird and paradoxical consequences for reasoning about moral value and risk in the very long run. This lecture will explore some of these consequences.

About the speaker

Jeffrey Sanford Russell is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California. His work covers many different topics, including the limits of what is possible, the structure of space and time, parts and wholes, things and their properties, evidence, belief, and action. Jeffrey is currently working on issues in decision theory and ethics involving large and infinite numbers, as well as normative uncertainty. Much of his work applies technical tools to traditional philosophical questions. More information is available here.

Selected Publications

With Yoaav Isaacs. “Infinite Prospects”. In: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103.1 (2021), pp. 178–198.

“On the Probability of Plenitude”. In: Journal of Philosophy 117 (5 2020), pp. 267–292.

“Non-Archimedean Preferences Over Countable Lotteries”. In: Journal of Mathematical Economics 88 (May 2020), pp. 180–186.

“How Much is at Stake for the Pragmatic Encroacher”. In: Oxford Studies in Epistemology 6 (2019).

“Quality and Quantifiers”. In: Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96.3 (2018), pp. 562– 577.

With John Hawthorne. “Possible Patterns”. In: Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 11 (2018).

With Andrew Bacon. “The Logic of Opacity”. In: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2017).

“Composition as Abstraction”. In: Journal of Philosophy 114 (9 2017), pp. 453–470

With John Hawthorne. “General Dynamic Triviality Theorems”. In: Philosophical Review 125 (3 2016), pp. 307–339.

“Qualitative Grounds”. In: Philosophical Perspectives 30 (1 2016), pp. 309–348.

Full list available here.

Parfit Memorial Lecture 2021 - Orri Stefansson (Stockholm University and Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study)

14 June 2021

A recording of the lecture is now available to view here.

The working paper that was the basis for the lecture can be found here.

Should welfare equality be a global priority?

Abstract

Suppose that some near-future generation can make an investment that would hugely benefit some far-future generation (up to the largest metaphysically possible increase in welfare) at the cost of a slight decrease in welfare for the near-future generation. There will otherwise be perfect equality between the two generations. Most people presumably think that it would be better if the near-future generation made the investment, at least as long as the near-future generation would enjoy a sufficiently high standard of living despite the small cost. However, in “Calibration dilemmas in the ethics of distribution,” Jake Nebel and I show that there exist calibration theorems that show that prioritarians or egalitarians who endorse this kind of verdict are committed to giving up what might otherwise seem to be reasonable aversion to inequality when relatively small welfare differences are at stake. The aim of this talk is to discuss calibration dilemmas like these and what they imply for global priorities.

About the speaker

Orri Stefansson is the Associate Professor (Docent) of Practical Philosophy at Stockholm University, Pro Futura Scientia Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, and advisor at the Institute for Futures Studies, where he is part of a project on climate ethics. He is also associate editor of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, and a regular visitor of the Global Priorities Institute. His current research concerns decision-making under extreme uncertainty, distributive ethics, population ethics, and catastrophic risk.

Selected Publications

Beyond Uncertainty: Reasoning with Unknown Possibilities (with Katie Steele), forthcoming, Cambridge University Press.

"Additively-Separable and Rank-Discounted Variable-Population Social Welfare Functions" (with Dean Spears), forthcoming in Economic Letters.

"Belief Revision for Growing Awareness" (with Katie Steele), forthcoming in Mind.

"On the Limits of the Precautionary Principle" Risk Analysis, 39(6): 1204-1222, 2019.

"What is Risk Aversion?" (with Richard Bradley), British Journal for the Philosophy of Science,  70(1): 77-102, 2019.

"What is 'Real' in Probabilism?" Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 95(3): 573-587, 2017.

Full list available here.

Parfit Memorial Lecture 2019 - Lara Buchak (University of California)

Thursday, 23 May

A recording of the lecture is now available to view here.

Should effective altruism focus on global health or existential threats?

Abstract

Global health interventions have a high probability of making a relatively small impact. Interventions that seek to eliminate or minimise existential threats often have a low probability of making an impact, and the probability of both the threat itself and the impact are hard to estimate; however, if they do make an impact, that impact will be enormous. Given these facts, which types of interventions should we focus on? I explore the difference that risk-aversion and risk-inclination, and ambiguity-aversion and ambiguity-seeking make to this question. Finally, I consider which of these attitudes we should adopt for purposes of ethics.

Presenter: Professor Lara Buchak, University of California, Berkeley