How do you distinguish the part of your ethics that you ignore in practice, e.g., not giving all your money to charity, from the part you insist you and everybody follow, e.g., not killing Joe even though he’s being really really annoying.
Giving all my money to charity isn’t a part of my ethics.
Increasing net utility (or something of the kind) is one of the things I care about. So the fact that something increases net utility is a reason to do it, and the fact that something decreases net utility is a reason not to. But net utility isn’t the only thing I care about, so a thing that increases net utility isn’t necessarily a thing I think I should do.
What I insist on, though, is another matter again. That’s a matter of Schelling points and traditions and the like, optimized (inter alia) for being easy to remember and intuitively plausible.
So:
Giving $1M to Joe: increases his utility, decreases mine, probably not a win overall in terms of net utility. Fails various other tests too. Not in any sense any sort of moral obligation.
Giving $100 to Joe, who is much poorer than me: net utility increase, might be a good thing to do on those terms. Probably reasonable not to do simply on the grounds that I care more about my own utility than that of strangers, that if I’m trying to do maximum good there are others who need the money much more than Joe, etc.
Giving $100 to a carefully chosen effective charity: close to the best thing I can do for net utility with the money. I still care more about my own utility than about strangers’, though, so not necessarily obligatory even “internally”.
Giving at least a few percent of one’s income to effective charities, provided one is reasonably comfortable financially: almost always a big net utility gain, not too burdensome, has the same form as various traditional practices, easy to remember and to do. I’d be comfortable recommending this as a principle everyone should be following.
The attentive reader will notice that not killing people just for being annoying clearly fits into the same category as the last of those.
How do you distinguish the part of your ethics that you ignore in practice, e.g., not giving all your money to charity, from the part you insist you and everybody follow, e.g., not killing Joe even though he’s being really really annoying.
Giving all my money to charity isn’t a part of my ethics.
Increasing net utility (or something of the kind) is one of the things I care about. So the fact that something increases net utility is a reason to do it, and the fact that something decreases net utility is a reason not to. But net utility isn’t the only thing I care about, so a thing that increases net utility isn’t necessarily a thing I think I should do.
What I insist on, though, is another matter again. That’s a matter of Schelling points and traditions and the like, optimized (inter alia) for being easy to remember and intuitively plausible.
So:
Giving $1M to Joe: increases his utility, decreases mine, probably not a win overall in terms of net utility. Fails various other tests too. Not in any sense any sort of moral obligation.
Giving $100 to Joe, who is much poorer than me: net utility increase, might be a good thing to do on those terms. Probably reasonable not to do simply on the grounds that I care more about my own utility than that of strangers, that if I’m trying to do maximum good there are others who need the money much more than Joe, etc.
Giving $100 to a carefully chosen effective charity: close to the best thing I can do for net utility with the money. I still care more about my own utility than about strangers’, though, so not necessarily obligatory even “internally”.
Giving at least a few percent of one’s income to effective charities, provided one is reasonably comfortable financially: almost always a big net utility gain, not too burdensome, has the same form as various traditional practices, easy to remember and to do. I’d be comfortable recommending this as a principle everyone should be following.
The attentive reader will notice that not killing people just for being annoying clearly fits into the same category as the last of those.