Travis Timmerman

This chapter looks what what I call the basic presumption, which I take to be a desideratum on any account of overall harm. Roughly, the basic presumption is the idea that it’s always imprudent to overall harm yourself (or let yourself be overall harmed) and always prudent to overall benefit yourself (or let yourself be overall benefited). If something is neither an overall harm nor a benefit, it would make no prudential difference whether it occurred. In this chapter, I show that a version of the counterfactual comparative account of harm (CCA) that is actualist in nature can accommodate the basic presumption, while none of its rivals can. The fact that CCA can accommodate the basic presumption and neither causal accounts of harm nor the negative impact on well-being account of harm can is, I argue, good evidence in favor of CCA. I end the chapter with a discussion of NIWA, where I raise additional additional objections against it.

The actualism/possibilism debate in ethics concerns the relationship between an agent’s free actions and her moral obligations. The actualist affirms, while the possibilist denies, that facts about what agents would freely do in certain circumstances partly determines that agent’s moral obligations. This paper assesses the plausibility of actualism and possibilism in light of _desiderata_ about accounts of blameworthiness. This paper first argues that actualism cannot straightforwardly accommodate certain very plausible _desiderata_ before offering a few independent solutions on behalf of the actualist. This paper then argues that, contrary to initial appearances, possibilism is subject to its own comparably troubling blameworthiness problem.

In attempting to do the most good, should you, at a given time, perform the act that is part of the best series of acts you can perform over the course of your life, or should you perform the act that would be best, given what you would actually do later? Possibilists say you should do the former, whereas actualists say you should do the latter. In this chapter, Travis Timmerman explores the debate between possibilism and actualism, and its implications for effective altruism. Each of these two alternatives, he argues, is implausible in its own right as well as at odds with typical effective altruist commitments. Timmerman argues that the best way out of this dilemma is to adopt a hybrid view. Timmerman’s preferred version of hybridism is possibilist at the level of criterion of right action but actualist at the level of decision procedure.

This chapter explores the relationship between the badness of death and the prudential value of suicide. Would suicide always be prudentially permissible if, as Epicureans believe, death cannot be bad for the deceased? In contrast to Epicureans, deprivationists believe that death can be bad for the deceased. Are they committed to the claim that suicide would necessarily be prudent in cases in which someone’s death is good for them? What about views that hold that there’s always something bad about death? Must defenders of such viewshold that suicide is always irrational? The short answer to each question is, quite surprisingly, “No.” The chapter ends with a discussion of whether suicide, when both harmful imprudent, would count as a posthumous harm.

Virtue ethics is often understood as a rival to existing consequentialist, deontological, and contractualist views. But some have disputed the position that virtue ethics is a genuine normative ethical rival. This chapter aims to crystallize the nature of this dispute by providing criteria that determine the degree to which a normative ethical theory is complete, and then investigating virtue ethics through the lens of these criteria. In doing so, it’s argued that no existing account of virtue ethics is a complete normative ethical view that rivals existing consequentialist, deontological, and contractualist views. Moreover, it is argued that one of the most significant challenges facing virtue ethics consists in offering an account of the right-making features of actions, while remaining a distinctively virtue ethical view.

I aim to do several interrelated things in this chapter. I first review standard counterfactual comparative accounts of harm (CCAs) and their theoretical virtues. I then review the most discussed problems for standard CCAs, viz. preemption and overdetermination and discuss how to avoid them. After that, I introduce Neil Feit’s latest counterfactual account of plural harm (QNPH) and the best objections to be raised against that view. I defended biting the bullet in response to some objections before offering an amended version of QNPH to avoid another, more serious problem. In the process of doing this, I show that the best account of harm is "actualist" (as opposed to "possibilist"). Finally, I argue against CCAs’ newest rival (NIWA/PIWA) on the following grounds. It generates verdicts more implausible than CCAs and cannot account for the moral relevance of harm in the right way. I also argue that it’s too imprecise to be obviously inconsistent with CCAs, to be informative, and that it’s far from clear it could be made more precise in a way that makes it a genuine, and superior, rival to CCAs.

This chapter does four things. First, it considers several questions about the proposed methodology. Second, it answers several objections to the methodology, many of which center on the results of implementing it. Third, it identifies several ways we could improve the methodology going forward, improving the empirical rigor of our approach. Fourth and finally, it takes stock of the project and provides our overall view of its significance. We emphasize that insofar as it’s appropriate to use our welfare range estimates for decision-making, they are placeholders for the main result, which is that the differences between species are smaller than some may have anticipated (or, more cautiously, that there is little empirical basis for postulating larger differences).

This chapter addresses the degree to which people should trust their intuitions about animals’ welfare ranges. If intuitions are fairly reliable here, then perhaps a complex methodology for producing welfare range estimates is unnecessary. Unfortunately, as we show, intuitions about welfare ranges are highly unreliable. We begin by developing general criteria that determine the degree to which any intuition is (un)reliable. We then review the philosophical literature that invokes intuitions about welfare ranges, as well as the survey data that track various intuitions the public has about animals. The criteria we defend show all such intuitions to be highly unreliable. We do allow that certain types of intuitions are reliable in some, but not all contexts. Still, the unreliability of intuitions about animals’ welfare ranges demands that we seek a more reliable methodology, at least with respect to this issue.

This chapter explores Tatjana Višak’s arguments for the claim that all animals have the same welfare ranges. It starts by defining capacity for welfare and reviews some theoretical considerations that bear on this question. Next, Višak’s empirically informed, theoretical arguments for the claim that all animals have the same welfare ranges are reviewed. Her arguments rely on the idea that relativized accounts of well-being are the most plausible accounts and appeal to a certain view about the evolutionary explanation of hedonic capacities. It’s then argued that relativized accounts of well-being are implausible because (i) they generate absurd conclusions and (ii) cannot plausibly be extended to account for animals’ total well-being. The paper ends by reviewing Višak’s evolutionary explanation of hedonic capacities and argues that the descriptive features of evolution she discusses do not provide evidence of equal hedonic capacities across taxa. In fact, given the way that evolution works, it would be very surprising if that turned out to be true. Consequently, Višak’s arguments fail to establish their conclusion.

When is it morally permissible for performers to portray characters from marginalized groups of which they are not a member? Although this question is philosophically underexplored, it has been commanding increasing attention in the public sphere, especially with respect to straight performers portraying queer characters. While the demand for increasing self-representation from marginalized communities is laudable, we argue that demanding performers to disclose their social identity is, in general, morally counterproductive. We make our case by focusing on recent instances where fans demanded that a performer disclose their sexual orientation, putting vulnerable performers in a harmful trilemma. In short, it will force many to either out themselves against their will, subject themselves to intense public backlash by taking the role without outing themselves, or forgo taking a role they want and at which they would excel. Instead, we propose that performers have a general (epistemic) obligation to learn about what their characters’ corresponding real-world experiences would plausibly be like, representing what they learned in their performances. We will argue that meeting this obligation typically entails learning about the values, broadly construed, of the community in question. If we are right, there is not even a general obligation that performers only take roles that correspond to their own social identity. Just as importantly, there is a strong moral reason not to demand that performers disclose aspects of their social identity in order to take on a role.

Virtue ethics is often understood as a rival to existing consequentialist, deontological, and contractualist views. But some have disputed the position that virtue ethics is a genuine normative ethical rival. This chapter aims to crystallize the nature of this dispute by providing criteria that determine the degree to which a normative ethical theory is complete, and then investigating virtue ethics through the lens of these criteria. In doing so, it’s argued that no existing account of virtue ethics is a complete normative ethical view that rivals existing consequentialist, deontological, and contractualist views. Moreover, it is argued that one of the most significant challenges facing virtue ethics consists in offering an account of the right-making features of actions, while remaining a distinctively virtue ethical view.

The actualism/possibilism debate in ethics is traditionally formulated in terms of whether true counterfactuals of freedom about the future (true subjunctive conditionals concerning what someone would freely do in the future if they were in certain circumstances) even partly determine an agent's present moral obligations. But the very assumption that there are true counterfactuals of freedom about the future conflicts with the idea that freedom requires a metaphysically open future. We develop probabilism as a solution to the actualism/possibilism debate, a solution that accommodates an open future requirement for freedom. We argue that probabilism resolves the conflicting intuitions that arise between actualists and possibilists and maintains certain distinct advantages over actualism and possibilism.

In this paper, I focus on the points of disagreement between Cholbi and myself about the nature of grief. More precisely, I am first going to provide reasons to reject Cholbi’s positive account of grief, specifically the condition that grief necessarily brings about a change in our practical identity. Then I am going to discuss the so-called Paradox of Grief, raising a few concerns I have about Cholbi’s solution and suggesting there is more to be said in favour of an existing solution (i.e., Pain as a Cost) he dismissed. My main goal is to raise these issues for discussion, rather than to prove my favoured view is true. I’m not quite sure what the correct account of grief is, though I am sure that Cholbi gets at least much of it right.

This paper focuses on three distinct issues in Fischer’s Death, Immortality, and Meaning in Life, viz. meaning in life, fearing death, and asymmetrical attitudes between our prenatal and postmortem non-existence. I first raise the possibility that life’s total meaning can be negative and argue that immoral or harmful acts are plausibly meaning-detracting acts, which could make the lives of historically impactful evil dictators anti-meaningful. After that, I review Fischer’s two necessary conditions for meaning in life and argue against each. In the second section, I review Fischer’s argument that we should fear death in virtue of it bringing about a permanent loss of our viewpoint. I offer an opposing argument that only intrinsic badness is a fitting object of fear. Since death is extrinsically bad, it cannot merit fear, even though it can be the appropriate object of other negative attitudes. In the third and final section, I consider Fischer’s solution to the asymmetry problem, which appeals to the rationality of temporal bias. I then raise two worries about it. I first argue that temporal bias is not necessarily, as Fischer claims, survival conducive. I then argue that, even if it is, this may actually be an epistemic defeater for the rationality of temporal bias.

Whether an action is morally right depends upon the alternative acts available to the agent. Actualists hold that what an agent would actually do determines her moral obligations. Possibilists hold that what an agent could possibly do determines her moral obligations. Both views face compelling criticisms. Despite the fact that actualist and possibilist assumptions are at the heart of seminal arguments in business ethics, there has been no explicit discussion of actualism and possibilism in the business ethics literature. This paper has two primary goals. First, it aims to rectify this omission by bringing to light the importance of the actualism/possibilism debate for business ethics through questions about the ethics of sweatshops. Second, it aims to make some progress in the sweatshop debate by examining and defending an alternative view, hybridism, and describing the moral and practical implications of hybridism for the sweatshop debate.

In The Human Predicament, David Benatar develops and defends the annihilation view, according to which “death is bad in large part because it annihilates the being who dies.” I make both a positive and negative argument against the annihilation view. My positive argument consists in showing that the annihilation view generates implausible consequences in cases where one can incur some other (intrinsic) bad to avoid the supposed (intrinsic) bad of annihilation. More precisely, Benatar’s view entails that would be prudent for someone to incur a non-trivial amount of pain in order to avoid being annihilated, even in cases in which the additional life one would live would not be good at all for the person living it. Yet, it seems imprudent to incur any amount of pain to continue living a life that isn’t good for the person living it, so annihilation itself cannot be (intrinsically) bad. Avoiding the implausible consequences I identify requires denying that annihilation is itself bad. My negative argument, made throughout other chapters, consists in demonstrating that standard forms of deprivationism can avoid each of the three major problems that Benatar attributes to them without having to posit that annihilation itself is bad.

Most philosophers in the death literature believe that death can be bad for the person who dies. The most popular view of death’s badness—namely, deprivationism—holds that death is bad for the person who dies because, and to the extent that, it deprives them of the net good that they would have accrued, had their actual death not occurred. Deprivationists thus face the challenge of locating the time that death is bad for a person. This is known as the Timing Problem, which is thought to be one of the biggest challenges facing views holding that death can be bad for the person who dies. Every possible answer to this question has been defended in the literature, yet each answer can seemingly be shown to be subject to compelling objections. In this paper, I argue that the force of the Timing Problem is illusory. Specifically, I argue that the problem, as formulated in the literature, is underspecified. Any adequately precise form of the question ‘When is death bad for the person who dies?’ is one to which there is a clear, decisive, and unproblematic answer.

While most people believe the best possible life they could lead would be an immortal one, so‐called “immortality curmudgeons” disagree. Following Bernard Williams, they argue that, at best, we have no prudential reason to live an immortal life, and at worst, an immortal life would necessarily be bad for creatures like us. In this article, we examine Bernard Williams' seminal argument against the desirability of immortality and the subsequent literature it spawned. We first reconstruct and motivate Williams' somewhat cryptic argument in three parts. After that, we elucidate and motivate the three best (and most influential) counterarguments to Williams' seminal argument. Finally, we review, and critically examine, two further distinct arguments in favor of the anti‐immortality position.

In a series of recent papers, Ben Bramble defends a version of hedonism which holds that purely repetitious pleasures add no value to one’s life (i.e. Non-Repeatable Hedonism). In this paper, we pose a dilemma for Non-Repeatable Hedonism. We argue that it is either committed both to a deeply implausible asymmetry between how pleasures and pains affect a person’s well-being and to deeply implausible claims about how to maximize well-being, or is committed to the claim that a life of eternal pleasure for a person can be just as good for them as a life of eternal suffering. The only way out of this dilemma is for Bramble to reject the Non-Repetition Requirement. Yet, rejecting this requirement both forces Bramble to reject the wholly unique, core component, of his view and undermines his view’s ability to handle one of the most powerful objections to hedonism, viz., that a life with a larger quantity of so-called “base” (or lower) pleasures is better for a person than a life with a slightly smaller quantity of so-called higher pleasures. We conclude that Non-Repeatable Hedonism must be rejected in favor of standard forms of hedonism or some non-hedonic view of well-being.

Effective altruists either believe they ought to be, or strive to be, doing the most good they can. Since they’re human, however, effective altruists are invariably fallible. In numerous situations, even the most committed EAs would fail to live up to the ideal they set for themselves. This fact raises a central question about how to understand effective altruism. How should one’s future prospective failures at doing the most good possible affect the current choices one makes as an effective altruist? This question is important to answer not only because every effective altruist will face this question due to typical human akrasia, but also because how the question is answered will determine just how demanding effective altruism can be. I argue that no matter how effective altruists answer this question, they will have to take on some commitments seemingly antithetical to their movement. More precisely, I argue that effective altruism is subject to a dilemma. Effective altruists’, at times, implicit actualist assumptions (i) commit them to conclusions seemingly antithetical to what typical effective altruists actually believe, as well as the spirit of the movement and (ii) undermine effective altruists’ arguments against moral offsetting and giving to charities close to the heart. Yet, effective altruists’, at times, implicit possibilist assumptions (iii) also commit them to conclusions seemingly antithetical to what typical effective altruists actually believe, as well as the spirit of the movement and (iv) undermine typical responses to demandingness worries for the normative conception of effective altruism. I argue that the best way out of the dilemma is to accept hybridism, though even hybridism won’t preserve every commitment of effective altruism.