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- Title
On the desire to make a difference.
- Authors
Greaves, Hilary; Thomas, Teruji; Mogensen, Andreas; MacAskill, William
- Abstract
True benevolence is, most fundamentally, a desire that the world be better. It is natural and common, however, to frame thinking about benevolence indirectly, in terms of a desire to make a difference to how good the world is. This would be an innocuous shift if desires to make a difference were extensionally equivalent to desires that the world be better. This paper shows that at least on some common ways of making a "desire to make a difference" precise, this extensional equivalence fails. Where it fails, "difference-making preferences" run counter to the ideals of benevolence. In particular, in the context of decision making under uncertainty, coupling a "difference-making" framing in a natural way with risk aversion leads to preferences that violate stochastic dominance, and that lead to a strong form of collective defeat, from the point of view of betterness. Difference-making framings and true benevolence are not strictly mutually inconsistent, but agents seeking to implement true benevolence must take care to avoid the various pitfalls that we outline.
- Subjects
BENEVOLENCE; STOCHASTIC dominance; RISK aversion; AMBIGUITY; UNCERTAINTY
- Publication
Philosophical Studies, 2024, Vol 181, Issue 6/7, p1599
- ISSN
0031-8116
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s11098-024-02102-0