The Philosophical Merits of Effective Altruism (Index)

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I recently completed a series of posts on the merits of effective altruism. The series was an extended analysis of Iason Gabriel's article 'Effective Altruism and its Critics' (originally titled 'What's wrong with effective altruism'). The series included a bonus guest post from Gabriel himself in which he expanded upon one of the arguments in the paper.

Anyway, I thought it might be worth indexing all the entries in this series in this post. I thought it might also be worth providing links to some of the key texts arguing for and against the principles of effective altruism. I make no claims respecting the comprehensiveness of this list; they are simply some of the resources I have read and found interesting. If you would like to suggest other links in the comments section, please feel free to do so.

Series Index

• Effective Altruism: A Taxonomy of Objections

• Justice-related Objections to Effective Altruism

• Is Effective Altruism Methodologically Biased?

• Is Effective Altruism Actually Effective?

• Is Effective Altruism Fair to Small Donors (Guest Post by Iason Gabriel)

• The Life-Cycle of Prescriptive Theories (not really about EA but does contain some reflections on it towards the end of the post)

Further Reading

• Singer, Peter - Famine, Affluence and Morality (republished version of the articles that inspired the modern movement)

• Unger, Peter - Living High and Letting Die

• Singer, Peter - The Most Good You Can Do

• MacAskill, William - Doing Good Better

• MacFarquhar, Larissa - Strangers Drowning (not a philosophical analysis or defence of EA but an interesting set of biographical sketches of people who try to do extreme moral good)

• Srinivasan, Amia - 'Stop the Robot Apocalypse', London Review of Books (critical review of MacAskill's Doing Good Better)

• Gray, John - 'How and How Not to be Good', New York Review of Books (critical review of Singer's The Most Good You Can Do)

• Krisha, Nakul - 'Add Your Own Egg', The Point Magazine (a tribute to Bernard Williams that includes some criticisms of EA)

• Herzog, Lisa - 'Can Effective Altruism Really Change the World?', Open Democracy (critical)

• Snow, Martin - 'Against Charity', Jacobin Magazine (critical)

• Clough, Emily - 'Effective Altruism's Political Blindspot', Boston Review (critical)

• Gabriel, Iason - 'Effective Altruism and its Critics', Journal of Applied Philosophy (the basis for the series I wrote)

• McMahan, Jeff - 'Philosophical Critiques of Effective Altruism' (a defence of EA against some its current critics)

• Wilbin, Robert - 'Effective Altruists Love System Change', 80,000 Hours Blog (defence of EA against the 'system change' objection)

• Alexander, Scott -  'Beware Systemic Change' SlateStarCodex (defence of EA against the 'systemic change' objection)

• Yetter Chappell, Richard -  'Effective Altruism, Radical Politics and Radical Philanthropy', Philosophy Etc (interesting blog post wondering exactly what it is that EA critics disagree with EA proponents about)