Review
I turned the knob up to 11 on demandingness in the Insanity Wolf Sanity Test. (The first section, "Altruism" is the most relevant here.)
Of course, I intend that section as a critique of the monstrous egregore that (in my opinion) is utilitarianism. But that is the true denial of supererogation. If you don't want to go as far as Insanity Wolf, where do you stop and why? Or do you go modus ponens to my modus tollens and accept the whole thing?
I think it was strategically valuable for the early growth of EA that leaders denied its demandingness, but I worry some EAs got unduly inoculated against the idea.
You mean, they lied, then people believed the lies? Or are the lies for the outer circle and the public, while the inner circle holds to the secret, true doctrine of all-demandingness? I am not playing Insanity Wolf with that suggestion. Peter Singer himself has argued that the true ethics must be kept esoteric.
It may be strategic about intrinsic value for a small group of people to suffer to implement highly demanding altruistic lifestyles of their own authentic diligence, but for everyone to operate at the extremes of altruism would make everything suck, which is something morality would advise against. Morality is demanding, but it can't be demanding to an extent that comes out wasteful of intrinsic value in the end. Well, that's my working hypothesis at least.
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard— Coldplay, The Scientist
In the wake of Dylan Matthews’ recent piece on the cost effectiveness of rebuilding Notre Dame, I have seen many people on Twitter hand wave away the demandingness objection to utilitarianism,[1] which says that always trying to do the most good is an impossible obligation.
To redeem their version of morality from the demangingness objection, the tweeters assert that some good deeds are supererogatory, which is philosophy for “nice to do, but not obligatory.” The problem is that they do not present a reason why doing more good would ever be supererogatory, other than the implicit convenience of ducking the demandingness objection.
That convenience is not a sufficient justification. The universe made you no promise that morality would not be demanding. If your moral reasoning leads you to believe that you ought take some action, even donating your last dollar, the burden is yours to supply an additional argument why the action is supererogatory.
I think it was strategically valuable for the early growth of EA that leaders denied its demandingness, but I worry some EAs got unduly inoculated against the idea.
Until we find a principled reason to reject the demandingness objection, the best available response is still to concede the objection with grace, not to deny it.
Utilitarianism is often the target of demangingess critiques, but you can make similar arguments about other kind of ethics. Even deontologists face the same burden to provide a reason why certain kinds of actions are supererogatory.