DAY 1 – Monday Nov 3
09:00 – 09:30 Registration and welcome
09:30 – 10:30 Krister Bykvist (IFFS/Stockholm)
Perfecting imperfect duties
In many ethical domains, climate ethics included, it seems like our duties are imperfect in the sense that we are not required to comply with our duty in this domain on every occasion in our lives, only on a sufficient number of occasions (Nefsky 2021, p. 212). The ideal lifestyle is thus one in which you comply with the imperfect duty, e.g. ‘Don’t emit’, a sufficient number of times in your life. I shall show that this kind of imperfect duty account faces a challenge I will dub the ‘top-down challenge’. Suppose you have determined what counts as a sufficient number of times. When does the imperfect duty allow you to not comply? The main alternative answers are (a) when you have already done enough, (b) when you will do enough in the future, (c) when you will do enough throughout your whole life, (d) when you would do enough, no matter what you were to do now, (e) when non-compliance would lead to compliance enough of the time, and (f) when non-compliance may lead to compliance enough of the time. Unfortunately, none of these answers are problem-free, but I shall argue that the least bad one is the last one.
10:35 – 11:35 Säde Hormio (Helsinki)
Contributing enough: Acting in the absence of a relevant difference
I offer an integrity-based account for why we should try to contribute enough over time. When it comes to the inefficacy problem in the context of aid donations, our position of being able to help is the key. Sometimes we have non-instrumentalist reasons to act in inefficacy cases due to the positions we stand in relation to the people in need of aid, however weak such relations might be, or due to our relations to our values. Instead of identifiability of people, the key is the position of being able to help. Through an appropriate focus on our social positions, I argue that we can get a clearer picture about contributing enough.
11:35 – 11:45 Break
11:45 – 12:45 Olle Torpman (IFFS)
Social Acceptance and the Division of Emissions Reductions: A Bottom-Up Argument for Emissions Egalitarianism
While the climate sciences indicate that global emissions must be halved within the next decade if we want to avoid a climate disaster, they cannot determine how the emissions reductions should be distributed between people. Climate change thus raises moral questions about how the burdens of mitigation should be divided. Various principles of distributive climate justice—such as Emissions Egalitarianism, Emissions Grandfathering, and Emissions Sufficientarianism—offer competing accounts of how the available carbon budget, or emissions permits, should be shared. Philosophers generally assess these principles according to two desiderata: fairness and effectiveness. This paper focuses on the second of these desiderata, effectiveness, and argues that it depends crucially on social acceptance. A principle’s capacity to mitigate climate change in practice is constrained by people’s willingness to accept and act on its recommendations.
To our knowledge, there are until present day no thorough surveys of people’s preferences regarding different divisions of emissions reductions, and there are no studies revealing relative degrees of social acceptance for different distributive climate justice principles. However, such principles possess several different features the social acceptance of which has been surveyed. Our aim in this paper is to say something derivatively about people’s preferences regarding these principles based on their preferences regarding these features. Drawing on research in psychology and behavioural economics, we identify four factors that shape social acceptance: individual rationality, expectations of others’ compliance, perceived fairness, and perceived effectiveness. By comparing how the distributive climate principles fare with respect to these features, the paper suggests that Emissions Egalitarianism is more likely than other principles to be socially accepted, and therefore offer a more practically effective division of emissions reductions.
12:45 – 13:45 Lunch at the office
13:45 – 14:45 Mark Budolfson (UT-Austin)
Existential Risk, Policy, Philanthropy, and Collective Action
Philanthropy and policymakers often use global wellbeing models that assume global cooperation to estimate the impact of various possible actions by philanthropy, government, and others. I use the case of climate change and AI-related X-risk to show that this leads to distorted estimates, which sometimes mistakenly classify actions that actually increase X-risk as the most effective at decreasing X-risk. I sketch some improved models, and discuss implications.
14:45 – 15:10 Coffee break
15:10 – 16:10 Christopher Woodard (Nottingham)
Climate Ethics, Coordination, and Moral Constraints
In this talk I will explore the idea that we can make some progress by thinking of climate duties in light of a collective consequentialist theory of moral constraints, rather than a collective consequentialist theory of coordination. The coordination framing encourages us to think in terms of optimal patterns of action, which tends to diminish the practical significance of collective considerations. In contrast, the constraints framing encourages us to think in terms of required or prohibited kinds of action, which may stand in the way of acting optimally. Does this shift help to explain some climate duties?
16:15 – 17:15 Felix Pinkert (Vienna)
Heroes wanted: Coordination through supererogation
The challenge posed by collective action problems is often framed as the challenge to identify obligations: A list of "who ought to do what", such that if all these obligations were discharged, a morally acceptable outcome would be brought about. These obligations can include obligations to directly contribute to bringing about a better outcome, or to initiate, contribute to, and support coordination of such contributory actions.
In this paper, I argue that in some cases, this search for obligations is futile. This applies in particular to the early stages of coordination, when contributory as well as coordinative actions can be highly costly or risky for individuals. Obligations to perform these actions are ruled out on grounds of being overly demanding - instead, these actions are supererogatory.
To get out of a situation in which we together produce suboptimal outcomes, it will then not be sufficient for all of us to do (or be willing to do) our duty. Instead, we need people who are willing to incur costs and risks beyond what can reasonably be required of them. Somewhat ironically, their morally supererogatory actions can make subsequent contributory as well as coordinative actions progressively less costly, and thus potentially obligatory for the rest of us.
After arguing for these claims in stylized cases, I finally argue that they also hold in many real-world collective action problems.
18:30 – Dinner
DAY 2 – Tuesday Nov 4
10:00 – 11:00 Vuko Andric (IFFS/Linköping)
Why Consequentialist Foundations Point Toward Indirection
Following Shelly Kagan, moral theories can be divided into two domains: factors—features that make actions right or wrong—and foundations—principles that explain why those factors have moral relevance. Foundational consequentialism holds that all moral factors derive their importance from their contribution to the good. This view, akin to what Hooker describes as an overriding commitment to maximize the good and what Harsanyi calls the moral postulate of maximizing social utility, is often assumed to entail a direct consequentialist approach, where actions are judged right or wrong solely by their consequences. In this paper, I argue instead that foundational consequentialism leads naturally to indirect consequentialism. I contend that direct consequentialism is incoherent with the foundational consequentialist framework it purports to embody. My defense draws on (i) the distinction between a criterion of rightness and a decision procedure, familiar in consequentialist literature, and (ii) Harsanyi’s arguments concerning the collective self-defeatingness of moral theories.
11:00 – 11:15 Break
11:15 – 12:15 Tim Campbell (IFFS)
Harm-reduction estimates for individual lifestyle choices
What impacts do individual lifestyle choices have on climate change—and what moral reasons or duties might they generate? Seth Wynes and Kimberly Nicholas have estimated the annual emissions reductions from a range of behaviours, such as living car-free (rather than driving a gas-powered car) and taking one fewer transatlantic flight each year. However, their estimates leave unclear what the expected consequences of these behaviours are, and hence, shed little light on whether an individual ought to act in such ways. To rectify this, we draw on a recent report by Tama Carlton and colleagues, which estimates the expected harm—measured in statistical life-years lost—from an additional tonne of CO₂. We then attempt to combine their findings with those of Wynes and Nicholas to derive harm-reduction estimates for the lifestyle choices that Wynes and Nicholas analyse. Finally, we explore normative principles that might guide the deliberations of individuals who are in a position to make these lifestyle choices.
12:15 – 13:15 Lunch at the office
13:15 – 14:15 Karsten Klint Jensen (IFFS)
Climate Change, Moral Motivation and Coordination Problems
This paper explores the adaptation of Parfit’s suggestion that many-person prisoner’s dilemmas can be solved by moral means, in particular by everyone becoming sufficiently altruistic, to the case of climate change. What exactly does an altruistic solution look like in the case of climate change, and how could it be brought about?
I shall adapt Olson’s theory about provision of public goods with one important revision: what matters from an altruistic perspective is how much each can add to the total net benefit, not how much of this benefit comes back to the agent herself. Point of departure is Hardin’s demonstration that with simplifying assumptions about constant marginal value of both costs and benefits, Olson’s theorems can be transformed into a simple many-person prisoner’s dilemma; this model again has to be revised similarly to concentrate only on total net benefit.
Given that everyone is altruistically motivated in this simple case, a positive net contribution from each will ensure that total net benefit is maximized. But how is it to be achieved that everyone is altruistically motivated? Parfit has not much to say about that. I shall draw on the results of a paper by Bykvist and myself to illuminate this issue.
But now consider various relaxations of the assumptions underlying the simple model: each agent may have available a wide range contributory acts; and each agent may have her personal cost- and benefit functions, the marginal value of which need not be constant. Finally, some benefits may be step goods, which only come into existence when sufficiently many contributions are made.
Assuming the collective goal of the altruistic solution is to maximize total benefit most cost efficiently, these various relaxed assumptions give rise to complex coordination problems, which I shall suggest share a certain structure. I shall also analyze how to interpret the altruistic solution if some agents fail to comply. Do the altruists in this case have a duty to ‘bridge the gap’? This question connects to the broader issue of fairness: cost efficiency is defined relative to the current income distribution, but if this distribution is unfair, what is implication for the overall goal (and consequently for the coordination problems)?
14:15 – 14:45 Coffee break
14:45 – 15:45 Elizabeth Kahn (Durham)
Collectivization with less Idealization
Normative philosophers in the liberal analytic tradition have done great work theorising obligations of states and individuals with regards to climate change. However, their accounts risk idealising agents and circumstances in way that could make their theories unhelpful for real life agents. In this talk I focus on my own account of climate change and duties and seek to consider how Charles Mills’ critique of idealization and my interviews with activists working in the UK context might lead me to revise my account.
15:45 – 16:00 Break
16:00 – 17:00 Gunnar Björnsson (Stockholm)
Instrumental reasons for the powerless: Towards a solution to the hard problem of inefficacy
How can individuals have reasons to contribute to collective goods when their contributions make no difference to outcomes? This problem of inefficacy is particularly difficult for instrumental reasons: if realizing an end is all that matters, why contribute when doing so won't affect its realization? Existing accounts appealing to collective or modal difference-making fail to answer this question. To add to the puzzle, any reason to contribute to the realization of an end without making a difference to it seems trumped by reasons grounded in making even a tiny positive difference to it.
I argue that the solution to this hard problem of inefficacy lies in understanding instrumental reasons for an action as grounded in its contribution to meeting situational 'calls' for end-realization. Specifically, we have reasons to contribute to meeting calls that good agents would be responsive to. This understanding makes sense of countless everyday cases where instrumental reasoning identifies ways of contributing without making a difference to the outcome. In addition, it makes sense of why, when we identify possibilities of difference-making, the end in question will always provide reason for performing the action which makes a positive difference over that which merely contributes to the outcome.
18:30 – Dinner
DAY 3 – Wednesday Nov 5
10:00 – 11:45 Research seminar (online): Stephanie Collins (Monash)
Interdependent Responsibility for Structural Injustice
A structural injustice occurs when social, economic, or political processes produce unjust outcomes, where those processes cannot be reduced to identifiable wrongs perpetrated by isolatable agents. Examples include climate change, widespread homelessness, and exploitative work practices. In circumstances of structural injustice, it can be difficult to identify responsible agents. This paper proposes a care-ethical approach to understanding responsibility for structural injustice. On this approach, responsibility derives from the inevitable fact of human interdependency. This responsibility calls upon each of us to perform contextually-embedded and open-ended actions of care, utilising the levers our social roles make available to us. The paper outlines how this approach complements and builds upon existing approaches in the literature on responsibility for structural injustice.
Participants
Gunnar Björnson (Stockholm)
Stephanie Collins (Monash)
Elizabeth Kahn (Durham)
Felix Pinkert (Vienna)
Christopher Woodard (Nottingham)
Vuko Andric (IFFS/Linköping)
Mark Budolfson (UT-Austin)
Krister Bykvist (IFFS/Stockholm)
Tim Campbell (IFFS)
Säde Hormio (Helsinki)
Karsten Klint Jensen (IFFS)
David Lindqvist (Linköping)
Daniel Ramöller (IFFS)
Olle Torpman (IFFS)