This paper focuses on two arguments William MacAskill discusses with approval in What We Owe the Future. Both arguments support the existentially unrestricted form of longtermism that MacAskill favors, and both rely on moral principles that reflect a particular way of resolving the decades-old, Narveson-inspired, value of existence controversy. But it is questionable whether that way of resolving the controversy — i.e., against Narveson — has ever in fact been entirely grounded. Instead, many in the population ethics mainstream have simply assumed that the controversy was happily put to bed soon after it first gained attention. Once we identify that assumption as mere assumption, we can see that the principles in question work, not as the solid underpinnings of an insightful resolution of the value of existence controvery, a resolution we ourselves are compelled to accept, but rather as dogma – thus the two dogmas of population ethics. That insight opens the door to an existentially restricted form of longtermism, a form that is arguably more attractive than MacAskill’s own.

This paper puts forward a novel argument for realism about corporate agents. We begin with the observation that philosophical theories of trust generally require that any putative trustee is a moral agent. We then consider sources of evidence from practice that suggest that people speak, behave, and theorise as-if they trust corporations. This amounts to taking a realist view about corporate moral agency. Corporations can thus be conceived as agents that emerge from, among other things, the individuals, rules, and the internal organisational complexity that constitutes them. Our methodological approach throughout involves arguing that our behaviour and our theorising about a particular kind of entity (the corporation) can be used to justify a position in social metaphysics.

This paper reconceptualizes aesthetic action in John Stuart Mill’s art of life as a distinct, world-regarding action, oriented toward ideals such as justice, beauty, and nobility. While morality is guided by obligations to others and prudence by rationality and the cultivation of virtues, aesthetics concerns the aspirational pursuit of collective human flourishing. Rejecting character-based interpretations, the paper distinguishes aesthetic action by its transformative effect and expressive quality. Though not enforceable, aesthetic ideals expand moral imagination and inspire long-term social progress. Drawing on Mill’s separation between action and character evaluation, the argument clarifies that aesthetic action cannot be reduced to virtue or character. Instead, it completes Mill’s tripartite normative framework by illuminating a third domain that motivates ethical life through nobleness and imagination. Aesthetic action thus becomes essential to understanding Mill’s perfectionist aspiration and his vision of higher happiness.

We cannot justifably believe that any currently available actions will have a non-negligible positive influence a billion or more years in the future. I offer three arguments for this thesis. According to the Infinite Washout Argument, given the non-zero chance that your actions will produce infinitely many effects, any finite effects will wash out in expectation. According to the Cluelessness Argument, we cannot justifiably guess what actions are likely to have positive effects in a billion-plus years. We cannot be justified, for example, in thinking that nuclear war or human extinction would be more likely to have bad than good consequences that far into the future. According to the Negligibility Argument, even if we could justifiably guess that some particular action is likelier to have good than bad consequences that far in the future, the odds of good consequences would be negligible due to the compounding of probabilities over time.

Longtermists such as William MacAskill maintain that if we are concerned about human well-being and the longterm future, we should embrace continued technological advancement and development, and that, indeed, one of the most significant threats to longterm human well-being and the well-being of other sentient creatures is technological stagnation – remaining at roughly the present technological level. This paper argues that we should be much more skeptical regarding claims that link continued technological development with positive contributions to well-being. We should take seriously that even if technological development has contributed significantly to improvements in well-being in the past, that we may reach or have already reached a point at which future technological development no longer does so, and that, in that event, thinking about longterm ethical concerns actually recommends developing the capability to slow down, stop, or even roll back (some) technological development.

Many claim that there is an important relationship between consciousness and welfare. Call this general view phenomenalism. One way of fleshing out phenomenalism is to hold that consciousness is what makes one the type of entity that can be noninstrumentally better or worse off in the first place. Consciousness is at least a necessary condition on welfare subjecthood. A different account holds that even if consciousness is not necessary for welfare subjecthood, conscious welfare subjects have a greater welfare capacity. We argue that the most likely source of support for either version of phenomenalism – hedonism about welfare goods and bads – provides no support at all. Along the way, we discuss an alternative view of welfare subjectivity and welfare capacity that does not appeal to consciousness but only to mentality, a view we call mentalism.

Egalitarianism and prioritarianism are competing views about the ethics of distribution. Both views have wide scopes of concern. But, writing in this journal, Michael Otsuka has discovered a case that seems to show an interesting asymmetry between the limits of egalitarian and prioritarian concern. In that case, intuitively one outcome is better than another (in a respect relevant to the ethics of distribution); prioritarianism can recover that intuitive judgment; but egalitarianism seems unable to recover it. I show, however, that egalitarianism can recover the intuitive judgment in question on a well-motivated basis. That result is of interest because it shows the possibility and prima facie plausibility of a version of egalitarianism with a surprisingly wide scope of concern – one according to which it matters that some are worse off than those who (merely) could have existed.

In this paper, I argue that Taurek’s positive view, namely that we ought to show equal respect and concern to those affected by our actions, commits him to saving the bigger number in some cases. This leads to an adjustment of his negative claim, namely that numbers don’t count. Numbers don’t count in the sense he was interested in, i.e., sums of harms or benefits (across different people) lack moral significance. Numbers do count, however, when considering how to act fairly which is what equal respect demands. This adjustment supports Taurek’s general view on how to think about moral matters.