Christian Tarsney
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 1607762 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Christian Tarsney |
| NOMBRES | Christian |
| APELLIDO | Tarsney |
| FIRMA | TARSNEY C |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6324-7145 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 16 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 15 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 16 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2021 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 3 |
Absolutism vs. comparativism about value
Expected value, to a point
Expected value maximization gives plausible guidance for moral decision‐making under uncertainty in many situations. But it has unappetizing implications in ‘Pascalian’ situations involving tiny probabilities of extreme outcomes. This paper shows, first, that under realistic levels of ‘background uncertainty’ about sources of value independent of one's present choice, a widely accepted and apparently innocuous principle—stochastic dominance—requi…
Deception and manipulation in generative AI
A Dominance Argument Against Incompleteness
This article presents a new argument against many forms of moral and prudential value incompleteness. The argument relies on two central principles: (i) a weak “negative dominance” principle, to the effect that lottery 1 is better than lottery 2 only if some possible outcome of lottery 1 is better than some possible outcome of lottery 2, and (ii) a weak form of ex ante Pareto, to the effect that, if lottery 1 gives an unambiguously better (stocha…
Non-Additive Axiologies in Large Worlds
Is the overall value of a world just the sum of values contributed by each value-bearing entity in that world? Additively separable axiologies (like total utilitarianism, prioritarianism, and critical level views) say 'yes', but non-additive axiologies (like average utilitarianism, rank-discounted utilitarianism, and variable value views) say 'no'. This distinction appears to be practically important: among other things, additive axiologies gener…
Metanormative regress
Against anti‐fanaticism
Should you be willing to forego any sure good for a tiny probability of a vastly greater good? Fanatics say you should, anti‐fanatics say you should not. Anti‐fanaticism has great intuitive appeal. But, I argue, these intuitions are untenable, because satisfying them in their full generality is incompatible with three very plausible principles: acyclicity, a minimal dominance principle, and the principle that any outcome can be made better or wor…
Average Utilitarianism Implies Solipsistic Egoism
Average utilitarianism and several related axiologies, when paired with the standard expectational theory of decision-making under risk and with reasonable empirical credences, can find their practical prescriptions overwhelmingly determined by the minuscule probability that the agent assigns to solipsism—that is, to the hypothesis that there is only one welfare subject in the world, namely, herself. This either (i) constitutes a reductio of thes…
Egyptians, Aliens, and Okies
Grill (2023) defends the sum of averages view (SAV), on which the value of a population is found by summing the average welfare of each generation or birth cohort. A major advantage of SAV, according to Grill, is that it escapes the Egyptology objection to average utilitarianism. But, we argue, SAV escapes only the most literal understanding of this objection, since it still allows the value of adding a life to depend on facts about other, intuit…
The epistemic challenge to longtermism
Belief in robust temporal passage (probably) does not explain future-bias
Empirical work has lately confirmed what many philosophers have taken to be true: people are ‘biased toward the future’. All else being equal, we usually prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. According to one hypothesis, the temporal metaphysics hypothesis, future-bias is explained either by our (tacit) beliefs about temporal metaphysics—the temporal belief hypothesis—or alternatively by our temp…
Robust passage phenomenology probably does not explain future-bias
People are ‘biased toward the future’: all else being equal, we typically prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. Several explanations have been suggested for this pattern of preferences. Adjudicating among these explanations can, among other things, shed light on the rationality of future-bias: For instance, if our preferences are explained by unjustified beliefs or an illusory phenomenology, we m…
Bias towards the future
All else being equal, most of us typically prefer to have positive experiences in the future rather than the past and negative experiences in the past rather than the future. Recent empirical evidence tends not only to support the idea that people have these preferences, but further, that people tend to prefer more painful experiences in their past rather than fewer in their future (and mutatis mutandis for pleasant experiences). Are such prefere…
Vive la Différence? Structural Diversity as a Challenge for Metanormative Theories
Decision-making under normative uncertainty requires an agent to aggregate the assessments of options given by rival normative theories into a single assessment that tells her what to do in light of her uncertainty. But what if the assessments of rival theories differ not just in their content but in their structure—for example, some are merely ordinal while others are cardinal? This article describes and evaluates three general approaches to thi…
What Should We Agree on about the Repugnant Conclusion
The Repugnant Conclusion is an implication of some approaches to population ethics. It states, in Derek Parfit's original formulation, For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better, even though its members have lives that are barely worth living. (Parfit 1984: 388)
Future bias in action
What Should We Agree on about the Repugnant Conclusion
The Repugnant Conclusion is an implication of some approaches to population ethics. It states, in Derek Parfit's original formulation, For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better, even though its members have lives that are barely worth living. (Parfit 1984: 388)
Future bias in action
The epistemic challenge to longtermism
Against anti‐fanaticism
Should you be willing to forego any sure good for a tiny probability of a vastly greater good? Fanatics say you should, anti‐fanatics say you should not. Anti‐fanaticism has great intuitive appeal. But, I argue, these intuitions are untenable, because satisfying them in their full generality is incompatible with three very plausible principles: acyclicity, a minimal dominance principle, and the principle that any outcome can be made better or wor…
Robust passage phenomenology probably does not explain future-bias
People are ‘biased toward the future’: all else being equal, we typically prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. Several explanations have been suggested for this pattern of preferences. Adjudicating among these explanations can, among other things, shed light on the rationality of future-bias: For instance, if our preferences are explained by unjustified beliefs or an illusory phenomenology, we m…
Bias towards the future
All else being equal, most of us typically prefer to have positive experiences in the future rather than the past and negative experiences in the past rather than the future. Recent empirical evidence tends not only to support the idea that people have these preferences, but further, that people tend to prefer more painful experiences in their past rather than fewer in their future (and mutatis mutandis for pleasant experiences). Are such prefere…
Vive la Différence? Structural Diversity as a Challenge for Metanormative Theories
Decision-making under normative uncertainty requires an agent to aggregate the assessments of options given by rival normative theories into a single assessment that tells her what to do in light of her uncertainty. But what if the assessments of rival theories differ not just in their content but in their structure—for example, some are merely ordinal while others are cardinal? This article describes and evaluates three general approaches to thi…
What Should We Agree on about the Repugnant Conclusion
The Repugnant Conclusion is an implication of some approaches to population ethics. It states, in Derek Parfit's original formulation, For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better, even though its members have lives that are barely worth living. (Parfit 1984: 388)
Future bias in action
Belief in robust temporal passage (probably) does not explain future-bias
Empirical work has lately confirmed what many philosophers have taken to be true: people are ‘biased toward the future’. All else being equal, we usually prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. According to one hypothesis, the temporal metaphysics hypothesis, future-bias is explained either by our (tacit) beliefs about temporal metaphysics—the temporal belief hypothesis—or alternatively by our temp…
Robust passage phenomenology probably does not explain future-bias
People are ‘biased toward the future’: all else being equal, we typically prefer to have positive experiences in the future, and negative experiences in the past. Several explanations have been suggested for this pattern of preferences. Adjudicating among these explanations can, among other things, shed light on the rationality of future-bias: For instance, if our preferences are explained by unjustified beliefs or an illusory phenomenology, we m…
Bias towards the future
All else being equal, most of us typically prefer to have positive experiences in the future rather than the past and negative experiences in the past rather than the future. Recent empirical evidence tends not only to support the idea that people have these preferences, but further, that people tend to prefer more painful experiences in their past rather than fewer in their future (and mutatis mutandis for pleasant experiences). Are such prefere…
Average Utilitarianism Implies Solipsistic Egoism
Average utilitarianism and several related axiologies, when paired with the standard expectational theory of decision-making under risk and with reasonable empirical credences, can find their practical prescriptions overwhelmingly determined by the minuscule probability that the agent assigns to solipsism—that is, to the hypothesis that there is only one welfare subject in the world, namely, herself. This either (i) constitutes a reductio of thes…
Egyptians, Aliens, and Okies
Grill (2023) defends the sum of averages view (SAV), on which the value of a population is found by summing the average welfare of each generation or birth cohort. A major advantage of SAV, according to Grill, is that it escapes the Egyptology objection to average utilitarianism. But, we argue, SAV escapes only the most literal understanding of this objection, since it still allows the value of adding a life to depend on facts about other, intuit…
The epistemic challenge to longtermism
Non-Additive Axiologies in Large Worlds
Is the overall value of a world just the sum of values contributed by each value-bearing entity in that world? Additively separable axiologies (like total utilitarianism, prioritarianism, and critical level views) say 'yes', but non-additive axiologies (like average utilitarianism, rank-discounted utilitarianism, and variable value views) say 'no'. This distinction appears to be practically important: among other things, additive axiologies gener…
Metanormative regress
Against anti‐fanaticism
Should you be willing to forego any sure good for a tiny probability of a vastly greater good? Fanatics say you should, anti‐fanatics say you should not. Anti‐fanaticism has great intuitive appeal. But, I argue, these intuitions are untenable, because satisfying them in their full generality is incompatible with three very plausible principles: acyclicity, a minimal dominance principle, and the principle that any outcome can be made better or wor…
Expected value, to a point
Expected value maximization gives plausible guidance for moral decision‐making under uncertainty in many situations. But it has unappetizing implications in ‘Pascalian’ situations involving tiny probabilities of extreme outcomes. This paper shows, first, that under realistic levels of ‘background uncertainty’ about sources of value independent of one's present choice, a widely accepted and apparently innocuous principle—stochastic dominance—requi…
Deception and manipulation in generative AI
A Dominance Argument Against Incompleteness
This article presents a new argument against many forms of moral and prudential value incompleteness. The argument relies on two central principles: (i) a weak “negative dominance” principle, to the effect that lottery 1 is better than lottery 2 only if some possible outcome of lottery 1 is better than some possible outcome of lottery 2, and (ii) a weak form of ex ante Pareto, to the effect that, if lottery 1 gives an unambiguously better (stocha…
Absolutism vs. comparativism about value
Philosophy (11 obras) · Epistemology (10 obras) · Economics (7 obras) · Metaphysics (7 obras) · Philosophy of language (7 obras) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (6 obras) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (5 obras) · Philosophy of mind (5 obras) · Positive economics (5 obras) · Psychology (5 obras)