Essays on Longtermism: Present Action for the Distant Future

This is an open access title. It is available to read and download as a free PDF version on Oxford Academic and is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International licence.

Longtermism, broadly speaking, is the view that positively influencing the long-term future is one of the key moral priorities of our time. Calls for taking a long-term view towards global problems such as climate change and poverty are familiar, typically urging us to plan on a scale of decades or perhaps a century. By contrast, longtermism asks us to take seriously the idea that what we should do right now may depend on the effects of our actions thousands, even millions, of years into the future. Essays on Longtermism brings together leading scholars to discuss four sets of overlapping questions raised by the longtermist approach. First, should we accept some version of longtermism? Second, to what extent can we predict and control the far future? Third, which ethical priorities are recommended by longtermism, and how revisionary are they? Finally, what implications would longtermism have for the design or reform of social, political, and legal institutions? Contributors, who include both supporters and critics of longtermism, are drawn from a range of disciplines including philosophy, economics, psychology, law, political science, and mathematics, and from private industry.

Hilary Greaves, University of Oxford, Jacob Barrett, Vanderbilt University, David Thorstad, Vanderbilt University

Hilary Greaves is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Her research interests range broadly across ethics, but with a particular focus around issues of axiology and those lying at the interface with economics. Greaves’ theoretical work has spanned, among other things, utilitarian aggregation, population axiology, interpersonal comparisons of well-being, moral uncertainty, discounting, and cluelessness. She also has worked on various issues of practical ethics, including healthcare prioritization, population size, global poverty, climate change, artificial intelligence and existential risk. From 2017 to 2022, Greaves served as Founding Director of the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford.

Jacob Barrett is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at Vanderbilt University, and a Senior Research Affiliate at the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on social, moral, and political philosophy, and especially on questions relating to long-run social reform.

David Thorstad is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, Senior Research Affiliate at the Global Priorities Institute, Oxford, and Research Affiliate at the MINT Lab, ANU. Thorstad’s research focuses on bounded rationality, global priorities research, and the ethics of emerging technologies.