The latest seminar in practical philosophy was a presentation about problems of overdetermination and preemption in climate action. My rough notes are below. I’m trying a new styling format for these. The notes from the talk itself will be in a normal white or black font (depending on if the post is being viewed in light or dark mode). My interjecting comments will be [L: in square brackets and in a different color].
The talk was much, much more detailed than this but I don’t want to post photos of slides with tables of the various models because the speaker mentioned this work is WIP. So as before, the notes are not very specific to the presentation itself and are more like a general overview of what I learned about the topic.
The presentation was about climate change, but I can’t help but think of all the points raised as something more general. Maybe not so much the specific models presented (and not shown here), but the general considerations could be in part transferrable to other issues that deal with making sacrificial/costly choices with uncertain individual impact for the greater good.
Climate action as a many-person Prisoner’s Dilemma
When we are faced with problems of climate change, we are faced with a many-person Prisoner’s Dilemma - or, more specifically, a Contributor’s Dilemma - concerning the public good of avoiding harm from climate change. The speaker was looking for moral solutions. A moral solution involves that the agents become motivated to contribute out of moral reasons, because they themselves will not get the benefits [L: Is that true, at this point? The lack of us getting the benefits? Or are we far enough along to actively see the lack of damage in _our_ lifetime as a benefit?]
- In some cases, this is a pure intergenerational problem. Benefits of taking action against climate change accrue to future generations, costs accrue to the current generation.
- In all cases, a self-interested agent has no reason to contribute. But if nobody contributes, the public good will not be provided.
The need for collective action
Various types of arguments try to show that individuals have no reason to contribute unilaterally, as individual action does not make a difference. Additionally, unilateral contributions when others do not comply are futile. Additionally, there’s a potential perception of leakage: “If I don’t do this harmful thing, someone else will.”
Leakage
Imagine a group of consumers reduce their demand for a product that involves high carbon emissions. Maybe their reduced demand is enough to cause the product provider to lower its prices. But consumers who kept the original level of demand [L: or those who previously could not afford the product?] may now be willing to buy more of it at the reduced price. As a result, the carbon footprint that would have been reduced by the lowered demand is compensated for in others buying more at a lower cost. Could a similar mechanism apply to a group of individuals lowering their environmental impact? Will someone else just compensate by increasing their own? The cost to the contributors ends up potentially being paid for nothing.
Consideration in regards to individual climate action: In economic theory, it is assumed no single agent can affect market prices. So the mechanism only works for groups of a certain size; this isn’t really relevant to individual contributors choosing whether to lower their own emissions. Besides, if leakage takes place the amount is typically much lower than 100%.
The need for collective duties
In these types of arguments, it is typically implicit that if others contribute as well, an individual will have a reason to contribute. These arguments implicitly suggest that there’s a collective duty of some form to address climate change. Which implies there’s an individual duty to contribute if sufficiently many others do.
The role of coordination
- From a consequentialist perspective, each individual has a duty to do the best they can regardless of what others do.
- Coordination is needed to ensure that effectiveness is achieved by getting most or everybody on board.
In many existing cases, contribution to minimizing climate impact is discussed as an all or nothing thing. Each individual is all in or not in at all, contributes the same value, and pays the same cost. In reality, this is not the case - contributors have different means and capabilities. Coordination is needed to ensure the burden is distributed fairly.
- Agents should agree on an impartial ranking of outcomes. Agree = the ranking is (1) shared by all and (2) each is willing to act on it.
- What are the criteria for this ranking? Maximizing value? Achieving a predefined goal?
It appears impossible to set up an impartial ranking because of lack of knowledge of where each contributor starts, how much they can contribute, and how to judge their relative contribution fairly.
Is fairness relevant?
It’s also controversial whether fairness should even play a role in climate change policy, or if that is a separate issue. If it should play a role - what should that be? The most radical solution might be to address the harm from poverty together with harm from climate change. But then coordination becomes even more complicated. If we are currently already prepared to live with this existing inequality, why do we suddenly care when it comes to addressing climate change? But many people believe they should go hand in hand.
Q&A/Discussion
Some interesting followup discussion came up after the presentation.
On whether understanding the reasons to take action matters all that much
Carnivorous food choices were brought up as an example. Given complex supply chains, individually refraining from eating steak or fish seems to make no real impact. Yet, if many people did the same, it would make a significant difference. Doesn’t this imply there must be a reason for individuals to act, even if we currently can’t clearly explain why? It’s common to assume solutions exist to unresolved philosophical problems. E.g., we still debate the existence and extent of free will, but continue to propose solutions that rely on an agent’s ability to exercise it. And similarly here, shouldn’t we assume that reasons for individual actions exist even if we don’t yet understand them fully?
Response: Suggesting people stop buying chicken, for example, might be naive due to how distributed supply chains are. The real difficulty lies in understanding how individual contributions aggregate into collective impact. This aggregation might follow different models—linear, threshold-based, or something else—and we must clarify this before drawing conclusions. Intuition is that scenarios like food consumption are more accurately analyzed in terms of leakage and market thresholds, meaning coordinated group action is necessary to genuinely shift market behavior.
Two separate issues
- Explaining why coordinated action yields beneficial results (which could discourage free-riding).
- Providing a moral reason why individuals should willingly participate rather than free-ride. Possibly, an underlying moral theory (like a principle that if you can help, you should) addresses this.
Maybe we haven’t identified the moral reason yet, but it could exist. If we accept that individual actions make no difference might be true but reject the premise that if there is no individual impact there is no reason to act, because it conflicts strongly with our moral intuitions, we still have a motivation to find the correct theory of coordination. Rejecting the premise that individual actions make no difference seems reasonable given that it leads to morally unsatisfying conclusions.
The response focused on motivation: Which would be more motivating: arguing that an individual’s action does or could make a real difference, or arguing that one should act despite knowing one’s individual action won’t matter, due to some unknown moral reason?
What is the role of motivation?
Suppose the most effective way to motivate people to act according to an impartial ranking is by convincing them their actions make an impact. But imagine ethicists discover the correct moral theory is non-consequentialist, requiring action for entirely different reasons (e.g., following traditional authority). This highlights the difference between choosing the right moral theory and effectively motivating people. When speaking of a moral solution, do we mean a solution people find sufficiently motivating?
The speaker assumes that demonstrating to individuals that their actions have an impact is motivating. Stating the opposite—that individual actions don’t matter—is clearly demotivating. However, they recognize this might be an unfounded assumption, raising deeper psychological questions about effective motivation.
[L: I think it may have been at this point that the discussion seemed to almost morph into a more psychological rather than philosophical one - what motivates people, and does motivating them matter, and could just knowing something is 'right' be motivating enough?]Playing on human agents’ tendency to follow through
It was suggested that maybe using our tendency to value followthrough would be sufficiently motivating. David Gauthier discusses sequential mutual aid and threats — where rationality involves consistently following through on promises or threats. Could this idea help us achieve coordinated action on climate change? If our goal is to mitigate climate change for future generations, it demands individuals collectively and consistently reduce emissions. People are generally disposed to follow through on promises or commitments. Could emphasizing this disposition motivate people, even if individual actions don’t immediately cross personal benefit thresholds?
People naturally view following through on commitments as rational. Leveraging this general disposition instead of relying solely on self-interest might encourage coordinated action for climate mitigation. Alternatively, we might initially motivate even irrational individuals by appealing to self-interest. But there’s an implicit assumption that demonstrating self-interest always convinces people. Many act against their self-interest, motivated instead by commitments and promises. Could emphasizing promise-keeping be used to effectively motivate individuals?
[L: To me, this sounded too optimistic. If we're now down the road of considering what could realistically motivate people, then it seems like we need to be at least a little practical about it. We like the _idea_ of keeping our promises and following through, but in practice we often do not keep the commitments we make, even to ourselves. It doesn't seem like this would be a reliable method of convincing anyone to take action in a sustained way.]Final thoughts
I think my notes here are a bit all over the place, but ok enough for me to refer back to in the future. I’m not sure I agree with the premise that I as an individual will not get any benefit in my lifetime from reduced climate impact, and that the benefit is going to be felt by future generations alone. But as I mentioned above, the topics raised were just generally interesting to me even outside of the specific issue of individual climate action.