There is a substantial core of common agreement within "actually good" moral philosophy [^0]. Most people who think about the subject for a few years end up in similar places on a bunch of central questions. And yet... in practice, society is a long way from integrating (i.e. acting upon, instantiting) some of these "widely accepted" moral insights. Some examples of moral insights that are uncontroversial among most "serious" moral philosophers, yet are miles away from being fully integrated into social norms and institutions: **Theory of value (what matters):** 1. Capacity to experience suffering is sufficient for [moral patienthood](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/2017-report-consciousness-and-moral-patienthood). 2. Our working assumption should be that many non-human animals can experience suffering. Therefore, many non-human animals are moral patients. 3. Involuntary suffering is _pro tanto_ bad. (It is all things considered bad assuming there is not significant instrumental value associated with it.) 4. It's better to have more of the good and less of the bad, all else equal. 5. ... **Normative ethics (what we should do about it):** 1. The "duty of easy rescue": when we can prevent extreme suffering at minimal cost to ourselves, we should do so. 1. (There's reasonable disagreement on what counts as "minimal cost"). 2. It's wrong to give people a hard time on account of tastes, dispositions or features that don't impede the flourishing of others. 3. Where possible, we should pay "insurance" premiums to reduce the chance of major catastrophes, and existential catastrophes. 4. ... So.... one might think that, at current margins, we should focus on applying and instantiating these important, hard-won insights. "Moral philosophy ain't the bottleneck right now", she said. I have quite some sympathy for this. This despite my mixed feelings about purportedly "self-evident" axioms, and my general impression that we are miles away from a "complete" moral theory (if that idea even makes sense). It is not hard to say "we should not be gratuitously cruel" (c.f. [[David Runciman]], [[=Judith Shklar]]). Nor is it hard to see that we are a long way from excellent adherence to this minimal standard.[^1] Even if moral philosophy is not the bottleneck, it's possible the actual bottleneck is pretty nearby. Perhaps we need to popularise the insights, making them intuitive and natural to sufficiently many humans. Or perhaps we need to put more effort into figuring out how to translate the abstract normative insight into day-to-day norms and policies.[^2] More pessimistic takes might put the bottlenecks further away. It's not that we lack the knowledge of what matters, and what we should do. Rather, perhaps, there are game theoretic or institutional blockages. Perhaps the blockage is deeply related to human nature (e.g. our motivational capacities are incorrigibly scope insensitive). What's the case that moral philosophy actually is the bottleneck? Bostrom thinks that our increasing technological capabilities are forcing us to do "philosophy on a deadline". I'm not sure we need much more moral philosophy to understand the desirability of avoiding the various catastrophic and existential risks that loom on the horizon. That said, I agree that the prospect of A(G)I presents some novel questions, and gives others greater urgency. It's like: if you know your child is going to rule one day, you really want to think carefully about how you raise them. So, if you think A(G)I is the most important game in town, then I think there's a good case for trying to advance the frontiers of moral philosophy. I think it's also reasonable to worry about the dismal state of our understanding of consciousness, given how it seems to be sufficient for [moral patienthood](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/2017-report-consciousness-and-moral-patienthood#SummaryCurrentThinking). And you might Likewise, if, for good reason, moral philosophy is basically the only thing you can imagine doing [^3]. Otherwise... I think it's time to roll up your sleeves. [^0]: Yes, drawing a circle around "actually good" moral philosophy is a very risky business. I do not do this lightly, and I don't (e.g.) ignore most continental philosophy, mark controversial figures as out of bounds, etc. There are vast swathes of moral philosophy I'd call "actually good" yet have substantial disagreement with. [^1]: I say "no" to misanthropy, and "no" to despair, though. We're doing fairly well, by historical standards. It's not our fault that we were thrown into this Darwinian hellscape. [^2]: 80,000 Hours, and most other effective altruism movement-building efforts, are a bet on this. [^3]: I might have said this, if asked, during my undergraduate degree, aged 20/21. But I would not say it now. If you have not spent at least 2 years seriously trying to do something else, I think it's unlikely you've met the "unimaginability" bar I have in mind here. # Scratchpad How empirical is normative ethics?