摘要：In his interesting and provocative article ‘Being Good in a World of Need’, Larry
Temkin argues for the possibility of a type of Each-We Dilemma in which, if we each
produce the most good we can individually, we produce a worse outcome collectively.1
Such situations would ostensibly be troubling from the standpoint of Effective
Altruism, the project of finding out how to do the most good and doing it, subject
to not violating side-constraints (MacAskill, forthcoming, p. 5). We here show that
Temkin’s argument is more controversial than it may appear initially regarding both
impartiality and goodness. This is because it is both inconsistent with (i) a plausible
conception of impartiality (Anonymity) and inconsistent with (ii) the standard view
of goodness (the Internal Aspects View). Moreover, because (i) and (ii) are entailed by
the sense of ‘impartial goodness’ that Effective Altruism tentatively adopts, Temkin’s
argument is less relevant to Effective Altruism than he suggests.
