“Bottom-Up Bracketing: A Person-Centered Response to Cluelessness” by Impartial Partially

This competition entry has been selected for publication by the Forum team. Summary Kollin, Clifton, DiGiovanni, and Macé (2025) propose two “bracketing” theories for recovering altruistic action guidance under cluelessness, formalizing a response that DiGiovanni (2025) had earlier viewed sympathetically but raised doubts about. On bottom-up bracketing, we set aside beneficiaries for whom it is indeterminate which option is better, and then aggregate over the remaining beneficiaries. On top-down bracketing, we instead evaluate the largest subsets of beneficiaries for which the comparison is determinate. Although bottom-up bracketing yields Kollin et al.'s intended verdict in the motivating donation case (Against Malaria Foundation > Make-A-Wish Foundation, despite long-term cluelessness) and satisfies Super-Strong Pareto, the authors reject it because it fails to extend their baseline consequentialist relation and, in particular, violates Statewise Dominance. I argue that this rejection is ill-motivated. In their central counterexample to bottom-up bracketing, one person is determinately better off under option A than option B, while neither A nor B is determinately better for the other people. Bottom-up bracketing therefore chooses A. B wins under top-down bracketing only because the other people's individually indeterminate welfare comparisons are pooled before determinacy is assessed. But if individual persons are the [...] ---Outline:(00:16) Summary(03:21) 1. Bottom-up versus top-down bracketing(08:35) 2. A person-centered case for bottom-up bracketing(14:27) 3. Specific replies to and questions for DiGiovanni, Clifton, and others(14:35) 3.1. An unexplained tension in DiGiovanni's metanormative bracketing?(18:15) 3.2. Does bracketing carve consequences arbitrarily?(20:22) 3.3. Does bracketed cluelessness weaken "moral urgency"?(22:25) 3.4. Can a weighing model of reasons support Super-Strong Pareto?(24:47) 3.5. Is person-centered bottom-up bracketing a "consequentialist" theory?(26:42) 3.6. Do population ethics or infinite ethics argue against a person-centered approach?(36:20) 4. Bonus \[optional\]: Is impartial altruism indeterminate? --- First published: August 17th, 2026 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qpQSEy7n2WjxazFnf/bottom-up-bracketing-a-person-centered-response-to --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.