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Philosophy for the Long Run: Introduction to the Symposium on Longtermism — Moral Philosophy and Politics, De Gruyter (2025)
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An academic introduction to a philosophy symposium on longtermism; relevant to AI safety insofar as longtermism underpins much of the philosophical motivation for prioritizing existential and catastrophic risk reduction, including from advanced AI.
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Summary
This is the introduction to a 2025 academic symposium on longtermism published in Moral Philosophy and Politics, authored by Stefan Riedener. It frames longtermism as the view that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority, outlines the core argument for the view, and sets the stage for critical philosophical examination of its foundations and implications.
Key Points
- •Longtermism holds that the key moral priority is positively influencing the far future—potentially spanning hundreds of thousands or millions of years.
- •The core argument rests on three premises: the future is enormous in scale, future beings matter morally as much as present ones, and some actions can probabilistically improve long-run outcomes.
- •The view is described as revisionary in its justification rather than necessarily in its recommended actions—present benefits matter comparatively little under strict longtermism.
- •The symposium brings together philosophical perspectives to critically evaluate whether longtermism is defensible, examining its assumptions about population ethics, uncertainty, and moral theory.
- •Published open-access in a peer-reviewed philosophy journal, signaling growing mainstream academic engagement with longtermist ideas.
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| Longtermism's Philosophical Credibility After FTX | -- | 50.0 |
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# Philosophy for the Long Run: Introduction to the Symposium on Longtermism
- Stefan Riedener
Stefan Riedener
University of Bergen, P.O. Box 7805, 5020 Bergen, Norway
[View ORCID profile](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7315-1016) \| [Email author](mailto:stefan.riedener@uib.no)
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Published/Copyright:March 27, 2025
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From the journal [Moral Philosophy and Politics](https://www.degruyterbrill.com/journal/key/mopp/html) [Volume 12 Issue 1](https://www.degruyterbrill.com/journal/key/mopp/12/1/html)
## Article
Longtermism is the view that a, or _the_ key moral priority of our time is to positively influence the long-term future – the next hundreds of thousands or millions of years.**\[1\]** Suppose a government is deciding whether to invest in increased pensions, climate change measures, or foreign aid. According to standard longtermists, in many such decisions, the government should do whatever will have the best long-term consequences in expectation. How much these investments benefit present people, in and of itself, matters comparatively little. Instead, what’s decisive is whether they increase the chance that people (or other being
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