Against anti‐fanaticism

Abstract

Should you be willing to forego any sure good for a tiny probability of a vastly greater good? Fanatics say you should, anti‐fanatics say you should not. Anti‐fanaticism has great intuitive appeal. But, I argue, these intuitions are untenable, because satisfying them in their full generality is incompatible with three very plausible principles: acyclicity, a minimal dominance principle, and the principle that any outcome can be made better or worse. This argument against anti‐fanaticism can be turned into a positive argument for a weak version of fanaticism, but only from significantly more contentious premises. In combination, these facts suggest that those who find fanaticism counterintuitive should favor not anti‐fanaticism, but an intermediate position that permits agents to have incomplete preferences that are neither fanatical nor anti‐fanatical.