Stubborn Attachments

Stubborn Attachments is a leaf non-fiction book that argues for economic growth, what Cowen refers to as Wealth Plus.

Cowen views pluralism as “a core moral intuition”.

When assessing value Cowen considers the following frameworks:

1. Time (present value vs. future)
2. Aggregation Problem (conflicting individual needs)
3. Rules (structure and order to operate by)
4. Radical Uncertainty (how can we know what is good or valuable with so much uncertainty about long run consequences)
5. Rights (human)
6. Common Sense morality

He rests on two “philosophical moves”:

1. Economic production is good.
2. Future humans should be more important to us than they are typically treated when assessing value

Pluralism

Pluralism is the belief that there is not one consistent means, in fact there are many, of approaching truths about the world. Life has many complicated values and no single one trumps the other¹.

1. Cowen, T. Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals. (Stripe Press, San Francisco, CA, 2018).