Welcome to University of Gothenburg and our conference The Ethics of Inefficacy, in June 2025. Recently, interest in the Inefficacy Problem has surged, generating lively debate among philosophers and beyond. The aim of this conference is to explore and advance new solutions to this puzzle, fostering critical dialogue and collaboration among contributors.
Maike Albertzart, Zach Barnett, Gunnar Björnsson, Mark Budolfson, James Christensen, Julia Driver, Säde Hormio, Julia Nefsky (Keynote), Joakim Sandberg, Carolina Sartorio.
Many significant outcomes arise from the combined actions of multiple individuals, even though no single action is pivotal to the result. Examples include addressing climate change, preventing overfishing, tackling injustices in the global garment industry, and divesting from unethical companies. While most agree that individuals have moral reasons to act in such scenarios, this raises a normative challenge – the “Inefficacy Problem”: When and why do individuals have reasons to act, even when their actions seem to make no discernible difference?
Since Parfit’s influential Reasons and Persons (1984), this question has sparked extensive philosophical inquiry. Recently, interest in the Inefficacy Problem has surged, generating lively debate among philosophers and beyond. The aim of this conference is to explore and advance new solutions to this puzzle, fostering critical dialogue and collaboration among contributors.
Most conference contributions will be published in the volume The Ethics of Inefficacy at Routledge in 2026. Mattias Gunnemyr (University of Gothenburg), Rutger van Oeveren (Rutgers University), and Jan Willem Wieland (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) will edit the volume.
The conference also includes a Young Scholar Award for PhD students and recent graduates (within three years of their PhD defense by the conference date). The award provides up to €500 to cover travel and accommodation expenses.
Contact: Mattias Gunnemyr (University of Gothenburg), Rutger van Oeveren (Rutgers University), and Jan Willem Wieland (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
The conference is organised in collaboration with the Financial Ethics Research Group, the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science at the University of Gothenburg, and the Department of Philosophy at Stockholm University. We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Gothenburg (KVVS) and the Erik and Gurli Hultengren Fund for Philosophy at Lund University.