300 words with…
Tessa Supèr
PhD student Ethics and Political Philosophy
Nights have become long and dark, festive lights are decorating the streets and temperatures are dropping. Winter is here, and yet many of us hesitate to turn on the heating in their homes this year.
While this is in part due to the high gas prices, there can also be other motivations for conserving energy: we might have a concern for the environment and believe we should all contribute to solving the climate crisis we are currently facing.
For the same reason, people may decide to stop travelling by airplane, become vegetarian, or vote for a green party. By doing so, we can collectively make a big difference in mitigating the harmful effects of climate change.
However, the contribution that each individual person can make, is extremely small compared to the scale of the problems. Therefore, many people wonder: “Why should I cooperate if it doesn’t make a difference anyway? It seems to be a waste of my efforts!” My PhD project is focused around this question, which does not only arise for climate change but also for many other contemporary societal issues, such as fighting a pandemic, donating money to charity, joining a big demonstration, etc.
“Why should I cooperate if it doesn’t make a difference anyway? My PhD project is focused around this question.”
In the coming years, I will attempt to develop an account that can provide an answer to the question why people should cooperate in solving such problems, despite the fact that their individual contribution does not, by itself, make a difference. In my dissertation, I will be analysing various theories from the field of rationality and investigate whether such theories can help us to show why cooperating would be rational, even though for each individual, the cost is high, and the effect is minimal.
Tessa Supèr (29) studied Molecular Neurosciences (MA, 2019) at the UvA, combined with Philosophy of Neuroscience (MSc 2018) at VU Amsterdam. Since October 2021, she has been working as a PhD student in the Ethics and Political Philosophy group at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her project is part of a bigger research group called The Ethics of Cooperation.
magazine for humanities alumni december 2022