PHIL 360
Global Priorities
Recurring · Undergraduate course
What would we do if we cared about everyone equally? This course investigates the world’s most important problems and what we can do to help with our careers, time, and resources. We focus on global health and poverty, animals and the environment, and emerging technologies, asking how to compare problems, assess evidence, and choose among interventions when resources are limited.
The course draws on development economics, global health, environmental science, international studies, and progress studies. We examine both particular interventions and the institutions that make progress possible: research funding, incentives, coordination, regulation, and the capacity to implement policy. Topics include health and development, climate and energy, animal welfare, AI, demographic change, and global catastrophic risk.
Philosophical questions include how to weigh health, freedom, opportunity, and happiness; how much future people and nonhuman animals matter; and what responsibilities individuals have to improve the world. PHIL 360 is a more advanced version of PHIL 250: Changing the World, with substantial overlap and more demanding engagement with arguments and evidence.
Readings
Books and readings listed for Fall 2026 as of September 30. Later units develop as the term progresses; optional readings are marked.
Required books
- Bregman, Moral Ambition
2025
- Banerjee and Duflo, Poor Economics
Revised 2025 edition
- Ritchie, Not the End of the World
2024
Caring about the world
- Ritchie, Not the End of the World
Introduction and chapter 1
- Roser, Most of Us Are Wrong about How the World Has Changed (opens in a new tab)
- Roser, The World Is Awful. The World Is Much Better. The World Can Be Much Better. (opens in a new tab)
- The World Is Falling ApartOptional
Introduction
- Negativity Drives Online News ConsumptionOptional
- Gapminder, Dollar Street (opens in a new tab)
Compare everyday life across income levels
- Roser, The Limits of Personal Experience (opens in a new tab)
- Giving What We Can, How Rich Am I? (opens in a new tab)
Interactive resource
- Appiah, What Will the Future Condemn Us For?
- Bregman, Moral Ambition
Prologue; chapter 1; chapter 9, sections 1–3
- Ord, Global Poverty and Morality
- Soares, Fighting for Something
Prioritizing: emotion, opportunity cost, and evidence
- Bregman, Moral Ambition
Chapter 5
- Slovic, The More Who Die, the Less We Care
- Soares, On Caring
- Bloom, Empathy and Its DiscontentsOptional
- Caviola et al., Obstacles to Effective GivingOptional
- MacAskill, Doing Good Better
Introduction and chapter 2
- Glanville and Pattison, Prioritizing Global Responsibilities
Introduction
- Duflo, Field Experiments and the Practice of Policy (opens in a new tab)
Introduction, sections I–II, and Conclusion
- Manley, Reason Better
Chapter 7, section 7.3
- Liebman, When ‘Can’t Miss’ Programs Fail (opens in a new tab)
Global health and development
- Banerjee and Duflo, Poor Economics
Foreword and chapter 1; chapter 4 up to ‘Why Schools Fail’; chapter 3; chapter 2 except ‘Are the Poor Really Eating Well, and Eating Enough?’
- van Teutem and Ritchie, Foreign Aid from the United States Saved Millions of Lives Each Year (opens in a new tab)
- Gibbs, The ABCs of Policy Research (opens in a new tab)
- Ritchie, Safe Drinking Water (opens in a new tab)
- GiveWell, Water Quality Interventions (opens in a new tab)
Sections 1–2.2 and 5.1
- Dadonaite, No Child Should Die from Pneumonia (opens in a new tab)
- Donaldson, Gilbert, and Hu, The End of Lead (opens in a new tab)
- Egger, Walker et al., Can Cash Transfers Save Lives?
Introduction and Conclusion
- Ritchie, Maternal Deaths (opens in a new tab)