Weighing and reasoning: Themes from the philosophy of John Broome, 2015
Much public policy analysis requires us to place a monetary value on the badness of a premature h... more Much public policy analysis requires us to place a monetary value on the badness of a premature human death. Currently dominant approaches to determining this 'value of a life' focus exclusively on the 'self-regarding' value of life — that is, the value of a person's life to the person whose death is in question — and altogether ignore effects on other people. This procedure would be justified if, as seems intuitively plausible, other-regarding effects were negligible in comparison with self-regarding ones. I argue that in the light of the issue of overpopulation, that intuitively plausible condition is at best highly questionable. Unless the world is in fact underpopulated, the social disvalue of a premature death is likely to be significantly lower than the current estimates.
I argue that excessive reliance on the notion of “the badness of death” tends to lead theorists a... more I argue that excessive reliance on the notion of “the badness of death” tends to lead theorists astray when thinking about healthcare prioritisation. I survey two examples: the confusion surrounding the “time-relative interests account” of the badness of death, and a confusion in the recent literature on cost-benefit analyses for family planning interventions. In both cases, the confusions in question would have been avoided if (instead of attempting to theorise in terms of the badness of death) theorists had forced themselves first to write down an appropriate value function, and then focused on the question of how to maximize value.
Rights-based approaches and consequentialist approaches to ethics are often seen as being diametr... more Rights-based approaches and consequentialist approaches to ethics are often seen as being diametrically opposed to one another. In one sense, they are. In another sense, however, they can be reconciled: a ‘global’ form of consequentialism might supply consequentialist foundations for a derivative morality that is non-consequentialist, and perhaps rights-based, in content. By way of case study to illustrate how this might work, I survey what a global consequentialist should think about a recent dispute between Jeff McMahan and Henry Shue on the morality and laws of war.
Global health priority-setting: Cost-effectiveness and beyond
In carrying out cost-benefit or cost-effective analysis, a discount rate should be applied to som... more In carrying out cost-benefit or cost-effective analysis, a discount rate should be applied to some kinds of future benefits and costs. It is controversial, though, whether future health is in this class. I argue that one of the standard arguments for discounting (from diminishing marginal returns) is inapplicable to the case of health, while another (favouring a pure rate of time preference) is unsound in any case. However, there are two other reasons that might support a positive discount rate for future health: one relating to uncertainty, and the other relating to the instrumental benefits of improved health. While the latter considerations could be modelled via a discount rate, they could alternatively be modelled more explicitly, in other ways; I briefly discuss which modelling method is preferable. Finally, I argue against the common claims that failing to discount future health would lead to paradox, and/or to inconsistency with the way future cash flows are treated.
Structuralism is supposed to be a dissolver of metaphysical pseudo-debates. This paper is a searc... more Structuralism is supposed to be a dissolver of metaphysical pseudo-debates. This paper is a search for the thesis behind the rhetoric. Taking 'spacetime structuralism' as a case study, I identify six different theses that seem to share this name. My conclusions are largely negative: that those theses that are new are not plausible, and vice versa. The exception is structuralism as a rejection of the fundamen-tality of the object/property/relation framework, but in this case it is as yet unclear what the positive thesis might be.
I explore the prospects for modelling epistemic rationality (in the probabilist setting) via an e... more I explore the prospects for modelling epistemic rationality (in the probabilist setting) via an epistemic decision theory, in a consequential-ist spirit. Previous work has focused on cases in which the truth-values of the propositions in which the agent is selecting credences do not depend , either causally or merely evidentially, on the agent's choice of credences. Relaxing that restriction leads to a proliferation of puzzle cases and theories to deal with them, including epistemic analogues of evidential and causal decision theory, and of the Newcomb problem and 'Psychopath Button' problem. A variant of causal epistemic decision theory deals well with most cases. However, there is a recalcitrant class of problem cases for which no epistemic decision theory seems able to match our intuitive judgements of epistemic rationality. This lends both precision and credence to the view that there is a fundamental mismatch between epistemic consequentialism and the intuitive notion of epistemic rationality; the implications for understanding the latter are briefly discussed. 1 Beyond pure observation: Some puzzle cases In most epistemological situations, the agent is a pure observer, in the following two senses. (1) What she believes does not causally influence the truth of the propositions that her beliefs are about. (2) While one generally hopes that the agent is more likely to believe that P if P is true than if P is false, still the fact that S believes that P on the basis of evidence E is not itself additional evidence in favour of, or against, P. Interesting epistemological puzzle cases arise when the agent is not merely an observer: when the truth of the proposition believed does depend, in some
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 2014
It is widely recognised that 'global' symmetries, such as the boost invariance of classical mecha... more It is widely recognised that 'global' symmetries, such as the boost invariance of classical mechanics and special relativity, can give rise to direct empirical counterparts such as the Galileo-ship phenomenon. However , conventional wisdom holds that 'local' symmetries, such as the dif-feomorphism invariance of general relativity and the gauge invariance of classical electromagnetism, have no such direct empirical counterparts. We argue against this conventional wisdom. We develop a framework for analysing the relationship between Galileo-ship empirical phenomena on the one hand, and physical theories that model such phenomena on the other, that renders the relationship between theoretical and empirical symmetries transparent, and from which it follows that both global and local symmetries can give rise to Galileo-ship phenomena. In particular, we use this framework to exhibit an analog of Galileo's ship for the local gauge invariance of electromagnetism.
Decisions, whether moral or prudential, should be guided at least in part by considerations of th... more Decisions, whether moral or prudential, should be guided at least in part by considerations of the consequences that would result from the various available actions. For any given action, however, the majority of its consequences are unpredictable at the time of decision. Many have worried that this leaves us, in some important sense, clueless. In this paper, I distinguish between 'simple' and 'complex' possible sources of cluelessness. In terms of this taxonomy, the majority of the existing literature on cluelessness focusses on the simple sources. I argue, contra James Lenman in particular, that these would-be sources of cluelessness are unproblematic, on the grounds that indifference-based reasoning is far less problematic than Lenman (along with many others) supposes. However, there does seem to be a genuine phenomenon of cluelessness associated with the 'complex' sources; here, indifference-based reasoning is inapplicable by anyone's lights. This 'complex problem of cluelessness' is vivid and pressing, in particular, in the context of Effective Altruism. This motivates a more thorough examination of the precise nature of cluelessness, and the precise source of the associated phenomenology of discomfort in forced-choice situations. The latter parts of the paper make some initial explorations in those directions.
Harsanyi claimed that his Aggregation and Impartial Observer Theorems provide a justification for... more Harsanyi claimed that his Aggregation and Impartial Observer Theorems provide a justification for utilitarianism. This claim has been strongly resisted, notably by Sen and Weymark, who argue that while Harsanyi has perhaps shown that overall good is a linear sum of individuals' von Neumann-Morgenstern utilities, he has done nothing to establish any connection between the notion of von Neumann-Morgenstern utility and that of well-being, and hence that utilitarianism does not follow. The present article defends Harsanyi against the Sen-Weymark critique. I argue that, far from being a term with precise and independent quantitative content whose relationship to von Neumann-Morgenstern utility is then a substantive question, terms such as 'well-being' suffer (or suffered) from indeterminacy regarding precisely which quantity they refer to. If so, then (on the issue that this article focuses on) Harsanyi has gone as far towards defending 'utilitarianism in the original sense' as could coherently be asked.
An important objection to preference-satisfaction theories of well-being claims that they cannot ... more An important objection to preference-satisfaction theories of well-being claims that they cannot make sense of interpersonal comparisons of well-being. A tradition dating back to Harsanyi (1953) attempts to solve this problem by appeal to so-called extended preferences, that is, roughly, preferences over situations whose description includes one's ordinary (non-extended) preferences. This paper presents a new problem for the extended preferences program, related to Arrow's celebrated impossibility theorem. We consider three ways in which the extended-preference theorist might avoid this problem, and recommend that she pursue one: developing aggregation rules (for extended preferences) that violate Arrow's Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives condition.
An important objection to preference-satisfaction theories of well-being is that these theories c... more An important objection to preference-satisfaction theories of well-being is that these theories cannot make sense of interpersonal comparisons of well-being. A tradition dating back to Harsanyi (1953) attempts to respond to this objection by appeal to so-called extended preferences: very roughly, preferences over situations whose description includes agents' preferences. This paper examines the prospects for defending the preference-satisfaction theory via this extended preferences program. We argue that making conceptual sense of extended preferences is less problematic than others have supposed, but that even so extended preferences do not provide a promising way for the preference satisfaction theorist to make interpersonal well-being comparisons. Our main objection takes the form of a trilemma: depending on how the theory based on extended preferences is developed, either (a) the result will be inconsistent with ordinary preference-satisfaction theory, or (b) it will fail to recover sufficiently rich interpersonal well-being comparisons, or (c) it will take on a number of other arguably odd and undesirable commitments.
This article is a critical survey of the debate over the value of the social discount rate, with ... more This article is a critical survey of the debate over the value of the social discount rate, with a particular focus on climate change. The majority of the material surveyed is from the economics rather than from the philosophy literature, but the emphasis of the survey itself is on foundations in ethical and other normative theory rather than highly technical details. I begin by locating the standard approach to discounting within the overall landscape of ethical theory, and explaining the assumptions and simplifications that are needed in order to arrive at the model that is standard in the discounting literature. The article then covers the general theory of the Ramsey equation and its relationship to observed interest rates, arguments for and against a positive rate of pure time preference, the consumption elasticity of utility, and the effect of various sorts of uncertainty on the discount rate. Finally, it turns specifically to the application of this debate to the case of climate change, focussing on the recent controversy over the low discount rate used in the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change.
Population axiology is the study of the conditions under which one state of affairs is better tha... more Population axiology is the study of the conditions under which one state of affairs is better than another, when the states of affairs in question may differ over the numbers and the identities of the persons who ever live. Extant theories include totalism, averagism, variable value theories, critical level theories, and " person-affecting " theories. Each of these theories is open to objections that are at least prima facie serious. A series of impossibility theorems shows that this is no coincidence: it can be proved, for various sets of prima facie intuitively compelling desiderata, that no axiology can simultaneously satisfy all the desiderata on the list. One's choice of population axiology appears to be a choice of which intuition one is least unwilling to give up.
Given the deep disagreement surrounding population axiology, one should remain uncertain about wh... more Given the deep disagreement surrounding population axiology, one should remain uncertain about which theory is best. However, this uncertainty need not leave one neutral about which acts are better or worse. We show that as the number of lives at stake grows, the Expected Moral Value approach to axiological uncertainty systematically pushes one towards choosing the option preferred by the Total and Critical Level views, even if one's credence in those theories is low.
Overpopulation is often identified as one of the key drivers of climate change. Further, it is of... more Overpopulation is often identified as one of the key drivers of climate change. Further, it is often thought that the mechanism behind this is obvious: 'more people means more greenhouse gas emissions'. However, in light of the fact that climate change depends most closely on cumulative emissions rather than on emissions rates, the relationship between population size and climate change is more subtle than this. Reducing the size of instantaneous populations can fruitfully be thought of as spreading out a fixed number of people more thinly over time, and (in light of the significance of cumulative emissions) it is not immediately clear whether or how such a 'spreading' would help with climate change. To bring the point into sharp relief, I first set out a simple model according to which population reduction would not lead to any climate-change-related improvement. I then critically examine the assumptions of the model. If population reduction would lead to a significant climate-change-related improvement, this must be because (i) population reduction would significantly reduce even cumulative emissions, and/or (ii) climate damages are, to a significant extent, driven by the pace of climate change, and not only the eventual extent of the change.
"Prioritarianism is supposed to be a theory of the overall good that
captures the common intuiti... more "Prioritarianism is supposed to be a theory of the overall good that
captures the common intuition of "priority to the worse off ". But it is difficult to give precise content to the prioritarian claim. Over the past few decades, prioritarians have increasingly responded to this `content problem' by formulating prioritarianism not in terms of an alleged primitive notion of quantity of well-being, but instead in terms of von Neumann-Morgenstern utility. The resulting two forms of prioritarianism (which I call, respectively, "Primitivist" and "Technical" prioritarianism) are not mere variants on a theme, but are entirely distinct theories, amenable to different motivating arguments and open to different objections. This paper argues that the basic intuition of "priority to the worse o ff" provides no support for Technical Prioritarianism: qua attempt to capture that intuition, the turn to von Neumann-Morgenstern utility is a retrograde step.
Weighing and reasoning: Themes from the philosophy of John Broome, 2015
Much public policy analysis requires us to place a monetary value on the badness of a premature h... more Much public policy analysis requires us to place a monetary value on the badness of a premature human death. Currently dominant approaches to determining this 'value of a life' focus exclusively on the 'self-regarding' value of life — that is, the value of a person's life to the person whose death is in question — and altogether ignore effects on other people. This procedure would be justified if, as seems intuitively plausible, other-regarding effects were negligible in comparison with self-regarding ones. I argue that in the light of the issue of overpopulation, that intuitively plausible condition is at best highly questionable. Unless the world is in fact underpopulated, the social disvalue of a premature death is likely to be significantly lower than the current estimates.
I argue that excessive reliance on the notion of “the badness of death” tends to lead theorists a... more I argue that excessive reliance on the notion of “the badness of death” tends to lead theorists astray when thinking about healthcare prioritisation. I survey two examples: the confusion surrounding the “time-relative interests account” of the badness of death, and a confusion in the recent literature on cost-benefit analyses for family planning interventions. In both cases, the confusions in question would have been avoided if (instead of attempting to theorise in terms of the badness of death) theorists had forced themselves first to write down an appropriate value function, and then focused on the question of how to maximize value.
Rights-based approaches and consequentialist approaches to ethics are often seen as being diametr... more Rights-based approaches and consequentialist approaches to ethics are often seen as being diametrically opposed to one another. In one sense, they are. In another sense, however, they can be reconciled: a ‘global’ form of consequentialism might supply consequentialist foundations for a derivative morality that is non-consequentialist, and perhaps rights-based, in content. By way of case study to illustrate how this might work, I survey what a global consequentialist should think about a recent dispute between Jeff McMahan and Henry Shue on the morality and laws of war.
Global health priority-setting: Cost-effectiveness and beyond
In carrying out cost-benefit or cost-effective analysis, a discount rate should be applied to som... more In carrying out cost-benefit or cost-effective analysis, a discount rate should be applied to some kinds of future benefits and costs. It is controversial, though, whether future health is in this class. I argue that one of the standard arguments for discounting (from diminishing marginal returns) is inapplicable to the case of health, while another (favouring a pure rate of time preference) is unsound in any case. However, there are two other reasons that might support a positive discount rate for future health: one relating to uncertainty, and the other relating to the instrumental benefits of improved health. While the latter considerations could be modelled via a discount rate, they could alternatively be modelled more explicitly, in other ways; I briefly discuss which modelling method is preferable. Finally, I argue against the common claims that failing to discount future health would lead to paradox, and/or to inconsistency with the way future cash flows are treated.
Structuralism is supposed to be a dissolver of metaphysical pseudo-debates. This paper is a searc... more Structuralism is supposed to be a dissolver of metaphysical pseudo-debates. This paper is a search for the thesis behind the rhetoric. Taking 'spacetime structuralism' as a case study, I identify six different theses that seem to share this name. My conclusions are largely negative: that those theses that are new are not plausible, and vice versa. The exception is structuralism as a rejection of the fundamen-tality of the object/property/relation framework, but in this case it is as yet unclear what the positive thesis might be.
I explore the prospects for modelling epistemic rationality (in the probabilist setting) via an e... more I explore the prospects for modelling epistemic rationality (in the probabilist setting) via an epistemic decision theory, in a consequential-ist spirit. Previous work has focused on cases in which the truth-values of the propositions in which the agent is selecting credences do not depend , either causally or merely evidentially, on the agent's choice of credences. Relaxing that restriction leads to a proliferation of puzzle cases and theories to deal with them, including epistemic analogues of evidential and causal decision theory, and of the Newcomb problem and 'Psychopath Button' problem. A variant of causal epistemic decision theory deals well with most cases. However, there is a recalcitrant class of problem cases for which no epistemic decision theory seems able to match our intuitive judgements of epistemic rationality. This lends both precision and credence to the view that there is a fundamental mismatch between epistemic consequentialism and the intuitive notion of epistemic rationality; the implications for understanding the latter are briefly discussed. 1 Beyond pure observation: Some puzzle cases In most epistemological situations, the agent is a pure observer, in the following two senses. (1) What she believes does not causally influence the truth of the propositions that her beliefs are about. (2) While one generally hopes that the agent is more likely to believe that P if P is true than if P is false, still the fact that S believes that P on the basis of evidence E is not itself additional evidence in favour of, or against, P. Interesting epistemological puzzle cases arise when the agent is not merely an observer: when the truth of the proposition believed does depend, in some
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 2014
It is widely recognised that 'global' symmetries, such as the boost invariance of classical mecha... more It is widely recognised that 'global' symmetries, such as the boost invariance of classical mechanics and special relativity, can give rise to direct empirical counterparts such as the Galileo-ship phenomenon. However , conventional wisdom holds that 'local' symmetries, such as the dif-feomorphism invariance of general relativity and the gauge invariance of classical electromagnetism, have no such direct empirical counterparts. We argue against this conventional wisdom. We develop a framework for analysing the relationship between Galileo-ship empirical phenomena on the one hand, and physical theories that model such phenomena on the other, that renders the relationship between theoretical and empirical symmetries transparent, and from which it follows that both global and local symmetries can give rise to Galileo-ship phenomena. In particular, we use this framework to exhibit an analog of Galileo's ship for the local gauge invariance of electromagnetism.
Decisions, whether moral or prudential, should be guided at least in part by considerations of th... more Decisions, whether moral or prudential, should be guided at least in part by considerations of the consequences that would result from the various available actions. For any given action, however, the majority of its consequences are unpredictable at the time of decision. Many have worried that this leaves us, in some important sense, clueless. In this paper, I distinguish between 'simple' and 'complex' possible sources of cluelessness. In terms of this taxonomy, the majority of the existing literature on cluelessness focusses on the simple sources. I argue, contra James Lenman in particular, that these would-be sources of cluelessness are unproblematic, on the grounds that indifference-based reasoning is far less problematic than Lenman (along with many others) supposes. However, there does seem to be a genuine phenomenon of cluelessness associated with the 'complex' sources; here, indifference-based reasoning is inapplicable by anyone's lights. This 'complex problem of cluelessness' is vivid and pressing, in particular, in the context of Effective Altruism. This motivates a more thorough examination of the precise nature of cluelessness, and the precise source of the associated phenomenology of discomfort in forced-choice situations. The latter parts of the paper make some initial explorations in those directions.
Harsanyi claimed that his Aggregation and Impartial Observer Theorems provide a justification for... more Harsanyi claimed that his Aggregation and Impartial Observer Theorems provide a justification for utilitarianism. This claim has been strongly resisted, notably by Sen and Weymark, who argue that while Harsanyi has perhaps shown that overall good is a linear sum of individuals' von Neumann-Morgenstern utilities, he has done nothing to establish any connection between the notion of von Neumann-Morgenstern utility and that of well-being, and hence that utilitarianism does not follow. The present article defends Harsanyi against the Sen-Weymark critique. I argue that, far from being a term with precise and independent quantitative content whose relationship to von Neumann-Morgenstern utility is then a substantive question, terms such as 'well-being' suffer (or suffered) from indeterminacy regarding precisely which quantity they refer to. If so, then (on the issue that this article focuses on) Harsanyi has gone as far towards defending 'utilitarianism in the original sense' as could coherently be asked.
An important objection to preference-satisfaction theories of well-being claims that they cannot ... more An important objection to preference-satisfaction theories of well-being claims that they cannot make sense of interpersonal comparisons of well-being. A tradition dating back to Harsanyi (1953) attempts to solve this problem by appeal to so-called extended preferences, that is, roughly, preferences over situations whose description includes one's ordinary (non-extended) preferences. This paper presents a new problem for the extended preferences program, related to Arrow's celebrated impossibility theorem. We consider three ways in which the extended-preference theorist might avoid this problem, and recommend that she pursue one: developing aggregation rules (for extended preferences) that violate Arrow's Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives condition.
An important objection to preference-satisfaction theories of well-being is that these theories c... more An important objection to preference-satisfaction theories of well-being is that these theories cannot make sense of interpersonal comparisons of well-being. A tradition dating back to Harsanyi (1953) attempts to respond to this objection by appeal to so-called extended preferences: very roughly, preferences over situations whose description includes agents' preferences. This paper examines the prospects for defending the preference-satisfaction theory via this extended preferences program. We argue that making conceptual sense of extended preferences is less problematic than others have supposed, but that even so extended preferences do not provide a promising way for the preference satisfaction theorist to make interpersonal well-being comparisons. Our main objection takes the form of a trilemma: depending on how the theory based on extended preferences is developed, either (a) the result will be inconsistent with ordinary preference-satisfaction theory, or (b) it will fail to recover sufficiently rich interpersonal well-being comparisons, or (c) it will take on a number of other arguably odd and undesirable commitments.
This article is a critical survey of the debate over the value of the social discount rate, with ... more This article is a critical survey of the debate over the value of the social discount rate, with a particular focus on climate change. The majority of the material surveyed is from the economics rather than from the philosophy literature, but the emphasis of the survey itself is on foundations in ethical and other normative theory rather than highly technical details. I begin by locating the standard approach to discounting within the overall landscape of ethical theory, and explaining the assumptions and simplifications that are needed in order to arrive at the model that is standard in the discounting literature. The article then covers the general theory of the Ramsey equation and its relationship to observed interest rates, arguments for and against a positive rate of pure time preference, the consumption elasticity of utility, and the effect of various sorts of uncertainty on the discount rate. Finally, it turns specifically to the application of this debate to the case of climate change, focussing on the recent controversy over the low discount rate used in the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change.
Population axiology is the study of the conditions under which one state of affairs is better tha... more Population axiology is the study of the conditions under which one state of affairs is better than another, when the states of affairs in question may differ over the numbers and the identities of the persons who ever live. Extant theories include totalism, averagism, variable value theories, critical level theories, and " person-affecting " theories. Each of these theories is open to objections that are at least prima facie serious. A series of impossibility theorems shows that this is no coincidence: it can be proved, for various sets of prima facie intuitively compelling desiderata, that no axiology can simultaneously satisfy all the desiderata on the list. One's choice of population axiology appears to be a choice of which intuition one is least unwilling to give up.
Given the deep disagreement surrounding population axiology, one should remain uncertain about wh... more Given the deep disagreement surrounding population axiology, one should remain uncertain about which theory is best. However, this uncertainty need not leave one neutral about which acts are better or worse. We show that as the number of lives at stake grows, the Expected Moral Value approach to axiological uncertainty systematically pushes one towards choosing the option preferred by the Total and Critical Level views, even if one's credence in those theories is low.
Overpopulation is often identified as one of the key drivers of climate change. Further, it is of... more Overpopulation is often identified as one of the key drivers of climate change. Further, it is often thought that the mechanism behind this is obvious: 'more people means more greenhouse gas emissions'. However, in light of the fact that climate change depends most closely on cumulative emissions rather than on emissions rates, the relationship between population size and climate change is more subtle than this. Reducing the size of instantaneous populations can fruitfully be thought of as spreading out a fixed number of people more thinly over time, and (in light of the significance of cumulative emissions) it is not immediately clear whether or how such a 'spreading' would help with climate change. To bring the point into sharp relief, I first set out a simple model according to which population reduction would not lead to any climate-change-related improvement. I then critically examine the assumptions of the model. If population reduction would lead to a significant climate-change-related improvement, this must be because (i) population reduction would significantly reduce even cumulative emissions, and/or (ii) climate damages are, to a significant extent, driven by the pace of climate change, and not only the eventual extent of the change.
"Prioritarianism is supposed to be a theory of the overall good that
captures the common intuiti... more "Prioritarianism is supposed to be a theory of the overall good that
captures the common intuition of "priority to the worse off ". But it is difficult to give precise content to the prioritarian claim. Over the past few decades, prioritarians have increasingly responded to this `content problem' by formulating prioritarianism not in terms of an alleged primitive notion of quantity of well-being, but instead in terms of von Neumann-Morgenstern utility. The resulting two forms of prioritarianism (which I call, respectively, "Primitivist" and "Technical" prioritarianism) are not mere variants on a theme, but are entirely distinct theories, amenable to different motivating arguments and open to different objections. This paper argues that the basic intuition of "priority to the worse o ff" provides no support for Technical Prioritarianism: qua attempt to capture that intuition, the turn to von Neumann-Morgenstern utility is a retrograde step.
An important objection to preference-satisfaction theories of well-being is that they cannot make... more An important objection to preference-satisfaction theories of well-being is that they cannot make sense of interpersonal comparisons. A tradition dating back to Harsanyi (J Political Econ 61(5):434, 1953) attempts to solve this problem by appeal to people's so-called extended preferences. This paper presents a new problem for the extended preferences program, related to Arrow's celebrated impossibility theorem. We consider three ways in which the extended-preference theorist might avoid this problem, and recommend that she pursue one: developing aggregation rules (for extended preferences) that violate Arrow's Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives condition.
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Papers by Hilary Greaves
captures the common intuition of "priority to the worse off ". But it is difficult to give precise content to the prioritarian claim. Over the past few decades, prioritarians have increasingly responded to this `content problem' by formulating prioritarianism not in terms of an alleged primitive notion of quantity of well-being, but instead in terms of von Neumann-Morgenstern utility. The resulting two forms of prioritarianism (which I call, respectively, "Primitivist" and "Technical" prioritarianism) are not mere variants on a theme, but are entirely distinct theories, amenable to different motivating arguments and open to different objections. This paper argues that the basic intuition of "priority to the worse o ff" provides no support for Technical Prioritarianism: qua attempt to capture that intuition, the turn to von Neumann-Morgenstern utility is a retrograde step.
captures the common intuition of "priority to the worse off ". But it is difficult to give precise content to the prioritarian claim. Over the past few decades, prioritarians have increasingly responded to this `content problem' by formulating prioritarianism not in terms of an alleged primitive notion of quantity of well-being, but instead in terms of von Neumann-Morgenstern utility. The resulting two forms of prioritarianism (which I call, respectively, "Primitivist" and "Technical" prioritarianism) are not mere variants on a theme, but are entirely distinct theories, amenable to different motivating arguments and open to different objections. This paper argues that the basic intuition of "priority to the worse o ff" provides no support for Technical Prioritarianism: qua attempt to capture that intuition, the turn to von Neumann-Morgenstern utility is a retrograde step.