Can Consequentialists Honour the Special Moral Status of Persons?
Utilitas 22 (4):434-446 (2010)
| Abstract | It is widely believed that consequentialists are committed to the claim that persons are mere containers for well-being. In this article I challenge this view by proposing a new version of consequentialism, according to which the identities of persons matter. The new theory, two-dimensional prioritarianism, is a natural extension of traditional prioritarianism. Two-dimensional prioritarianism holds that wellbeing matters more for persons who are at a low absolute level than for persons who are at a higher level and that it is worse to be deprived of a given number of units than it is good to gain the same number of units, even if the new distribution is a permutation of the original one. If a fixed amount of well-being is transferred from one person to another and then transferred back again, two-dimensional prioritarianism implies that it would have been better to preserve the status quo | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,653 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesMartin Peterson (2012). Multi-Dimensional Consequentialism. Ratio 25 (2):177-194.
Thomas Porter (2012). In Defence of the Priority View. Utilitas 24 (03):349-364.
David DeGrazia (2008). Moral Status as a Matter of Degree? Southern Journal of Philosophy 46 (2):181-198.
Lynne Rudder Baker (2002). The Ontological Status of Persons. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (2):370-388.
Lynne Baker (2007). Persons and Other Things. Journal of Consciousness Studies 14 (s 5-6):17-36.
Arto Laitinen (2006). Interpersonal Recognition and Responsiveness to Relevant Differences. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 9 (1):47-70.
Christopher Wareham (2011). On the Moral Equality of Artificial Agents. International Journal of Technoethics 2 (1):35-42.
David McCarthy (2008). Utilitarianism and Prioritarianism II. Economics and Philosophy 24 (01).
David Albert Jones (2012). The “Special Status” of the Human Embryo in the United Kingdom: An Exploration of the Use of Language in Public Policy. Human Reproduction and Genetic Ethics 17 (1):66-83.
Richard Stith (2004). The Priority Of Respect. International Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2):165-184.
Martin Peterson & Sven Ove Hansson (2005). Equality and Priority. Utilitas 17 (3):299-309.
Ingmar Persson (2008). Why Levelling Down Could Be Worse for Prioritarianism Than for Egalitarianism. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 11 (3):295 - 303.
Richard Brook (2002). Mary Anne Warren, Moral Status: Obligations to Persons and Other Living Things:Moral Status: Obligations to Persons and Other Living Things. Ethics 112 (3):644-646.
Bart Gruzalski (2000). Mary Anne Warren, Moral Status: Obligations to Persons and Other Living Things:Moral Status: Obligations to Persons and Other Living Things. Ethics 110 (3):645-649.
Carlos Soto (2013). Killing, Wrongness, and Equality. Philosophical Studies 164 (2):543-559.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2010-11-06Total downloads14 ( #82,984 of 548,979 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,511 of 548,979 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
