Abstract
According to the person-affecting restriction, one distribution of welfare can be better than another only if there is someone for whom it is better. Extant problems for the person-affecting restriction involve variable-population cases, such as the nonidentity problem, which are notoriously controversial and difficult to resolve. This paper develops a fixed-population problem for the person-affecting restriction. The problem reveals that, in the presence of incommensurable welfare levels, the person-affecting restriction is incompatible with minimal requirements of impartial beneficence even in fixed-population contexts.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
A distribution of well-being is a function from individuals to welfare levels, where each individual’s welfare level represents how good that distribution is for her. I consider such distributions rather than total outcomes or possible worlds to bracket the truth or falsity of welfarism, according to which the goodness of an outcome depends only on its distribution of welfare. I assume that nonwelfarists would judge some welfare distributions better than others, while maintaining that outcomes with better welfare distributions need not be better overall. We could, alternatively, compare total outcomes or informationally richer distributions while imaginining that all axiologically relevant considerations other than welfare are equal, or by restricting our attention to the goodness of outcomes with respect to the value of well-being.
By better (and better for) I mean better (for) all things considered, not just in some respect. This distinguishes the person-affecting restriction from what Temkin (1993, 256) calls the slogan (see note 3). The principle considered here is, in Parfit (2017)’s terminology, the narrow telic person-affecting restriction. I set aside its deontic analogue, as well as the so-called wide person-affecting restriction.
The person-affecting restriction, as understood here, is not committed to welfarism (see note 1). Objections to welfarism do not challenge the person-affecting restriction, understood as a restriction on the goodness of distributions of welfare. Radical egalitarians who embrace leveling down would reject the restriction. But moderate egalitarians, who reject leveling down, can accept the restriction while rejecting what Temkin (1993, 256) calls the slogan. The slogan says that a distribution cannot be better in any respect unless it is better in some respect for someone. Unlike the slogan, the person-affecting restriction considered here is compatible with moderate egalitarianism. And, unlike other objections to the person-affecting restriction, the argument of this paper is compatible with the slogan.
The choice between \(C\) and \(D\) is inspired by Hare (2010) problem of “opaque sweetening” in the theory of rational choice. Distributions like \(C\) and \(C'\) are briefly considered by McCarthy et al. (2016) in another context; they do not consider implications for the person-affecting restriction.
To be more precise, let \(\mathcal {I}\) be the set of individuals. Welfare distributions \(X\) and \(Y\) are permutations of each other just in case, for some bijection \(\sigma (\cdot )\) from \(\mathcal {I}\) to \(\mathcal {I}\), \(X\) assigns to each \(i \in \mathcal {I}\) the same welfare level that \(Y\) assigns to \(\sigma (i)\). Those who prefer to compare total outcomes or informationally richer distributions (as mentioned in note 1) can instead consider correspondingly richer permutations, which assign the same welfare levels and axiologically relevant nonwelfare properties (e.g., levels of desert) to each \(i\) and \(\sigma (i)\). See, e.g., the weak anonymity axiom proposed by Blackorby et al. (2005) and the “desert-modulated anonymity” considered by Adler (2018).
The cases I have in mind involve (1) infinite populations in which one distribution is better for each person than a permutation of that distribution (as in Liedekerke 1995), (2) prospects that distribute chances of being better or worse off between people in different ways, but guarantee anonymously identical distributions (as in Diamond 1967), and (3) choices in which some people face much greater burdens than others (as in Brown 2019). I am inclined to maintain anonymity in all three cases, but others may disagree; minimal anonymity avoids these problems.
Some have suggested that minimal anonymity is flatly inconsistent with the spirit of the person-affecting restriction, which they take to include the claim that \(X\) and \(Y\) can be equally good only if there is someone for whom they are equally good. But many person-affecting theorists would want to say, for example, that \((x,x+)\) and \((x+,x)\) are equally good even though there is no one for whom they are equally good. So I do not take that claim to be implied by the spirit of the person-affecting restriction.
Assume that \(D\) is better than \(C'\) and that \(C'\) and \(C\) are equally good. Then \(D\) is at least as good as \(C'\), which is at least as good as \(C\). So, by transitivity, \(D\) must be at least as good as \(C\). Now suppose that \(C\) is at least as good as \(D\). Then \(C'\) must be at least as good as \(D\), by transitivity. But that is impossible, because \(D\) is better than \(C'\). So \(C\) cannot be at least as good as \(D\), but \(D\) is at least as good as \(C\). Therefore, \(D\) is better than \(C\).
References
Adler, M. D. (2018). Prioritarianism: Room for desert? Utilitas, 30(2), 172–97. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820817000164.
Arrhenius, G. (2000). An impossibility theorem for welfarist axiologies. Economics and Philosophy, 16(02), 247–66.
Arrhenius, G., & Rabinowicz, W. (2015). The value of existence. In I. Hirose & J. Olson (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of value theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Arrhenius, G., & Rabinowicz, W. (2012). Better to be than not to be? Discusiones Filosóficas, 13(21), 65–85.
Blackorby, C., Bossert, W., & Donaldson, D. (2005). Population issues in social choice theory, welfare economics, and ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, C. (2019). “Is close enough good enough?” Economics & Philosophy. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266267119000099.
Chang, R. (2002). The possibility of parity. Ethics, 112(4), 659–88. https://doi.org/10.1086/339673.
Diamond, P. A. (1967). Cardinal welfare, individualistic ethics, and interpersonal comparison of utility: Comment. Journal of Political Economy, 75(5), 765–66. https://doi.org/10.1086/259353.
Dubra, J., Maccheroni, F., & Ok, E. A. (2004). Expected utility theory without the completeness axiom. Journal of Economic Theory, 115(1), 118–33. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-0531(03)00166-2.
Fleurbaey, M., & Voorhoeve, A. (2015). On the social and personal value of existence. In I. Hirose & A. Reisner (Eds.), Weighing and reasoning: Themes from the philosophy of John Broome. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hare, C. (2010). Take the sugar. Analysis, 70(2), 237–47. https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/anp174.
Heyd, D. (1994). Genethics: Moral issues in the creation of people. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Holtug, N. (1999). Utility, priority and possible people. Utilitas, 11(1), 16.
Holtug, N. (2001). On the value of coming into existence. The Journal of Ethics, 5(4), 361–84.
McCarthy, D., Mikkola, K., & Thomas, T. (2016). Utilitarianism with and without expected utility. MPRA Paper No. 79315.
McDermott, M. (2018). Harms and objections. Analysis. https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/any062.
Narveson, J. (1967). Utilitarianism and new generations. Mind, 76(301), 62–72.
Nebel, J. M. (2018). The good, the bad, and the transitivity of better than. Noûs, 52(4), 874–99. https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12198.
Parfit, D. (1976). Rights, interests, and possible people. In S. Gorovitz, A. L. Jameton, R. Macklin, J. M. O’Connor, E. V. Perrin, B. P. St. Clair, & S. Sherwin (Eds.), Moral problems in medicine. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Parfit, D. (1984). Reasons and persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Parfit, D. (2017). Future people, the non-identity problem, and person-affecting principles. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 45(2), 118–57. https://doi.org/10.1111/papa.12088.
Parsons, J. (2002). Axiological actualism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 80(2), 137–47. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajp/80.2.137.
Pummer, T. (2017). Spectrum arguments and hypersensitivity. Philosophical Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0932-3.
Rachels, S. (1998). Counterexamples to the transitivity of better than. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 76(1), 71–83. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048409812348201.
Raz, J. (1985). Value incommensurability: Some preliminaries. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 86, 117–34.
Roberts, M. A. (2002). A new way of doing the best that we can: Person-based consequentialism and the equality problem. Ethics, 112(2), 315–50. https://doi.org/10.1086/324321.
Ross, J. (2015). Rethinking the person-affecting principle. Journal of Moral Philosophy, 12(4), 428–61. https://doi.org/10.1163/17455243-01204004.
Sen, A. (1970). Interpersonal aggregation and partial comparability. Econometrica, 38(3), 393. https://doi.org/10.2307/1909546.
Sen, A. (1980). Plural Utility. In Proceedings of the Aristotelian society, New Series, 81 (ArticleType: research-article/Full publication date: 1980–1981/Copyright 1980 The Aristotelian Society) (pp. 193–215). https://doi.org/10.2307/4544973.
Temkin, L. S. (1987). Intransitivity and the mere addition paradox. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 16(2), 138–87.
Temkin, L. S. (1993). Inequality. New York: Oxford University Press.
Temkin, L. S. (1996). A continuum argument for intransitivity. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 25(3), 175–210.
Van Liedekerke, L. (1995). Should utilitarians be cautious aboutan infinite future? Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 73(3), 405–7. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048409512346741.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Cian Dorr, Laura Franklin-Hall, Johann Frick, Arden Koehler, Rob Long, Adam Lovett, Michal Masny, Sam Scheffler, Jake Zuehl, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Nebel, J.M. A fixed-population problem for the person-affecting restriction. Philos Stud 177, 2779–2787 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01338-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01338-5