I discuss Ingmar Persson’s recent argument that the Levelling Down Objection could be worse for prioritarians than for egalitarians. Persson’s argument depends upon the claim that indifference to changes in the average prioritarian value of benefits implies indifference to changes in the overall prioritarian value of a state of affairs. As I show, however, sensible conceptions of prioritarianism have no such implication. Therefore prioritarians have nothing to fear from the Levelling Down Objection.

I have earlier argued that, like egalitarianism, prioritarianism is exposed to the levelling down objection—which I do not find serious—but also that it faces related, more serious objections that egalitarianism avoids. In this paper I reply to Thomas Porter’s attempt to rebut this argument. I also trace the more serious objections to prioritarianism to the fact that it implies the desirability of welfare diffusion, i.e. that it is better all things considered if a quantity of welfare (...) is distributed over as many recipients as possible, so that each recipient gets a minimal benefit, and that the outcome would still be in one respect better, even if the quantity of welfare was reduced. In contrast to egalitarianism, prioritarianism therefore implies that it is in one respect better if an equality, or a solitary individual, is located at lower rather than a higher level of welfare. (shrink)

According to the Leveling Down Objection, some, if not all, egalitarians must concede that leveling down can make things better in a respect—in terms of equality. I argue, first, that if this is true, then it is hard for such egalitarians to avoid the even more disturbing result that leveling down can be better all-things-considered. I then consider and reject two attempts to take this particular sting out of being an egalitarian. The first (...) is Tom Christiano’s argument that the egalitarian is not forced to concede that the leveled down state is better with respect to equality, on the grounds that if equality with respect to any X matters, e.g. welfare, then value must be assigned to X, rendering the leveled down state inferior even with respect to equality. This is insufficient, I argue, to justify his requirement that Pareto-inferior states cannot be better with respect to equality. The second, offered by both Ingmar Persson and Campbell Brown, is to argue that prioritarianism—a central rival to egalitarianism—is also subject to the Leveling Down Objection. Persson and Campbell fail, I claim, because their arguments turn on increases in measures in leveled down states that have no value on the prioritarian view. (shrink)

Derek Parfit has argued that, in contrast to prioritarianism, egalitarianism is exposed to the levelling down objection, i.e., the objection that it is absurd that a change which consists merely in the betteroff losing some of their well-being should be in one way for the better. In reply, this paper contends that there is a plausible form of egalitarianism which is equivalent to another form of prioritarianism than the Parfitian one, a relational rather than an (...) absolute form of prioritarianism, and that, although this relational or egalitarian form of prioritarianism is hit by the levelling down objection, the Parfitian form is also hit by it, or worse objections, if it is fully worked out. (shrink)

Derek Parfit has argued that egalitarianism is exposed to a levelling down objection because it implies, implausibly, that a change, which consists only in the better-off sinking to the level of the worse-off, is in one respect better, though it is better for nobody. He claims that, in contrast, the prioritarian view that benefits to the worse-off have greater moral weight escapes this objection. This article contends, first, that prioritarianism is equally affected by the levelling (...) class='Hi'>down objection as is egalitarianism, but that this objection lacks force. Secondly, prioritarianism is less plausible than egalitarianism because it implies that lowering the level of equality by diffusing a quantity of welfare equally over as many recipients as possible is for the better all things considered, and that the outcome of such welfare diffusion would still be better in one respect, even if the quantity of welfare was radically reduced. (shrink)

abstract Derek Parfit has argued that egalitarianism is exposed to a levelling down objection because it implies, implausibly, that a change, which consists only in the better‐off sinking to the level of the worse‐off, is in one respect better, though it is better for nobody. He claims that, in contrast, the prioritarian view that benefits to the worse‐off have greater moral weight escapes this objection. This article contends, first, that prioritarianism is equally affected by the levelling (...) down objection as is egalitarianism, but that this objection lacks force. Secondly, prioritarianism is less plausible than egalitarianism because it implies that lowering the level of equality by diffusing a quantity of welfare equally over as many recipients as possible is for the better all things considered, and that the outcome of such welfare diffusion would still be better in one respect, even if the quantity of welfare was radically reduced. (shrink)

The Levelling-Down Objection is a standard objection to monistic egalitarian theories where equality is the only thing that has intrinsic value. Most egalitarians, however, are value pluralists; they hold that, in addition to equality being intrinsically valuable, the egalitarian currency in which we are equal or unequal is also intrinsically valuable. In this paper, I shall argue that the Levelling-Down Objection still minimizes the weight that the intrinsic badness of inequality could have in the overall (...) intrinsic evaluation of outcomes, given a certain way of measuring the badness of inequality, namely, the Additive Individual-Complaints Measure. (shrink)

Telic egalitarianism is famously threatened by the levelling down objection. In its canonical form, the objection purports to show that it is not, in itself, an improvement if inequality is reduced. In a variant that is less often discussed, the objection is that telic egalitarians are committed to believing that sometimes one ought to reduce inequality, even when doing so makes no one better off. The standard egalitarian response to this ‘all things considered’ variant of the (...) levelling down objection is to embed egalitarianism in a pluralist consequentialist moral theory. In section 1, I briefly recapitulate this familiar strategy. In section 2, I argue that this standard pluralist consequentialist response is inadequate. The inadequacy of the standard response, I argue, stems from the fact that the following are jointly inconsistent: (1) a commitment to levelling down's impermissibility; (2) standard pluralist egalitarian consequentialism; (3) inequality being of non-trivial importance; and (4) the most plausible measures of inequality's badness. In section 3, I show that egalitarians can better respond to the all-things-considered levelling down objection by embedding egalitarianism in a nonconsequentialist moral theory. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Distinguishing Different Kinds of Egalitarianism Equality, Fairness, Luck, and Responsibility Equality of What? The Subsistence Level, Sufficiency, and Compassion Prioritarianism and the Leveling Down Objection19 Equality or Priority? Illustrating Egalitarianism's Distinct Appeal Conclusion Notes.

In his restriction of prioritarianism to cases in which the same people would exist in all the possible outcomes, Parfit stakes out an unstable position, both for himself and more generally. There is no plausible rationale for a prioritarianism that is so restricted, which is consistent with the key features of Parfit’s elaboration and defence of this view and his other commitments. The principles that might be appealed to, in an attempt to justify such a restriction, give rise (...) to a different view—one that is sensitive to the presence or absence of the competing claims of different individuals, where both the existence and the magnitude of these claims are determined by gains and losses to individuals in a manner that is not fully captured by Parfit’s prioritarian weighting. (shrink)

Prioritarianism can usefully be seen as a corrective to both egalitarianism and utilitarianism. It allegedly corrects for egalitarianism insofar as it tends toward equality but seems immune to the Leveling Down Objection. It allegedly corrects for utilitarianism insofar as it emphasizes improving peoples' lives but is distribution-sensitive, favoring benefiting those who are worse off over those who are better off, other things equal. The best way to understand the view and assess its prospects is to see (...) whether on closer examination it can indeed avoid the pitfalls of the two more traditional views it might replace. What emerges from such a closer examination is that prioritarianism must be very carefully specified to avoid the Leveling Down Objection. More significantly, to clearly avoid problems associated with utilitarianism, prioritarianism must be formulated in deontic rather than telic terms. It is not clear, however, that such a deontic prioritarianism has any advantages over deontic egalitarianism. (shrink)

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 122-164, May 2022. I argue that the consensus view that one must never level down to equality gives rise to a dilemma. This dilemma is best understood by examining two parallel cases of leveling down: one drawn from the economic domain, the other from the political. In the economic case, both egalitarians and non-egalitarians have resisted the idea of leveling down wages to equality. With no incentives (...) for some people to work hard social productivity will likely decline, further lowering people's wages and thus leaving everybody all-things-considered worse off as a result—hence “never level down.” On the other hand, however, the argument against leveling down does not appear to pass muster in the political sphere: denying political equality in the form of “one person, one vote”, for example, by giving a higher share of voting power to people with, say, more education seems straightforwardly objectionable, even if such a voting scheme would improve the outcomes of all people, including those who are ultimately left with fewer votes. Thus, a fundamental tension arises: we can either endorse the widely-affirmed “never-level-down” thesis, which says that sacrificing people's well-being exclusively for the sake of promoting equality can never be the right thing to do, or we can endorse the principle of “one person, one vote.” But we cannot do both. I defend this dilemma against a view I call the compatibility view: roughly, that because OPOV is strictly necessary to advance some weighty, non-egalitarian interest people have, accepting OPOV as a principle of justice is compatible with one's rejection of leveling down. (shrink)

In an important piece of work Derek Parfit distinguishes two different forms of egalitarianism, ‘Deontic’ and ‘Telic’. He contrasts these with what he calls the Priority View, which is not strictly a form of egalitarianism at all, since it is not essentially concerned with how well off people are relative to each other. His main aim is to generate an adequate taxonomy of the positions available, but in the process he draws attention to some of the different problems they face. (...) I shall argue that there are forms of egalitarianism overlooked by Parfit which avoid the problems encountered by Deontic and Telic Egalitarians. (shrink)

The levelling-down objection rejects the egalitarian view that it is intrinsically good to eliminate the inequality of an outcome by lowering the relevant good of those better off to the level of those worse off. Larry Temkin suggests that the position underlying this objection is an exclusionary version of the person-affecting view, in which an outcome can be better or worse only if persons are affected for better or worse. Temkin then defends egalitarianism by rejecting this position. (...) In this essay, I avoid Temkin's conclusion by arguing that the levelling-down objection is best understood as resting on an alternative position, which involves a distinction between those non-person-affecting ideals that posit value as tied to individuals in a particular manner and those that do not. Taken as the basis of the levelling-down objection, this position allows us consistently to reject egalitarianism while accepting many plausible non-person-affecting ideals. (shrink)

The levelling down objection is the most serious objection to the principle of equality, but we think it can be conclusively defeated. It is serious because it pits the principle of equality squarely against the welfares of the persons whose welfares or resources are equalized. It suggests that there is something perverse about the principle of equality. In this paper, we argue that levelling down is not an implication of the principle of equality. To show this (...) we offer a defence of, and partial elaboration of, what we call a common good conception of the principle of equality, which principle favours states in which everyone is better off to those in which everyone is worse off. We contrast this with what we call a purely structural conception of the principle of equality. The common good conception of equality involves two basic components: (1) in each circumstance there exists an ideal egalitarian distribution, which distributes equally all the available good in the distribution with the highest average welfare and (2) in evaluating how just the world is, it will matter how far the actual distribution is from the ideal distribution. The ideal egalitarian distribution in the circumstance is Pareto optimal and the approximation rule implies that Pareto superior states are less unjust than Pareto inferior states. 1. (shrink)

In a recent article, Michael Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve argue that prioritarianism fails to account for the shift in moral significance in gains to individuals in interpersonal as compared to intrapersonal cases. In this article, I show that the priority view escapes this objection but in a way that deprives it of (some of) its anti-egalitarian stance. Despite Otsuka and Voorhoeve, prioritarianism, rightly understood, provides consistent and attractive recommendations in both single- and multi-person cases. Yet prioritarians, the (...) article goes on to show, cannot do so while availing themselves of the leveling down objection (LDO) to egalitarianism. They may not do so because similarly to egalitarianism, prioritarianism also must reject the principle of personal good. That is, egalitarians and prioritarians may sometime recommend certain actions and outcomes even when these are better for no one. Prioritarians may survive the Otsuka–Voorhoeve critique, but to do so they must abandon their anti-egalitarian stance (or at the very least, the LDO). (shrink)

Many think that equality is an intrinsic value. However, this view, especially when based on a consequential foundation, faces familiar objections related to the claim that equality is sometimes good for none and bad for some: most notably the levelling down objection. This article explores a unique (consequential) conception of equality, as part of a more general conception of fairness concerning the resolution of interpersonal conflicts, which is not exposed to these objections.

This paper discusses limitarianism in light of three popular objections to the redistribution of extreme wealth: (i) that such redistribution legitimizes envy, which is a morally objectionable attitude; (ii) that it disincentivizes the wealthy to invest and work, leading to a diminished social product, and, thereby, making everyone worse-off; and (iii) that it undercuts the pursuit and achievement of human excellence by depriving successful people of resources through which they may otherwise excel. We argue that these objections fail to undermine (...) limitarianism. An elaborated defence against them, rather, reveals how the Standard Defence of limitarianism may be expanded and strengthened by relying explicitly on the importance of preventing a society of envy, avoiding harm to non-rich citizens, and ensuring that humans are given the opportunities to excel in ways that go beyond those that allow for the amassment of wealth. (shrink)

It is common to define egalitarianism in terms of an inequality ordering, which is supposed to have some weight in overall evaluations of outcomes. Egalitarianism, thus defined, implies that levelling down makes the outcome better in respect of reducing inequality; however, the levelling down objection claims there can be nothing good about levelling down. The priority view, on the other hand, does not have this implication. This paper challenges the common view. The standard definition of egalitarianism (...) implicitly assumes a context. Once this context is made clear, it is easily seen that egalitarianism could be defined alternatively in terms of valuing a benefit to a person inversely to how well off he is relative to others. The levelling down objection does not follow from this definition. Moreover, the common definition does not separate egalitarian orderings from prioritarian ones. It is useful to do this by requiring that on egalitarianism, additively separable orderings should be excluded. But this requirement is stated as a condition on the alternative definition of egalitarianism, from which the levelling down objection does not follow. (shrink)

Egalitarians think that equality in the distribution of goods somehow matters. But what exactly is egalitarianism? This article argues for a characterization based on novel principles essentially involving risk. The characterization is then used to resolve disputed questions about egalitarianism. These include: the way egalitarianism is concerned with patterns, in particular its relationship to strong separability; the relationship between egalitarianism and other distributive views, such as concerns with fairness and with giving priority to the worse off; and the relationship between (...) egalitarianism and evaluative measurement. But egalitarianism is subject to a particularly severe form of the levelling-down objection, and is claimed to be false. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I discuss two distributive principles in moral philosophy: Derek Parfit's Prioritarianism and Egalitarianism. I attempt to defend a version of Egalitarianism, which I call Weighted Egalitarianism. Although Parfit claims that Egalitarianism is subject to what he calls the Levelling Down Objection, I show that my proposed Weighted Egalitarianism is not subject to the Objection, and that it gives priority to the worse off people. The real difference between the two principles lies in how (...) the weight of each person's well-being is determined. Prioritarianism assumes that there is a moral scale of the goodness of well-being, independently of distributions of people's well-being. I raise two objections to this claim: firstly, it is hard to believe that the choice of the level of well-being affects our distributive judgement; secondly, it is hard to believe that there is such a moral scale independently of distributions of people's well-being. On the other hand, Weighted Egalitarianism claims that the weight is given by the rank order position of the person in the ranking by well-being level. This means that, in Weighted Egalitarianism, the goodness of a distribution is an increasing, linear function of people's well-being. Weighted Egalitarianism is not affected by the choice of the level of people's well-being. Nor does it require require the moral scale of the goodness of well-being independently of distributions of people's well-being. Leximin, which might be a version of Prioritarianism, avoids my objections. But it is hard to support Leximin, because it rules out the trade off between the better off and the worse off. I conclude that Weighted Egalitarianism is more acceptable than Prioritarianism. (shrink)

In "Equality, Priority, and Compassion," Roger Crisp rejects both egalitarianism and prioritarianism. Crisp contends that our concern for those who are badly off is best accounted for by appealing to "a sufficiency principle" based -- indirectly, via the notion of an impartial spectator -- on compassion for those who are badly off" (p. 745). A key example of Crisp's is the Beverly Hills case (discussed below). This example is directed against prioritarianism, but it also threatens egalitarianism. In this (...) article, I respond to the Beverly Hills case. I also challenge the wide person-affecting principle and Crisp's welfarist restriction, which some believe underlie the Levelling Down Objection against egalitarianism. My aim in this article is to defend egalitarianism by illuminating both its nature and appeal. (shrink)

This paper aims to illuminate some issues in the equality, priority, or what debate. I characterize egalitarianism and prioritarianism, respond to the view that we should care about sufficiency or compassion rather than equality or priority, discuss the levelling down objection, and illustrate the significance of the distinction between prioritarianism and egalitarianism, establishing that the former is no substitute for the latter. In addition, I respond to Bertil Tungodden's views regarding the Slogan, the levelling down (...) objection, the Pareto Principle, leximin, the principle of personal good, strict moderate egalitarianism, the Hammond Equity Condition, the intersection approach, and non-aggregative reasoning. (shrink)

Resumo O igualitarismo axiológico defende que uma situação melhora ao menos em algum aspecto se o valor que contém é distribuído mais igualitariamente. Neste artigo defendo essa forma de igualitarismo e aponto alguns de seus corolários. Depois de considerar e rejeitar a objeção da igualação por baixo, sustento que do igualitarismo se segue um questionamento da consideração meramente maximizadora do valor da vida. Argumento, também, que essa posição objeta às concepções antropocêntricas do valor. Palavras chave: igualitarismo, prioritarismo, igualação por baixo, (...) valor impessoal, antropocentrismo, valor da vida.Axiological egalitarianism claims that an outcome improves at least in some respect if the value it contains is more evenly distributed. In this paper I defend this form of egalitarianism and identify some of its corollaries. First, I consider and reject the levelling down objection. I then point out that egalitarianism casts doubt on the traditional view of the value of life in terms of maximization. Further, I argue that this theory also questions anthropocentric conceptions of value. Keywords: egalitarianism, prioritarianism, levelling down, impersonal value, anthropocentrism, value of life. (shrink)

:This paper questions the distinction between egalitarianism and prioritarianism, arguing that it is important to separate the reasons for particular social preferences from the contents of these preferences, that it is possible to like equality and separability simultaneously, and that some egalitarians and prioritarians may therefore share the same social preferences. The case of risky prospects, for which Broome has proposed an interesting example meant to show that egalitarians and prioritarians cannot share the same preferences, is scrutinized. The levelling (...) down objection is also examined. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the political and economic domains are analogous for distributive purposes. The upshot of this conclusion is that because we normally think that an unequal distribution of votes is objectionable even if these inequalities are strictly necessary to improve the lives of less informed voters, so we should conclude that an unequal distribution of resources might be similarly objectionable even if strictly necessary to make the worse off better off. Leveling down economic resources (...) is therefore sometimes morally permissible. I consider and reject three types of objections to this view. (shrink)

The Slogan holds that one situation cannot be worse (or better) than another unless there is someone for whom it is worse (or better). This principle appears to provide the basis for the levelling-down objection to teleological egalitarianism. Larry Temkin, however, argues that the Slogan is not a plausible moral ideal, since it stands against not just teleological egalitarianism, but also values such as freedom, rights, autonomy, virtue and desert. I argue that the Slogan is a plausible moral (...) principle, one that provides a suitable moral basis for the levelling-down objection to teleological egalitarianism. Contrary to Temkin, freedom, autonomy, virtue, and rights can all be understood in person-affecting terms, while equality of outcome cannot. Moreover, the Slogan is open to a variety of different ideas about how we should weight or rank people's gains and losses. This flexibility allows the Slogan to accommodate ideals such as prioritarianism and desert. (shrink)

The so-called “Levelling Down Objection” is commonly believed to occupy a central role in the debate between egalitarians and prioritarians. Egalitarians think that equality is good in itself, and so they are committed to finding value even in such equality as may only be achieved by “levelling down”–i.e., by merely reducing the better off to the level of the worse off. Although egalitarians might deny that levelling down could ever make for an all-things-considered improvement, they cannot (...) deny that it may make things better in at least one respect. Prioritarians, on the other hand, do deny this; according to them, levelling down cannot make things better in any respect. In this paper I argue that the Levelling Down Objection leans far too heavily on a heretofore unanalysed notion: namely, the notion of “being better in this or that respect.” I propose what I take to be a plausible analysis of that notion, and show that, given the proposed analysis, the prioritarian is no less vulnerable to the Levelling Down Objection than is the egalitarian. I conclude that proponents of the Levelling Down Objection need either to suggest a better analysis or abandon the Levelling Down Objection altogether. (shrink)

The goal of this article is modest. It is simply to help illuminate the nature of egalitarianism. More particularly, I aim to show what certain egalitarians are committed to, and to suggest that equality, as these egalitarians understand it, is an important normative ideal that cannot simply be ignored in moral deliberations. In doing this, I distinguish between equality as universality, equality as impartiality, and equality as comparability, and also between instrumental and non-instrumental egalitarianism. I then characterise the version of (...) egalitarianism with which I am concerned, which I call equality as comparative fairness. I discuss the relations between equality, fairness, luck, and responsibility, and defend egalitarianism against rival views that focus on subsistence, sufficiency, or compassion. I also defend egalitarianism against the Levelling Down and Raising Up Objections, and present several key examples to illustrate egalitarianism's distinct appeal, in contrast to prioritarianism's. I conclude by considering two common questions about my view: first, whether my ultimate concern is really with comparative fairness, rather than equality, so that my view is not, in fact, a substantive, non-instrumental version of egalitarianism, and second, whether my view ultimately reduces to a theory about desert. (shrink)

We argue in this paper that so-called new wave reductionism fails to capture the nature of the interlevel relations between psychology and neuroscience. Bickle (1995, Psychoneural reduction of the genuinely cognitive: some accomplished facts, Philosophical Psychology, 8, 265-285; 1998, Psychoneural reduction: the new wave, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) has claimed that a (bottom-up) reduction of the psychological concepts of learning and memory to the concepts of neuroscience has in fact already been accomplished. An investigation of current research on the phenomenon (...) of long-term potentiation reveals that this claim overstates the facts. Both the psychological and the neural concepts involved have not yet stabilized and face further correction under the influence of both bottom-up and top-down selection pressures. In addition, psychological concepts often refer to functions, and functions are indispensable and irreducible. Function ascriptions pick out objective patterns involving historical factors and distal goals. This view of functions implies that psychological facts cannot be simply read off from the neurophysiological facts. Although psychological theorizing is constrained by neurophysiology (and vice versa), psychology remains distinct at least to some degree. (shrink)

Down syndrome (DS) impacts several brain regions including the hippocampus and surrounding structures that have responsibility for important aspects of navigation and wayfinding. Hence it is reasonable to expect that DS may result in a reduced ability to engage in these skills. Two experiments are reported that evaluated route-learning of youth with DS, youth with intellectual disability (ID) and not DS, and typically developing (TD) children matched on mental age (MA). In both experiments, participants learned routes with eight choice (...) point presented via computer. Several objects were placed along the route that could be used as landmarks. Participants navigated the route once with turn indicators pointing the way and then retraced the route without them. In Experiment 1 we found that the TD children and ID participants performed very similarly. They learned the route in the same number of attempts, committed the same number of errors while learning the route, and recalled approximately the same number of landmarks. The participants with DS performed significantly worse on both measures of navigation (attempts and errors) and also recalled significantly fewer landmarks. In Experiment 2, we attempted to reduce TD and ID vs DS differences by focusing participants’ attention on the landmarks. Half of the participants in each group were instructed to identify the landmarks as they passed them the first time. The participants with DS again committed more errors than the participants in the ID and TD groups in the navigation task. In addition, they recalled fewer landmarks. While landmark identification improved landmark memory for both groups, it did not have a significant impact on navigation. Participants with DS still performed more poorly than did the TD and ID participants. Of additional interest, we observed that the performance of persons with DS correlated with different ability measures than did the performance of the other groups. The results the two experiments point to a problem in navigation for persons with DS that exceeds expectations based solely on intellectual level. (shrink)

A well-known objection to prioritarianism, famously levelled by Mike Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve, is that it wrongly ignores the unity of the individual in treating intra-personal cases like inter-personal cases. In this paper we accept that there should be a moral shift between these cases, but argue that this is because autonomy is a relevant consideration in intra-personal but not inter-personal cases, and one to which pluralist prioritarians ought to attend. To avoid this response, Otsuka and Voorhoeve must (...) assume we know nothing about the subjective information of the person being chosen for. But we show that this commits them to two controversial assumptions: that welfare consists in an objective list of goods, and – if one accepts an unorthodox but plausible account of the relationship between risk aversion and rationality – that there is only a narrow range of rational risk aversions. Only prioritarians who accept both these assumptions are on the hook of Otsuka and Voorhoeve’s objection; for all others, the examples have insufficient information, and so lose their sting. (shrink)

Mechanism realists assert the existence of mechanisms as objective structures in the world, but their exact metaphysical commitments are unclear. We introduce Local Hierarchy Realism (LHR) as a substantive and plausible form of mechanism realism. The limits of LHR reveal a deep tension between two aspects of mechanists’ explanatory strategy. Functional decomposition identifies locally relevant entities and activities, while these same entities and activities are also embedded in a nested hierarchy of levels. In principle, a functional decomposition may identify entities (...) engaging in causal interactions that crosscut the hierarchical structure of composition relations, violating the mechanist’s injunction against interlevel causation. We argue that this possibility is realized in the example of ephaptic coupling, a subsidiary process of neural computation that crosscuts the hierarchy derived from synaptic transmission. These considerations undermine the plausibility of LHR as a general view, yet LHR has the advantages that (i) its metaphysical implications are precisely stateable; (ii) the structure it identifies is not reducible to mere aggregate causation; and (iii) it clearly satisfies intuitive and informal definitions of mechanism. We conclude by assessing the prospects for a form of mechanism realism weaker than LHR that nevertheless satisfies all three of these requirements. (shrink)

In their recent article, ‘Why lockdown of the elderly is not ageist and why levelling down equality is wrong’, Savulescu and Cameron argue for selective isolation of the elderly as an alternative to general lockdown. An important part of their argument is the claim that the latter amounts to ‘levelling down equality’ and that this is ‘unethical’ or even ‘morally repugnant’. This response argues that they fail to justify either part of this claim: the claim that levelling (...) class='Hi'>down is always morally wrong is subject to challenges that Savulescu and Cameron do not consider; and a policy of maintaining general lockdown does not constitute levelling down, as it provides absolute benefits to those who would be worse off under selective isolation. (shrink)

This article argues that, as commonly understood, indirect discrimination is not necessarily unjust: 1) indirect discrimination involves the disadvantaging in relation to a particular benefit and such disadvantages are not unjust if the overall distribution of benefits and burdens is just; 2) indirect discrimination focuses on groups and group averages and ignores the distribution of harms and benefits within groups subjected to discrimination, but distributive justice is concerned with individuals; and 3) if indirect discrimination as such is unjust, strict egalitarianism (...) has to be the correct account of distributive justice, but such egalitarianism appears vulnerable to the leveling down objection (whether decisively or not), and many theorists explicitly reject strict egalitarianism anyway. The last point threatens the position of liberals who oppose indirect discrimination but think significant inequalities can be just. (shrink)

The paper returns to the question whether equality in distribution is valuable in itself, or, if you like, whether it is intrinsically valuable. Its bulk is an examination of two familiar arguments against the intrinsic value of distributional equality: the levelling down objection and the objection that equality violates some person-affecting condition, in that its realisation does not improve the lot of people.

Mechanism realists assert the existence of mechanisms as objective structures in the world, but their exact metaphysical commitments are unclear. We introduce Local Hierarchy Realism (LHR) as a substantive and plausible form of mechanism realism. The limits of LHR reveal a deep tension between two aspects of mechanists’ explanatory strategy. Functional decomposition identifies locally relevant entities and activities, while these same entities and activities are also embedded in a nested hierarchy of levels. In principle, a functional decomposition may identify entities (...) engaging in causal interactions that crosscut the hierarchical structure of composition relations, violating the mechanist’s injunction against interlevel causation. We argue that this possibility is realized in the example of ephaptic coupling, a subsidiary process of neural computation that crosscuts the hierarchy derived from synaptic transmission. These considerations undermine the plausibility of LHR as a general view, yet LHR has the advantages that (i) its metaphysical implications are precisely stateable; (ii) the structure it identifies is not reducible to mere aggregate causation; and (iii) it clearly satisfies intuitive and informal definitions of mechanism. We conclude by assessing the prospects for a form of mechanism realism weaker than LHR that nevertheless satisfies all three of these requirements. (shrink)

I develop the recent claim that prioritarianism, and not only its egalitarian competitors, must be committed to an impersonal outcome value (i. e. a value that makes a distribution better even if this does not affect anyone’s welfare). This value, that I label telic priority and that consists in the goodness of benefits going to the worst off recipients, implies implausible judgments that more than compete with ‘pure’ (Parfit) egalitarianism’s applause in leveling down scenarios. ‘Pure prioritarianism’, (...) an axiological theory that would consist in an unqualified commitment to telic priority only, must therefore be developed into a pluralist version of the priority view. Contra Parfit, prioritarianism and egalitarianism are on a par concerning the relationship between their pure (and implausible) formulations and their pluralist (and plausible) versions. The final section explains why telic priority always assigns preference to the worst-off (and not merely to the worse-off). (shrink)

The paper aims to demonstrate the possibility of consistently accepting the existence of effective mental causality in the fundamentally physical world. We suppose that the concept of causality in J. Kim’s exclusion argument against mental causation, which implies а generative conception of causal relations, can be revised taking into account the specificity of the multilevel organization of living objects. Rejection of the mechanistic model of causality as a linear process, allows you to maintain commitment to the principle of causal closure (...) of the physical world and at the same time explain how top-down causality at the macro level is possible. For this, we use the model of a fractal tree of causal chains by J. Lowe, in which mental causality plays the role of an indirect cause of a fact. We carry out a meaningful distinction between the causality of facts and events by resorting to the multilevel model of J. Ellis, in which mental causality can be considered as a macro-level fact that has a selective effect on physical events of lower levels, taking into account a wide environmental context. (shrink)

What does it mean for algorithmic classifications to be fair to different socially salient groups? According to classification parity criteria, what is required is equality across groups with respect to some performance measure such as error rates. Critics of classification parity object that classification parity entails that achieving fairness may require us to choose an algorithm that makes no group better off and some groups worse off than an alternative. In this article, I interpret the problem of algorithmic fairness as (...) a case concerning the ethics of the distribution of algorithmic classifications across groups (as opposed to, e.g., the fairness of data collection). I begin with a short introduction of algorithmic fairness as a problem discussed in machine learning. I then show how the criticism raised against classification parity is a form of leveling down objection, and I interpret the egalitarianism of classification parity as deontic egalitarianism. I then discuss a challenge to this interpretation and suggest a revision. Finally, I examine how my interpretation provides proponents of classification parity with a response to the leveling down criticism and how it relates to a recent suggestion to evaluate fairness for automated decision-making systems based on risk and welfare considerations from behind a veil of ignorance. (shrink)

Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift argue that education is a positional good; this, they hold, implies that there is a qualified case for leveling down educational provision. In this essay, Ben Kotzee discusses Brighouse and Swift's argument for leveling down. He holds that the argument fails in its own terms and that, in presenting the problem of educational justice as one of balancing education's positional and nonpositional benefits, Brighouse and Swift lose sight of what a consideration (...) of the nonpositional benefits by itself can reveal. Instead of focusing on education's positional benefits, Kotzee investigates what emphasizing education's nonpositional benefits would imply for educational justice. Drawing on recent work in social epistemology, Kotzee holds that theories of educational justice would benefit from a consideration of the virtue of epistemic justice, and he outlines solutions to a number of problems in the area from this perspective. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are good reasons to limit the scope of luck egalitarianism to co‐existing people. First, I outline reasons to be sceptical about how “luck” works intergenerationally and therefore the very grounding of luck egalitarianism between non‐overlapping generations. Second, I argue that what Kasper Lippert‐Rasmussen calls the “core luck egalitarian claim” allows significant intergenerational inequality which is a problem for those who object to such inequality. Third, luck egalitarianism cannot accommodate the intuition that it might be required (...) to leave future generations better off than we are, even if it would come at no cost to ourselves. Finally, I argue that following another, broader, version of luck egalitarianism would require us to level down future generations and possibly even ourselves, which is a problem for those persuaded by the levelling‐down objection. (shrink)

It is a mainstay of the philosophy of science that reduction is a relationship between theories pitched at different levels of nature. But the relevant sense of “level” is notoriously difficult to pin down. A promising recent analysis links the notion of level to the compositional relations associated with mechanistic explanation. Such relations do not order objects by scale or physical type; one and the same kind of entity can occur at several levels in a single mechanism. I will (...) sketch this approach to levels and consider some of its implications for our understanding of the relationship between cognitive psychology and neuroscience. (shrink)