Anna Mahtani describes a puzzle meant to show that the Ex-Ante Pareto Principle is incomplete as it stands and, since it cannot be completed in a satisfactory manner, decades of debate in welfare economics and ethics are undermined. In this paper, we provide a better solution to the puzzle which saves the Ex-Ante Pareto Principle from this challenge. We also explain how the plausibility of our solution is reinforced by its similarity to a standard solution to (...) an analogous puzzle in quantified epistemic logic. We also show that even if the puzzle were to remain unsolved, its impact on welfare economics and ethics would be limited. (shrink)

The concept of ‘pareto superiority’ plays a central role in ethics, economics, and law. Pareto superiority is sometimes taken as a relation between outcomes, and sometimes as a relation between actions—even where the outcomes of the actions are uncertain. Whether one action is classed as (ex ante) pareto superior to another depends on the prospects under the actions for each person concerned. I argue that a person’s prospects (in this context) can depend on how that person (...) is designated. Without any constraints on acceptable designators, then, the concept of pareto superiority is ill defined and gives inconsistent results. I consider various ways of completing the definition and draw out some surprising implications. (shrink)

First, Mahtani argues that both in the game The Mug and in the Sleeping Beauty we should not defer to a trusted person under a particular designation if they do not self-identify under this designation. This invites a more complex Reflection Principle. I respond that there are more parsimonious ways to avoid the challenges posed to the Reflection Principle. Second, Mahtani argues that preferences create a hyperintensional context, which poses a challenge to the Ex-Ante Pareto Principle that can (...) be averted by supervaluation. I respond that such an appeal to supervaluation would block randomization as a fair allocation device. (shrink)

Prioritarianism is a variant of utilitarianism. It differs from utilitarianism in that benefiting individuals matters more the worse off these individuals are. On this view, there are two standard ways of handling risky prospects: Ex-Post Prioritarianism adjusts for prioritizing the worse off in final outcomes and then values prospects by the expectation of the sum total of those adjusted values, whereas Ex-Ante Prioritarianism adjusts for prioritizing the worse off on each individual's expectation and then values prospects by the sum (...) total of those adjusted expectations. A standard objection to Ex-Post Prioritarianism is that it violates Ex-Ante Pareto, that is, it prescribes choices that worsen the expectations for everyone. In this article, I argue that Ex-Ante Prioritarianism suffers from much the same problem: it violates a sequential version of Ex-Ante Pareto, that is, it prescribes sequences of choices that worsen the expectations for everyone. (shrink)

The ex ante Pareto principle has an intuitive pull, and it has been a principle of central importance since Harsanyi’s defence of utilitarianism. The principle has been used to criticize and refine a range of positions in welfare economics, including egalitarianism and prioritarianism. But this principle faces a serious problem. I have argued elsewhere :303-323 2017) that the concept of ex ante Pareto superiority is not well defined, because its application in a choice situation concerning a (...) fixed population can depend on how the members of that population are designated. I show in this paper that in almost all cases of policy choice, there will be numerous sets of rival designators for the same fixed population. I explore two ways that we might complete the definition of ex ante Pareto superiority. I call these the ‘supervaluationist’ reading and the ‘subvaluationist’ reading. I reject the subvaluationist reading as uncharitable, and argue that the supervaluationist reading is the most promising interpretation of the ex ante Pareto principle. I end by exploring some of the implications of this principle for prioritarianism and egalitarianism. (shrink)

Policy-makers must sometimes choose between an alternative which has somewhat lower expected value for each person, but which will substantially improve the outcomes of the worst off, or an alternative which has somewhat higher expected value for each person, but which will leave those who end up worst off substantially less well off. The popular ex ante Pareto principle requires the choice of the alternative with higher expected utility for each. We argue that ex ante Pareto (...) ought to be rejected because it conflicts with the requirement that, when possible, one ought to decide as one would with full information. We apply our argument in an analysis of US policy on screening for breast cancer. -/- . (shrink)

It is well known that there is a conflict between three intuitive principles for the evaluation of risky prospects in distributional contexts, Ex-Post Egalitarianism, Ex-Ante Pareto and Dominance. In this paper, I return to Peter Diamond’s suggestion that we reject Dominance as a principle of rationality in distributional contexts and present a new argument in support of this position. The argument is based on an observation regarding the right way for a distributor to weigh reasons for actions. In (...) some cases, I argue, reasons for action that are grounded in the interests of one of the patients ought to be disregarded by the distributor. These cases share the following property: it is in the patient’s overall interest that the distributor disregards them. I show that Dominance does not permit distributors to disregard such reasons and use this observation to argue against the claim that Dominance is a principle of rationality in distributional contexts. (shrink)

The Pareto principle states that if the members of society express the same preference judgment between two options, this judgment is compelling for society. A building block of normative economics and social choice theory, and often borrowed by contemporary political philosophy, the principle has rarely been subjected to philosophical criticism. The paper objects to it on the ground that it indifferently applies to those cases in which the individuals agree on both their expressed preferences and their reasons for entertaining (...) them, and those cases in which they agree on their expressed preferences, while differing on their reasons. The latter are cases of "spurious unanimity", and it is normatively inappropriate, or so the paper argues, to defend unanimity preservation at the social level for them, so the Pareto principle is formulated much too broadly. The objection seems especially powerful when the principle is applied in an ex ante context of uncertainty, in which individuals can disagree on both their probabilities and utilities, and nonetheless agree on their preferences over prospects. (shrink)

The coherence of general good turns out to conflict with the widely accepted Pareto principle. This chapter explains the conflict and resolves it in favour of coherence. It also presents an example of a head‐on collision between coherence and the Pareto principle. The example relies on an auxiliary assumption, but one that is very plausible. The principle of personal good is immune to the difficulty raised by the probability agreement theorem. The theorem presents welfare economics with a dilemma: (...) it must abandon either the coherence of social preferences or else the traditional Pareto principle. Either way, it will have to repudiate Harsanyi's theorem. The ex‐ante school of welfare economists abandons coherence. This is the best established school. The ex‐ante school cleaves to the traditional Pareto principle. Consequently, it has to accept incoherent social preferences. (shrink)

We investigate the conflict between the ex ante and ex post criteria of social welfare in a new framework of individual and social decisions, which distinguishes between two sources of uncertainty, here interpreted as an objective and a subjective source respectively. This framework makes it possible to endow the individuals and society not only with ex ante and ex post preferences, as is usually done, but also with interim preferences of two kinds, and correspondingly, to introduce interim forms (...) of the Pareto principle. After characterizing the ex ante and ex post criteria, we present a first solution to their conflict that extends the former as much possible in the direction of the latter. Then, we present a second solution, which goes in the opposite direction, and is also maximally assertive. Both solutions translate the assumed Pareto conditions into weighted additive utility representations, and both attribute to the individuals common probability values on the objective source of uncertainty, and different probability values on the subjective source. We discuss these solutions in terms of two conceptual arguments, i.e., the by now classic spurious unanimity argument and a novel informational argument labelled complementary ignorance. The paper complies with the standard economic methodology of basing probability and utility representations on preference axioms, but for the sake of completeness, also considers a construal of objective uncertainty based on the assumption of an exogeneously given probability measure. JEL classification: D70; D81. (shrink)

We provide a general argument against value incomparability, based on a new style of impossibility result. In particular, we show that, against plausible background assumptions, value incomparability creates an incompatibility between two very plausible principles for ranking lotteries: a weak "negative dominance" principle (to the effect that Lottery 1 can be better than Lottery 2 only if some possible outcome of Lottery 1 is better than some possible outcome of Lottery 2) and a weak form of ex ante (...) class='Hi'>Pareto (to the effect that, if Lottery 1 gives an unambiguously better prospect to some individuals than Lottery 2, and equally good prospects to everyone else, then Lottery 1 is better than Lottery 2). After spelling out our results, and the arguments based on them, we consider which principle the proponent of incomparability ought to reject. (shrink)

Nebel argues for the Repugnant Conclusion via the “Intrapersonal Repugnant Conclusion,” on which certainty of a mediocre life is better for individuals than a sufficiently small chance of an excellent life. In this article, I deny that acceptance of the Intrapersonal Repugnant Conclusion leads us to the Repugnant Conclusion. I point out that on many views which avoid the Repugnant Conclusion we should discount very small probabilities down to zero. If we do, then Nebel’s crucial premise of Ex Ante (...) Pareto fails, because discounting at the individual level can fail to match up with discounting at the population level. (shrink)

I discuss the trilemma that consists of the following three principles being inconsistent: 1. The Common Principle: if one distribution, A, necessarily brings a higher total sum of personal value that is distributed in a more egalitarian way than another distribution, B, A is more valuable than B. 2. (Weak) ex-ante Pareto: if one uncertain distribution, A, is more valuable than another uncertain distribution, B, for each patient, A is more valuable than B. 3. Pluralism about attitudes to (...) risk (Pluralism): the personal value of a prospect is a weighted sum of the values of the prospect’s outcomes, but the weight each outcome gets might be different from the probability the prospect assigns to the outcome. (shrink)

For aggregative theories of moral value, it is a challenge to rank worlds that each contain infinitely many valuable events. And, although there are several existing proposals for doing so, few provide a cardinal measure of each world's value. This raises the even greater challenge of ranking lotteries over such worlds—without a cardinal value for each world, we cannot apply expected value theory. How then can we compare such lotteries? To date, we have just one method for doing so (proposed (...) separately by Arntzenius, Bostrom, and Meacham), which is to compare the prospects for value at each individual location, and to then represent and compare lotteries by their expected values at each of those locations. But, as I show here, this approach violates several key principles of decision theory and generates some implausible verdicts. I propose an alternative—one which delivers plausible rankings of lotteries, which is implied by a plausible collection of axioms, and which can be applied alongside almost any ranking of infinite worlds. (shrink)

Frege puzzles exploit cognitive differences between co-referential terms. Traditionally, they were handled by some version of Frege’s distinction between sense and reference, which avoided disruptive consequences for epistemology. However, the Fregean programme did not live up to its original promise, and was undermined by the development of theories of direct reference; for semantic purposes, its prospects now look dim. In particular, well-known analogues of Frege puzzles concern pairs of uncontentious synonyms; attempts to deal with them by distinguishing idiolects or postulating (...) ‘narrow contents’ or elaborate forms of context-sensitivity are inadequate or semantically implausible. Although ascriptions of knowledge, belief, and other attitudes are ubiquitous in epistemology, epistemologists have not properly come to terms with the surprising consequences of anti-Fregean semantic accounts of attitude ascriptions. In ‘A Puzzle about Belief ’, Saul Kripke shows that natural-seeming disquotational principles for ascribing belief lead to apparently unacceptable consequences, including outright contradictions, in problem cases. Such disquotation principles, I argue, are best regarded not as conceptual connections but just as heuristics in the psychological sense, quick and easy ways of assessing belief ascriptions, usually accurate under normal conditions but far from 100% reliable. I discuss similar heuristics for ascribing knowledge and other attitudes. That the principles have a merely heuristic status need not be pre-theoretically manifest to their users. This view vindicates Kripke’s conclusion that it would be wrong-headed to draw semantic conclusions from Frege puzzles. I discuss the epistemological consequences of an anti-Fregean approach to Frege puzzles, including for Kripke’s cases of the contingent a priori and the necessary a posteriori, but also for evidence, for epistemic modalities, and for epistemic and subjective conceptions of probability. Anna Mahtani’s recent identification of Frege puzzles for the ex ante Pareto Principle as used in welfare economics provides an interesting example. I suggest a model-building methodology as the most promising way of handling at least some of the difficulties. A final issue is the choice between different anti-Fregean approaches to semantics, from very coarse-grained intensional approaches on which sentences express functions from possible worlds to truth-values to more fine-grained hyperintensional approaches on which sentences express functions from possible or impossible worlds to truth-values or else Russellian structured propositions. Some of the hyperintensional theories violate semantic compositionality. More generally, since our attitude ascriptions rely on heuristics, they should be expected to exhibit some level of error; although hyperintensional approaches may be able slightly to reduce the level of postulated error, they do so at the cost of vastly increased theoretical complexity, and so have weak explanatory power. Methodologically, a simple intensional approach does better. (shrink)

Moral options are permissions to do less than best, impartially speaking. In this paper, we investigate the challenge of reconciling moral options with the ideal of justifiability to each individual. We examine ex-post and ex-ante views of moral options and show how they might conflict with this ideal in single-choice and sequential-choice cases, respectively. We consider some ways of avoiding this conflict in sequential-choice cases, showing that they face significant problems.

Screening for asymptomatic disease is a routine aspect of contemporary public health practice. However, it is also controversial, because it leads to overdiagnosis and overtreatment, with many arguing that programmes are “ineffective,” i.e., the “costs” outweigh the “benefits.” This paper explores a more fundamental objection to screening programmes: that, even if they are effective, they are ethically impermissible because they breach the principle of non-maleficence. In so doing, it suggests a new approach to the ethics of risk, justifying a concern (...) with how policies affect individuals’ absolute ex-ante prospects. Part 1 sets up the tension between screening and non-maleficence. Part 2 introduces and motivates a novel interpretation of the non-maleficence principle, “ex-ante Do No Harm,” which resolves this tension. Part 3 defends and clarifies this principle by discussing its relationship to the ex-ante Pareto principle. Part 4 discusses the worry that risk estimates are too “subjective.”. (shrink)

A critical analysis of theories of commercial impossibility and frustration of purpose is best undertaken in conjunction with a theoretical analysis of contract in general. Contracts function as a means of transferring social benefit, which can be subcategorised into subjective and objective benefit. Contracts also regulate the transfer or risk, which is inherent in property and hence any contractual relationship. In the light of the transfer of subjective and objective benefit and risk, contracts can be shown to be by definition (...) ex ante Pareto superior for both parties. Frustration of purpose or commercial impossibility is pleaded where the ex post overall benefit differs greatly from the ex ante expected value. This difference results from the manifestation of a risk which one party bears under the terms of the original contractual risk/benefit equilibrium. Considering the various subjective and objective risks and benefits involved in the contract, it is possible to classify frustrating eventualities under eight heads. In at least six cases the importance of the principle of security of exchange clearly precludes the operation of frustration. One of the remaining cases corresponds with the controversial Krell v Henry; there appears to be a temptation to regard frustration as the most socially utilitarian solution. Given however the dynamics of contractual risk and benefit, allowing frustration there would be unworkable because it would entail placing a subjective risk burden on the party which is in a worse position to evaluate it. There should be no place in the law for a doctrine of frustration of contract on the grounds of commercial impossibility orchanged circumstances. (shrink)

We give two social aggregation theorems under conditions of risk, one for constant population cases, the other an extension to variable populations. Intra and interpersonal welfare comparisons are encoded in a single ‘individual preorder’. The theorems give axioms that uniquely determine a social preorder in terms of this individual preorder. The social preorders described by these theorems have features that may be considered characteristic of Harsanyi-style utilitarianism, such as indifference to ex ante and ex post equality. However, the theorems (...) are also consistent with the rejection of all of the expected utility axioms, completeness, continuity, and independence, at both the individual and social levels. In that sense, expected utility is inessential to Harsanyi-style utilitarianism. In fact, the variable population theorem imposes only a mild constraint on the individual preorder, while the constant population theorem imposes no constraint at all. We then derive further results under the assumption of our basic axioms. First, the individual preorder satisfies the main expected utility axiom of strong independence if and only if the social preorder has a vector-valued expected total utility representation, covering Harsanyi’s utilitarian theorem as a special case. Second, stronger utilitarian-friendly assumptions, like Pareto or strong separability, are essentially equivalent to strong independence. Third, if the individual preorder satisfies a ‘local expected utility’ condition popular in non-expected utility theory, then the social preorder has a ‘local expected total utility’ representation. Fourth, a wide range of non-expected utility theories nevertheless lead to social preorders of outcomes that have been seen as canonically egalitarian, such as rank-dependent social preorders. Although our aggregation theorems are stated under conditions of risk, they are valid in more general frameworks for representing uncertainty or ambiguity. (shrink)

According to contractualist theories in ethics, whether an action is wrong is determined by whether it could be justified to others on grounds no one could reasonably reject. Contractualists then think that reasonable rejectability of principles depends on the strength of the personal objections individuals can make to them. There is, however, a deep disagreement between contractualists concerning from which temporal perspective the relevant objections to different principles are to be made. Are they to be made on the basis of (...) the prospects the principles give to different individuals ex ante or on the basis of the outcomes of the principles ex post? Both answers have been found to be problematic. The ex ante views make irrelevant information about personal identity morally significant and lead to objectionable ex ante rules, whereas ex post views lead to counterintuitive results in the so-called different harm and social risk imposition cases. The aim of this article is to provide a new synthesis of these views that can avoid the problems of the previous alternatives. I call the proposal ‘risk-acknowledging’ ex post contractualism. The crux of the view is to take into account in the comparisons of different objections both the realized harms and the risks under which individuals have to live. (shrink)

Dans «A Society of Individuals», j’esquisse une société qui n’a pas de bien propre, pas de fin sociale, mais qui existe plutôt pour permettre à chacun de ses membres de mieux poursuivre son propre bien, facilitant la coopération et résolvant le problème d’interaction de base, à savoir le fait que la maximisation de l’utilité et l’optimisation Pareto sont parfois incompatibles. Le point de vue orthodoxe défend la rationalité de la maximisation; je défends l’optimisation Pareto. Je soutiens que si (...) nous pouvions fixer les caractéristiques de notre société par un accord préalable, nous nous entendrions sur une société d’individus, et que le fait que nous nous entendions ex ante sur une certaine pratique sociale ou institution est la meilleure justification possible qu’elle constitue pour nous une norme.J’esquisse ensuite quelques-unes des caractéristiques principales de cette société. En faisant cela, je suppose que les membres de la société ne sont pas tous adeptes du contractarianisme, mais qu’ils peuvent soutenir différentes conceptions raisonnables que la société doit chercher à accommoder. Je considère la façon dont plusieurs prétendus droits, comme un droit à certaines ressources, seraient vus dans la société. Et je conclus avec l’idée que le contractarianisme, en faisant valoir que chaque membre adulte de la société doit bénéficier d’une citoyenneté égale, doit permettre à chacun de participer au choix et à la destitution des gouvernements. On peut alors penser que l’émergence d’une société d’individus constitue l’accomplissement de l’idéal démocratique. (shrink)

Ex ante contractualism holds that in situations involving risk we ought to act in accordance with principles that license the action that satisfies the strongest individual claim, where those claims are a function of the expected value that a given policy gives each person ex ante. I here challenge ex ante contractualism on contractualist grounds. I argue that adopting ex ante contractualism would have far reaching implications that contractualists, or many nonconsequentialist in general, would find very (...) hard to accept. I conclude that to block these implications, contractualists should adopt an ex post approach to deal with decisions under risk. (shrink)

According to Joseph Heath, privatizations should be judged on a case-by-case basis with appeal to the Pareto criterion. This approach, or so I argue, amounts to a depoliticization of privatization. While Heath’s approach is effective and at times illuminating, I show that a consistent application of his methodology is self-defeating in that it eventually requires a politicization of privatization. With appeal to transaction cost theory, I show there are social costs associated with affirming the competitive pressures of the market. (...) Subsequently, I argue that while private actors may, according to Heath, pursue efficiency with appeal to an adversarial morality, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are much more constrained in how they may achieve such gains. Due to the pressures of liberal neutrality, SOEs may chase efficiency only without setting actors back. Conversely, the private sector’s potential for success is predicated on its ability to compete for Kaldor-Hicks efficiency, which specifically allows for win-lose interactions. While SOEs are often no more able than the private sector to achieve Pareto optima, this discrepancy makes it so that SOEs produce gains that are ex-ante lower but more equal, whereas the private sector produces gains that are ex-ante higher but more unequal. Thus, the social cost of affirming the competitive pressures of the market is ex-ante inequality. If this premise is accepted, there is no way to avoid the conclusion that a consistent case-by-case approach requires a structural, political view on how privatizations affect the state’s ex-post Pareto-enhancing abilities. (shrink)

Frances Kamm distinguishes between changes or enhancements that are made before a child exists (ex ante changes) and those that are made once a child exists (ex post changes), and she argues that ex ante changes do not show disrespect or, as Michael Sandel would put it, lack of love, for a person, since the person does not yet exist. In this paper, I argue that it is important to distinguish between ex ante enhancements that are morally (...) neutral and those that are morally dubious, and that the latter ones are morally objectionable even if the persons do not yet exist. (shrink)

“Randomized dictatorship,” one of the simplest ways to solve bargaining situations, works as follows: a fair coin toss determines the “dictator”—the player to be given his first-best payoff. The two major bargaining solutions, that of Nash and that of Kalai and Smorodinsky, Pareto-dominate this process. However, whereas the existing literature offers axiomatizations of the Nash solution in which this ex ante domination plays a central role, it does not provide an analogous result for Kalai–Smorodinsky. This paper fills in (...) this gap: a characterization of the latter is obtained by combining the aforementioned domination with three additional axioms: Pareto optimality, individual monotonicity, and a weakened version of the Perles–Maschler super additivity axiom. (shrink)

This paper is part of an attempt to clarify the relationship between explanatory reasons and justificatory reasons for actions of various kinds. It draws on a distinction between two notions of rationalization, viz., ex ante and ex post rationalization, to recast the akratic case on the one hand and to explicate an adequate sense in which an explanatory but non-justificatory reason for an action rationalizes the latter on the other hand. The explication is helped by analysis of a hypothetical (...) example, and the name "quasi-rational" is legitimated for the type of actions this example represents. Last, but not least, the paper demonstrates that an implication of the argument is the falsity of one well-known principle in Davidson's action theory, i.e., the principle claiming that the (primary) reason for an action is also its cause. (shrink)

Prioritarianism is a moral view that ranks outcomes according to the sum of a strictly increasing and strictly concave transformation of individual well-being. Prioritarianism is ‘welfarist’ (namel...

Kuyumcuoglu argues that defenders of sweatshop regulations should reject consequentialism and accept an ex ante interpretation of contractualism instead. In this Commentary I show that Kuyumcuoglu’s argument doesn’t succeed. Defenders of sweatshops shouldn’t become ex ante contractualists because its advantages on this issue are more apparent than real.

Process reliabilism is a theory about ex post justification, the justification of a doxastic attitude one has, such as belief. It says roughly that a justified belief is a belief formed by a reliable process. It is not a theory about ex ante justification, one’s justification for having a particular attitude toward a proposition, an attitude one might lack. But many reliabilists supplement their theory such that it explains ex ante justification in terms of reliable processes. In this (...) paper I argue that the main way reliabilists supplement their theory fails. In the absence of an alternative, reliabilism does not account for ex ante justification. (shrink)

This chapter discusses desire theory and how the temporal gap between desires and the states of affairs that satisfy them affects this theory. Satisfaction is not that important in desire theory because even if getting what we want fails to satisfy, we are better off for having got it. The rationale for rejecting hedonistic accounts of well-being in favor of desire theories is the intuition that states of affairs that are not “like” anything for us can harm and benefit us. (...) Sumner, however, suggests that even if we grant the desire theorist’s fundamental assumption that they can make a difference to our well-being, the prospective character of desire, which opens a temporal gap between desires and the states of affairs that satisfy them, undermines the account. (shrink)

Le Droit est aujourd'hui placé devant un impératif stratégique : tourner sa force vers le futur, pour faire face à des enjeux (numérique et climat) sur lesquels la loi et le contrat n'ont pas l'emprise requise, puisque trop locale ou trop peu systémique, tandis que la responsabilité ex post n'est pas adéquate face à l'irréparable. La responsabilité se saisit donc de l'avenir, le juge devenant le personnage central du monde sans qu'il l'ait voulu. Ce déplacement dans le temps peut continuer (...) à s'ancrer dans le passé, du fait d'engagements des États ou des entreprises. Mais cette responsabilité pour le futur engendrant une obligation non de réparer mais de faire peut venir plus directement encore du seul fait que l'entité visée est « en position » d'agir pour qu'autrui soit préservé. Preuves préconstituées, office ex ante du juge, devoir pour autrui mais aussi pouvoirs de l'entreprise et de l'État pour porter cette responsabilité ex ante, pilier du droit de la compliance, droit de l'avenir, sont les nouvelles règles qui se mettent en place. (shrink)

Cushman characterizes rationalization as the inverse of rational reasoning, but this distinction is psychologically questionable. Coherence-based reasoning highlights a subtler form of bidirectionality: By distorting task attributes to make one course of action appear superior to its rivals, a patina of rationality is bestowed on the choice. This mechanism drives choice and action, rather than just following in their wake.

최근 일군의 철학자들은 스캔런의 계약주의가 이른바 사후적인 도덕이론이 아니라 사전적인 것으로 해석되어야 한다고 주장한다. 사전적 계약주의는 어떤 원칙이 개인에게 부과하는 이득이나 해악의 기대값의 관점에서 해당 원칙을 정당화하는 구조를 지닌다. 이런 최근의 경향은, 사후적이 아닌 사전적 계약주의가 위태롭게 하는 행위의 허용 가능성에 대해 최선의 설명을 제공해줄 수 있다는 인식에서 비롯되었다. 본고의 주된 목표는 사전적 계약주의를 옹호하는 기존 시도들의 한계를 극복할 수 있는 새로운 관점을 제시하는 것이다. 필자는 기존 연구에서 큰 관심을 받지 못한 예방조치라는 개념을 강조하며 그것이 사전적 계약주의의 체계 내에 정합적으로 (...) 안착될 수 있음을 보인다. 궁극적으로 필자는 예방조치라는 개념 없이는 위태롭게 하는 행위의 허용 가능성을 제대로 설명할 수 없다고 주장한다. (shrink)

When distributing an indivisible harm or benefit between multiple individuals, all of whom have an equal claim to avoid the harm or receive the benefit, it is commonly thought that one should hold a lottery in order to give each claimant an equal chance of winning. Moreover, it is often said that, by holding a lottery, one makes the resultant outcome inequality between those who receive the harm or benefit and those who do not less unfair than it would otherwise (...) have been. The stated view – the ‘egalitarian mixed view’ – claims that the unfairness of a brute luck ex post distribution is a function of both the degree of inequality in the ex post distribution itself, and the degree of inequality in the ex ante distribution of chances from which it is derived. Versions of the view have been prominently endorsed by a number of authors, including Arneson, Broome, Diamond, Lang, Otsuka, Parfit, and Temkin. The appeal of the view is linked to its apparent promise to accommodate intuitions that have been thought to threaten views which link the fairness of an outcome either solely to the ex ante distribution or solely to the ex post distribution. I argue, to the contrary, that the egalitarian mixed view is mistaken. In particular, I argue that the distinction at the heart of the view – that between outcomes and changes to probabilities – is morally arbitrary at best and incoherent at worst. I consider possible responses to the charge and find them wanting. I note that the failure of the egalitarian mixed view has significant consequences for policy, including most importantly for how we should interpret the goal of fair equality of opportunity. (shrink)

Users’ non-sustainable consumption behaviors are affecting the sustainability of access-based services, but ABS firms can utilize messaging strategies to persuade users to curtail their non-sustainable consumption behaviors. Through two online scenario-based experiments in China, this study determined that: Compared with rational appeal messaging, emotional appeal messaging is better able to persuade consumers to curtail non-sustainable consumption behaviors. Furthermore, loss-framed messages are more effective than gain-framed ones. Message appeal and message framing have an interactive persuasive effect on reducing such consumer behaviors. (...) Loss-framed rational appeal messages are more persuasive at reducing non-sustainable consumption behaviors than gain-framed rational appeal messages, and gain-framed emotional appeal messages persuade consumers to reduce non-sustainable consumption behaviors more than loss-framed ones. Consumers’ psychological ownership moderates the persuasive effect of messaging. Among consumers with a high level of psychological ownership of shared goods, only gain-framed emotional appeal messaging is effective at reducing non-sustainable consumption behaviors, whereas among consumers with low psychological ownership, the persuasive effect of loss-framed rational appeal messaging is more effective than gain-framed emotional appeal messaging. This study extends the research on non-sustainable consumption behavior management in ABSs and provides important inspiration for the management of ABSs consumer behavior. (shrink)

In this note, I provide an axiomatic characterization of the relative utilitarian bargaining solution to Nash bargaining problems. The solution is obtained when Nash’s independence of irrelevant alternatives axiom is replaced by the weak linearity axiom, while retaining the other three axioms. RU maximizes the sum of proportional gains, or, equivalently, minimizes the sum of proportional losses. RU is scale invariant and compared to the Nash and Kalai and Smorodinsky solutions, it is ex ante efficient when the bargaining problem (...) is considered as a lottery of future bargaining problems. (shrink)

El giro afectivo ingresó como matriz de discusión conceptual durante el pasaje entre los siglos XX y XXI y, entre muchos otros debates, argumentó a favor de la productividad de la distinción entre afecto y emoción. El objetivo de este trabajo es señalar el tipo de intervención que sobre la cuestión desarrolló la filosofía feminista antes de la irrupción de esta tradición y, en segundo lugar, establecer qué contenido se le puede dar en este marco a la idea de agencia. (...) El nodo del argumento obliga a recorrer una serie de intervenciones fundamentales de la filósofa feminista Iris Marion Young quien, de acuerdo con mi evaluación, señaló algunos de los efectos políticos problemáticos de ciertos argumentos que, hasta el día de hoy, conforman el corazón del giro afectivo en su versión más ortodoxa. (shrink)

This paper considers the tension between timelessness and timeboundedness in legal interpretation, examining parallels between sacred texts and secular law. It is argued that familiar dualities such as those between statute and judge-made law, law and equity, written and spoken discourse, dictionary meaning versus intended or contextual meaning, can be examined using this timeless/timebounded framework. Two landmark English cases, DPP v Shaw (1961) and R v R (1991) are analyzed as illustrating contrasting aspects of the socio-legal politics of “reasoning backwards”. (...) The related temporal distinction between ex ante and ex post points of view is examined both within legal theory and as a key issue for linguistic and semiotic systems. The argument is made that this distinction is the key to a wide range of methodological and theoretical problems in relating linguistics and semiotics to law. (shrink)

Unreasonable expectations about the nature and character of scientific knowledge support the widespread political assumption that predictive scientific assessments are a necessary precursor to environmental decision making. All too often, the practical outcome of this assumption is that scientific uncertainty becomes a ready-made dodge for what is in reality just a difficult political decision. Interdisciplinary assessments necessary to address complex environmental policy issues invariably result in findings that are inherently contestable, especially when applied in the unrestrained realm of partisan politics. (...) In this article, the authors argue that predictive scientific assessments are inherently limited in the extent to which they can guide policy development and that rigorous scientific assessments can be much more valuable in the role of ex post policy evaluation than they can in the context of ex ante policy formulation. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose and defend a distinct and novel approach to compensation for risk impositions. I call it the Risk-Pooling System of compensation. This system suggests that when X performs an action that imposes a risk of harm to Y, then X is liable to Y, and is therefore obliged to make an ex ante compensation that is roughly equivalent to the expected cost of potential harm to a social- risk pool. If and when Y suffers harm (...) as a result of the risk imposed by X, they then receive an ex post compensation roughly equivalent to the cost of actual harm suffered. This system of compensation creates a social buffer between the risk imposer – the one who has the duty to pay compensation into the pool – and the victim – the one who has the right to receive compensation from the social pool. I contend that the Risk-Pooling System is an improvement over its alternatives due to its capacity to produce the best social utilities, particularly, in terms of reducing information costs, obtaining optimal deterrence in the society and creating incentives for people to be engaged in social activities. (shrink)

Suppose n Bayesian agents need to make a decision as a group. The groupas a whole is also supposed to be a Bayesian agent whose probabilities andutilities are derived or aggregated in reasonable ways from the probabilitiesand utilities of the group members. The aggregation could beex ante, i.e., interms of expected utilities, or it could be ex post, i.e., in terms of utilitiesonly, or in terms of utilities and probabilities separately. This study exploresthe ex post approach. Using the Bolker/Jeffrey (...) framework, we show thatex post aggregation is subject to an instability phenomenon. That is, it mayhappen that the group preference between actions ``flips back and forth'''' dependingon the level of detail in which the decision problem is described. Structurally verysimilar phenomena also occur elsewhere in social choice theory, in statistics (Simpson''sParadox), and in voting theory (Ostrogorski''s Paradox). (shrink)

Goldman, though still a reliabilist, has made some recent concessions to evidentialist epistemologies. I agree that reliabilism is most plausible when it incorporates certain evidentialist elements, but I try to minimize the evidentialist component. I argue that fewer beliefs require evidence than Goldman thinks, that Goldman should construe evidential fit in process reliabilist terms, rather than the way he does, and that this process reliabilist understanding of evidence illuminates such important epistemological concepts as propositional justification, ex ante justification, and (...) defeat. (shrink)

Describes the author’s value of choice account of responsibility and examines a response by Stemplowska to an objection to this account, raised by Alex Voorhoeve. Argues that the problem raised by Voorhoeve’s example concerns the way in which risk is taken into account in contractualism rather than the value of choice account of responsibility. Departs from the author’s earlier work in arguing that the risk of harm should sometimes be taken into account on an ex ante rather than an (...) ex post basis. (shrink)