The passage of Mill’s Utilitarianism that sets out the condition in which one pleasure has a superior quality than another stokes interpretive controversy. According to the Lexical Interpretation, Mill takes one pleasure, P1, to be of a superior quality than another, P2, if, and only if, the smallest quantity of P1 is more valuable than any finite quantity of P2. This paper argues that, while the Lexical Interpretation may be supported with supplementary evidence, the passage itself does not rule out (...) qualitative superiority without lexical dominance, as it only requires P1 to be more valuable than any quantity of P2 that it is possible for someone to experience. Some will object that this concession to opponents of the Lexical Interpretation still renders Mill’s condition for qualitative superiority too demanding to be plausible. However, if Mill’s qualitative rankings apply to higher-order pleasures taken in modes of existence as such rather than to the pleasures of different activities chosen from within these modes, the objection loses much of its force. One upshot is that Mill may have more to contribute to debates in contemporary population axiology than is usually acknowledged. (shrink)

The first part of the chapter surveys some of the main ways in which the Sorites Paradox has figured in arguments in practical philosophy in recent decades, with special attention to arguments where the paradox is used as a basis for criticism. Not coincidentally, the relevant arguments all involve the transitivity of value in some way. The second part of the chapter is more probative, focusing on two main themes. First, I further address the relationship between the Sorites Paradox and (...) the main arguments discussed in the first part, by elucidating in what sense they rely on (something like) tolerance principles. Second, I briefly discuss the prospect of rejecting the respective principles, aiming to show that we can do so for some of the arguments but not for others. The reason is that in the latter cases the principles do not function as independent premises in the reasoning but, rather, follow from certain fundamental features of the relevant scenarios. I also argue that not even adopting what is arguably the most radical way to block the Sorites Paradox – that of weakening the consequence relation – suffices to invalidate these arguments. (shrink)

How should we as a society value changes in population size? The question may be crucial when evaluating global warming scenarios. I defend the intuition of neutrality, which answers a part of the question. It states that – other things being equal – it is ethically irrelevant whether or not additional people are added to a population. The argument against neutrality criticizes the intuition of neutrality as inconsistent. The contribution of this thesis is twofold: First, the framework of welfare economics, (...) the intuition of neutrality, and the argument against neutrality will be presented with formal rigour. Second, the formalizations will be used for a critical analysis of the argument against neutrality. Three ethical frameworks will be assumed – the difference principle, average utilitarianism, and contractarianism –, and their relation to the explicit and hidden premises of the argument against neutrality will be investigated. The result will be that all three frameworks are compatible with the intuition of neutrality (or slightly modified versions); so the argument against neutrality does not hold within them. (shrink)

Population axiology concerns how to evaluate populations in terms of their moral goodness, that is, how to order populations by the relations “is better than” and “is as good as”. The task has been to find an adequate theory about the moral value of states of affairs where the number of people, the quality of their lives, and their identities may vary. So far, this field has largely ignored issues about uncertainty and the conditions that have been discussed mostly pertain (...) to the ranking of risk-free outcomes. Most public policy choices, however, are decisions under uncertainty, including policy choices that affect the size of a population. Here, we shall address the question of how to rank population prospects—that is, alternatives that contain uncertainty as to which population they will bring about—by the relations “is better than” and “is as good as”. We start by illustrating how well-known population axiologies can be extended to population prospect axiologies. And we show that new problems arise when extending population axiologies to prospects. In particular, traditional population axiologies lead to prospect-versions of the problems that they praised for avoiding in the risk-free settings. Finally, we identify an intuitive adequacy condition that, we contend, should be satisfied by any population prospect axiology, and show how given this condition, the impossibility theorems in population axiology can be extended to (non-trivial) impossibility theorems for population prospect axiology. (shrink)

This chapter discusses how justice applies to public health. It begins by outlining three different metrics employed in discussions of justice: resources, capabilities, and welfare. It then discusses different accounts of justice in distribution, reviewing utilitarianism, egalitarianism, prioritarianism, and sufficientarianism, as well as desert-based theories, and applies these distributive approaches to public health examples. Next, it examines the interplay between distributive justice and individual rights, such as religious rights, property rights, and rights against discrimination, by discussing examples such as mandatory (...) treatment and screening. The chapter also examines the nexus between public health and debates concerning whose interests matter to justice (the “scope of justice”), including global justice, intergenerational justice, and environmental justice, as well as debates concerning whether justice applies to individual choices or only to institutional structures (the “site of justice”). The chapter closes with a discussion of strategies, including deliberative and aggregative democracy, for adjudicating disagreements about justice. (shrink)

When Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons, examined whether the Non-Identity Problem could be solved with the Impersonal Total Principle, he assumed perfect equality in the future population outcomes under his consideration. His thinking was that this assumption could not distort his reasoning, but would make it more simple and clear. He then reasoned that the best future population outcome, according to the Impersonal Total Principle, would be an enormous population, whose members have lives only barely worth living, as a (...) slight lowering in quality of life, according to the principle, can always be more than compensated for by an increase in the number of future people. He found this result impossible to believe and dubbed it the Repugnant Conclusion, concluding that his attempts had ended in failures and that the Non-Identity Problem continues to undermine our beliefs of our obligations to the future. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of the Impersonal Total Principle in real-world circumstances where the inevitability of inequality is taken into account. What, if anything, will this imply regarding the Repugnant Conclusion, the indirect version of the Non-Identity Problem and our abilities to ground our moral responsibilities to posterity in an ethical theory? (shrink)

The term “genetic load” first emerged in a paper written in 1950 by the geneticist H. Muller. It is a mathematical model based on biological, social, political and ethical arguments describing the dramatic accumulation of disadvantageous mutations in human populations that will occur in modern societies if eugenic measures are not taken. The model describes how the combined actions of medical and social progress will supposedly impede natural selection and make genes of inferior quality likely to spread across populations – (...) a process which in fine loads their progress. Genetic load is based on optimal fitness and emerges from a “typological view” of evolution. This model of evolution had previously, however, been invalidated by Robert Wright and Theodosius Dobzhansky who, as early as 1946, showed that polymorphism was the rule in natural populations. The blooming and persistence of the concept of genetic load, after its theoretical basis had already expired, are a historical puzzle. This persistence reveals the intricacy of science and policy-making in eugenic matters. The Canguilhemian concept of ‘scientific ideology’ is used along with the concept of ‘immutable mobile’ and compared with the concept of ‘co-production’, to provide complementary perspectives on this complex phenomenon. (shrink)

Effective altruism is committed to Altruistic Maximization – the claim that any impact of giving to charities ought to be maximized at the margins and counterfactually. This may lead to counterintuitive or contradictory conclusions in certain cases. For instance, when we can bring about a substantial benefit to few or a tiny benefit to a larger number at the same cost, spreading of benefits across a great number of recipients can compensate substantial loss for fewer people. However, sometimes the perspective (...) of widely spreading tiny benefits instead than giving substantial benefits to small groups is counterintuitive, and repugnantly wrong. Call this the ‘Altruistic Repugnant Conclusion.’ Standard solutions to the Repugnant Conclusion do not work if applied to the Altruistic Repugnant Conclusion. The Altruistic Repugnant Conclusion can be rebutted by giving up on the idea that judgements on such cases should be precise. But imprecision undermines Altruistic Maximization. Hence a dilemma for effective altruists follows: either they accept some strongly counterintuitive judgments—weakening the attractiveness of their position—or they give up on the maximizing requirement, thus admitting sub-optimal contributions. (shrink)

The main question addressed in this paper is: What is the most promising ethical theory that can be formulated in terms of the notion of a prima facie duty? I try to show that the answer to this question involves an ethical theory that, despite never having been discussed, is nevertheless worthy of serious consideration. The theory, Rossian Minimalism, says, roughly, that an act, A, is morally right iff no alternative to A would constitute less of a violation of prima (...) facie duties than A. (shrink)

In Reasons and Persons, Parfit (1984) posed a challenge: provide a satisfying normative account that solves the Non-Identity Problem, avoids the Repugnant and Absurd Conclusions, and solves the Mere-Addition Paradox. In response, some have suggested that we look toward person-affecting views of morality for a solution. But the person-affecting views that have been offered so far have been unable to satisfy Parfit's four requirements, and these views have been subject to a number of independent complaints. This paper describes a person-affecting (...) account which meets Parfit's challenge. The account satisfies Parfit's four requirements, and avoids many of the criticisms that have been raised against person-affecting views. (shrink)

This paper argues that non-identity actions are wrong because they _cause_ harm to people. While non-identity actions also typically benefit people, failure to act would similarly benefit someone, so considerations of benefit are ineligible to justify the harm. However, in some non-identity cases, failure to act would not benefit anyone: cases where one is choosing whether to procreate at all. These are the _hard_ non-identity cases. Not all "different-number" cases are hard. In some cases, we don't know whether acting would (...) result in more or fewer people; this paper argues that this _epistemic_ factor makes acting in these cases wrong. (shrink)

Assume we could someday create artificial creatures with intelligence comparable to our own. Could it be ethical use them as unpaid labor? There is very little philosophical literature on this topic, but the consensus so far has been that such robot servitude would merely be a new form of slavery. Against this consensus I defend the permissibility of robot servitude, and in particular the controversial case of designing robots so that they want to serve human ends. A typical objection to (...) this case draws an analogy to the genetic engineering of humans: if designing eager robot servants is permissible, it should also be permissible to design eager human servants. Few ethical views can easily explain even the wrongness of such human engineering, however, and those few explanations that are available break the analogy with engineering robots. The case turns out to be illustrative of profound problems in the field of population ethics. (shrink)

This paper will be concerned with hard choices—that is, choice situations where an agent cannot make a rationally justified choice. Specifically, this paper asks: if an agent cannot optimize in a given situation, are they facing a hard choice? A pair of claims are defended in light of this question. First, situations where an agent cannot optimize because of incompleteness of the binary preference or value relation constitute a hard choice. Second, situations where agents cannot optimize because the binary preference (...) or value relation violates acyclicity do not constitute a hard choice. (shrink)

Can it be better or worse for a person to exist than not to exist at all? This old and challenging existential question has been raised anew in contemporary moral philosophy, mainly for two reasons. First, traditional “impersonal” ethical theories, such as utilitarianism, have counterintuitive implications in population ethics, for example, the repugnant conclusion. Second, it has seemed evident to many that an outcome can be better than another only if it is better for someone, and that only moral theories (...) that are in this sense “person affecting” can be correct. The implications of this Person-Affecting Restriction will differ radically, however, depending on which answer one gives to the existential question. The negative answer, which we argue against, would make the restriction quite untenable. Hence, many of the problems regarding our moral duties to future generations turn around the issue at hand. (shrink)

In Rabinowicz (2008), I considered how value relations can best be analysed in terms of fitting pro-attitudes. In the formal model of that paper, fitting pro-attitudes are represented by the class of permissible preference orderings on a domain of items that are being compared. As it turns out, this approach opens up for a multiplicity of different types of value relationships, along with the standard relations of ‘better’, ‘worse’, ‘equally as good as’ and ‘incomparable in value’. Unfortunately, the approach is (...) vulnerable to a number of objections. I believe these objections can be avoided if one re-interprets the underlying notion of preference: instead of treating preference as a ‘dyadic’ attitude directed towards a pair of items, we can think of it as a difference of degree between ‘monadic’ attitudes of favouring. Each such monadic attitude has just one item as its object. Given this re-interpretation, permissible preferences can be modelled by the class of permissible assignments of degrees of favouring to items in the domain. From this construction, we can then recover the old modelling in terms of the class of permissible preference orderings, but the previous objections to that model no longer apply. (shrink)

Many people seem to share some version of what has been called the “intuition of neutrality” aboutcreating new people, which, roughly, says that there exists a certain range of levels of well-beingsuch that creating people within this range is, in itself, morally neutral, but creating people with alevel of well-being outside this range is not morally neutral. In this paper, I will discuss differentinterpretations of this intuition, and specifically distinguish between what I will call counterfactualinterpretations and Do-interpretations of the intuition. (...) I will argue that it is hard to interpret theintuition in a way that does not give rise to antinatalist moral reasons, i.e. reasons favoring an emptyfuture population, when it comes to choices of social policy. In particular, this holds if we assume aconception of relevant outcomes of actions reflecting consequentialist moral intuitions. In the end, I will formulate a normative principle of welfare promotion which I argue respects the most plausiblecounterfactual version of the neutrality intuition. (shrink)

A central question for psychologists, economists, and philosophers is how human lives should be valued. Whereas egalitarian considerations give rise to models emphasizing that every life should be valued equally, empirical research has demonstrated that valuations of lives depend on a variety of factors that often do not conform to specific normative expectations. Such factors include emotional reactions to the victims and cognitive considerations leading to biased perceptions of lives at risk (e.g., attention, mental imagery, pseudo-inefficacy, and scope neglect). They (...) can lead to a valuation function with decreasing marginal value and sometimes even decreasing absolute value as the number of victims increases. As a result, people spend more money to save an individual while at the same time being insensitive and apathetic to large losses of life, despite endorsing egalitarian norms. In this conceptual paper, we propose a descriptive model highlighting the role of different motivations and the conditions under which cognitions and emotions result in deviations from egalitarian normative valuations of human lives. (shrink)

We examine a general class of variable-value population principles. Our particular focus is on the extent to which such principles can avoid the repugnant and sadistic conclusions. We show that if a mild limit property is imposed, avoidance of the repugnant conclusion implies the sadistic conclusion. This result generalizes earlier observations by showing that they apply to a substantially larger class of principles. Our second theorem states that, under the limit property, the axiom of mere addition also conflicts with avoidance (...) of the repugnant conclusion. This result is a consequence of a similar observation that appears in the earlier literature. (shrink)

According topositive egalitarianism, not only do relations of inequality have negative value, as negative egalitarians claim, but relations of equality also have positive value. The egalitarian value of a population is a function of both pairwise relations of inequality (negative) and pairwise relations of equality (positive). Positive andnegative egalitarianismdiverge, especially in different-number cases. Hence, an investigation of positive egalitarianism might shed new light on the vexed topic of population ethics and our duties to future generations. We shall here, in light (...) of some recent criticism, further develop the idea of giving positive value to equal relations. (shrink)

The wrongful disability problem arises whenever a disability-causing, and therefore (presumptively) wrongful, procreative act is a necessary condition for the existence of a person whose life is otherwise worth living. It is a problem because it seems to involve no harm, and therefore no wrongful treatment, vis-à-vis that person. This essay defends the nonconsequentialist, rights-based, account of the wrong-making features of wrongful disability. It distinguishes between the person-affecting restriction, roughly the idea that wrongdoing is always the wronging of some person, (...) and the harm principle, the idea that all wrongings are harmings. It argues, first, that the harm principle should be rejected, in light of offending intuitions in salient examples. Rejection of the harm principle is not only independently plausible, but also paves the way for a nonconsequentialist diagnosis of wrongful disability. This diagnosis conceives of wrongdoing as a failure to express adequate respect for the humanity or personhood inherent in the person created. The paper defends a theory of humanity-respecting rights that accommodates plausible intuitions about satisficing and fairness, without resorting to consequentialist premises that lead to well-known impossibility results and paradoxes. (shrink)

There exists a derived negative right to procreative freedom, including a right to in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and to the exercise of selective techniques such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis. This is an extensive freedom, including not only the right to the exercise of a responsible parenthood, but also, in rare cases, to wrong decisions. It includes also a right for less than perfect parents to the use of IVF, and for IVF doctors to assist them, if they want and can (...) agree about the terms. (shrink)