The use of genetic testing has prompted the question of whether insurance companies should be able to use predictive genetic test results (GTRs) in their risk classification of clients. While some jurisdictions have passed legislation to prohibit this practice, the UK has instead adopted a voluntary code of practice that merely restricts the ways in which insurance companies may use GTRs. Critics have invoked various theories of justice to argue that this approach is unfair. However, as well as sometimes relying (...) on somewhat idealised assumptions, these analyses have tended to invoke theories that have wide-ranging and highly revisionary implications for insurance. Moreover, they fail to adequately engage with a conception of justice that plausibly undergirds the status quo approach to insurance in the UK. I argue that it is a mistake to simply invoke a single contestable theory in seeking to develop sound policy on the use of GTRs in insurance. To that end, in this paper, I outline three plausible principles of justice that policy on this issue ought to balance: A principle of equity, a principle of equal access and a principle of need. In doing so, I shall offer a pluralist justice-based argument in support of the spirit, if not the precise letter, of the UK approach. (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)

Nu cu foarte mult timp în urmă, grupul de teorie socială şi politică din cadrul proiectului POSDRU 89/1.5/S/56815 „Societatea bazată pe cunoaştere-cercetări, dezbateri, perspective”, a publicat, tot la editura Institutul European, lucrarea Concepte şi teorii social-politice. Volumul de faţă reprezintă un nou pas al grupului nostru de lucru în realizarea proiectului inaugurat prin publicarea acelei lucrări. Este vorba, reamintesc, despre proiectul elaborării unor volume care să-i ajute pe cei interesaţi în iniţierea (lor sau a altora) în teoria (şi în special (...) filosofia) politică, mai ales în dezvoltările sale conceptuale, argumentative şi problematologice recente. Desigur, nu am intenţionat în mod expres ca aceste volume să fie utile doar în această direcţie. Speranţa noastră a fost, dimpotrivă, ca ele să fie interesante şi pentru cercetătorii cu experienţă în investigarea şi dezbaterea temelor abordate în cadrul lor, mai ales pentru că unele capitole prezintă idei, argumente sau perspective originale, care, credem noi, merită atenţia critică a comunităţii cercetătorilor români. Menirea lor fundamentală rămâne totuşi, în intenţia noastră, cea introductivă. Aşa cum recunoşteam în cuvântul său înainte, Concepte şi teorii socialpolitice nu este deloc un volum exhaustiv. Teorii şi ideologii politice reprezintă, în bună măsură, şi o încercare de a compensa cumva acest „defect” al volumului în cauză. Desigur, nici publicarea lui nu ne permite să susţinem că am atins obiectivul oferirii unei introduceri cât mai complete în teoria/filosofia politică actuală. Deşi Teorii şi ideologii politice prezintă câteva dintre cele mai importante teorii sau ideologii politice contemporane, există multe altele care nu sunt prezentate (sau cel puţin nu sunt prezentate atât de detaliat pe cât ar fi meritat) între paginile sale. Mă refer aici, spre exemplu, la libertarianism, comunitarianism, cosmopolitism sau capabilism (ca teorie a dezvoltării umane). Ne consolăm însă în baza a trei argumente. Unul este acela că, aşa cum se poate observa cu uşurinţă din cuprinsul său, cartea de faţă prezintă totuşi un număr important dintre principalele teorii şi ideologii politice recente (unele dintre ele pentru prima dată în literatura românească de specialitate). Al doilea este acela că unele dintre teoriile sau ideologiile politice care nu sunt abordate aici au beneficiat deja de prezentări competente şi atente la noi (unele dintre ele chiar în Concepte şi teorii social-politice). În sfârşit, al treilea argument este acela că sperăm cu toţii că prezentul volum nu reprezintă ultimul nostru pas în realizarea obiectivului menţionat în debutul acestei intervenţii. Sperăm, altfel spus, să putem prezenta acele teorii sau ideologii politice care nu şi-au găsit locul între paginile lui sau ale celui precedent cu o altă ocazie. Ţin să precizez însă că volumul pe care îl introduc prin această intervenţie nu este întrutotul o continuare a celui precedent, deşi între ele există, desigur, destule afinităţi, relaţii şi continuităţi tematice. Mai exact, el nu ar putea fi descris totalmente neproblematic ca reprezentând „al doilea tom” al volumului Concepte şi teorii social-politice. Titlul său este menit să indice acest lucru. Dacă lucrarea anterioară era centrată pe prezentarea unora dintre principalele concepte ale teoriei/filosofiei social-politice contemporane, cartea de faţă prezintă câteva dintre principalele teorii sau ideologii dezvoltate şi apărate de politologii, filosofii, economiştii sau „ideologii” politici contemporani. Nici de această dată nu voi încerca să rezum principalele idei expuse sau metodologii utilizate de către autori în prezentarea teoriilor sau ideologiilor politice care se regăsesc între paginile ce urmează. Temeiul meu este acelaşi: acolo unde au considerat că este cazul, autorii capitolelor şi-au rezumat ei înşişi ideile prezentate sau/şi metodologiile utilizate. În plus, cititorul interesat să-şi facă o idee prealabilă despre conţinutul ideatic şi problematologic al cărţii dispune de un rezumat al ei (în limbile engleză şi franceză) în finalul său. În consecinţă, mă voi mulţumi să închei doar prin a exprima încă o dată speranţa noastră că această carte se va dovedi utilă celor cărora li se adresează cu preponderenţă. Sperăm, în alte cuvinte, ca ea să le fie de ajutor în înţelegerea şi evaluarea adecvată a teoriilor şi ideologiilor pe care le prezintă. Şi mai important, sperăm că ea îi va stimula să caute să aprofundeze cercetarea acestor teorii şi ideologii şi – mai ales – să iniţieze propriile investigaţii sistematice şi riguroase în această privinţă. Dezvoltarea politologiei şi a filosofiei politice în spaţiul românesc, ca să nu mai vorbim despre clarificarea şi fundamentarea cât mai completă şi adecvată a opţiunilor ideologice ale partidelor politice din România, au nevoie de acest lucru. (shrink)

I here settle a recent dispute between two rival theories in distributive ethics: Restricted Prioritarianism and the Competing Claims View. Both views mandate that the distribution of benefits and burdens between individuals should be justifiable to each affected party in a way that depends on the strength of each individual’s separately assessed claim to receive a benefit. However, they disagree about what elements constitute the strength of those individuals’ claims. According to restricted prioritarianism, the strength of a claim is determined (...) in ‘prioritarian’ fashion by both what she stands to gain and her absolute level of well-being, while, according to the competing claims view, the strength of a claim is also partly determined by her level of well-being relative to others with conflicting interests. I argue that, suitably modified, the competing claims view is more plausible than restricted prioritarianism. (shrink)

Larry Temkin has shown that Derek Parfit’s well-known Mere Addition Paradox suggests a powerful argument for the intransitivity of the relation “better than.” The crux of the argument is the view that equality is essentially comparative, according to which the same inequality can be evaluated differently depending on what it is being compared to. The comparative view of equality should be rejected, I argue, and hence so too this argument for intransitivity.

The principle of fair equality of opportunity is regularly used to justify social policies, both in the philosophical literature and in public discourse. However, too often commentators fail to make explicit just what they take the principle to say. A principle of fair equality of opportunity does not say anything at all until certain variables are filled in. I want to draw attention to two variables, timing and currency. I argue that once we identify the few plausible ways we have (...) at our disposal for filling in those variables, it will become apparent that a reasonable version of the principle will be quite narrow. Its usefulness as a justificatory basis for social policies will be limited to those policies that target the distribution of competitive opportunities among people entering majority. (shrink)

Fairness is a central, but under-theorized, notion in moral and political philosophy. This paper makes two contributions. Firstly, it criticizes Broome’s seminal account of fairness in Proc Aristotelian Soc 91:87–101, showing that there are problems with restricting fairness to a matter of relative satisfaction and holding that it does not itself require the satisfaction of the claims in question. Secondly, it considers the justification of lotteries to resolve cases of ties between competing claims, which Broome claims as support for his (...) theory, and contrasts random procedures to contests of skill, which may also be considered lotteries in a broader sense. I offer no alternative account of fairness of my own, but hope to point the way for future research on the nature of fairness. (shrink)

In this paper, I present and explore an alternative to a standard prioritarian axiology. Equality-tempered prioritarianism holds that the value of welfare increases should be balanced against the value of equality. However, given that, under prioritarianism, the value of marginal welfare benefits decreases as the welfare of beneficiaries increases, equality-tempered prioritarianism holds that the intrinsic value of equality will be sufficient to alter a prioritarian verdict only in cases in which welfare benefits are granted to the very well-off. I argue (...) that this view, suitably refined, solves a persistent problem for prioritarianism, and is superior to alternatives. (shrink)

The paper distinguishes between two rival views about the nature of final value (i.e. the value something has for its own sake) — intrinsicalism and conditionalism. The former view (which is the one adopted by G.E. Moore and several later writers) holds that the final value of any F supervenes solely on features intrinsic to F, while the latter view allows that the final value of F may supervene on features non-intrinsic to F. Conditionalism thus allows the final value of (...) F to vary according to the context in which F appears. Given the plausible assumption that there is an intimate tie between final values and appropriate attitudinal responses, it appears that conditionalism is the better approach for mainly the following three reasons: First, intrinsicalism is too indiscriminate, which makes it subject to what I call ‘location problems’ of final value. I illustrate this problem by discussing alleged examples of Moorean organic unities. Second, intrinsicalism evokes symptoms of ‘evaluative schizophrenia’. Third, considerations of theoretical economy tell in favour of conditionalism. Thereafter I respond to some recent challenges to conditionalism. An appendix surveys some meritorious implications that conditionalism offers for various substantial versions of such structurally different views about value as monism, pluralism, and particularism. (shrink)

This paper introduces a novel approach to evaluating theories of the good. It proposes evaluating these theories on the basis of their compatibility with the most plausible ways of calculating overall intrinsic value of a world. The paper evaluates the plausibility of egalitarianism using this approach, arguing that egalitarianism runs afoul of the more plausible ways of calculating the overall intrinsic value of a world. Egalitarianism conflicts with the general motivation for totalism and critical-level totalism, which is that independent contributions (...) of each individual’s life should be counted separately. It conflicts with the most plausible version of averagism because only the highly implausible simultaneous life-segment version of egalitarianism can make sense of inequality being disvaluable at a time. Egalitarianism combined with a diminishing marginal value theory also fails because it holds that, other things equal, the world is a better place when we reduce inequality by adding many people whose lives go very badly but whose sheer numbers lessen inequality. The discussion moves the debate about egalitarianism forward by circumventing the oft-discussed, but intractable, debate concerning the leveling down objection. It also reveals a promising new approach to critiquing theories of the good. (shrink)

Abstract:The paper seeks to defend Telic Egalitarianism (TE) by distinguishing two distinct categories into which typical objections to it fall. According to one category of objections (for example, levelling down) TE isgroundless. That is, there is simply no good reason to think that inequality as such is bad. The other type of objections to TE focuses on itscounterintuitiveimplications: it is forced to condemn inequalities between ourselves and long-dead Inca peasants, or between us and worse-off aliens from other planets. The paper (...) shows that once we unpack these two types of objections to TE they become much less persuasive. (shrink)

Equality is the central value for egalitarians. It is the value that distinguishes egalitarianism from other political theories. However, if equality is the central value for egalitarians, then why it is of value should be an obvious starting point for any discussion of egalitarianism. This article seeks to clarify the ways in which equality has been valued in philosophical discussion. I discuss the standard ways of valuing equality and argue that an understanding of equality as valuable because it is part (...) of other values offers an important new insight into how we value equality especially in relation to the traditional understanding of equality as either intrinsically or instrumentally valuable. (shrink)

Derek Parfit has argued that prioritarianism “naturally” has global scope, i.e. naturally applies to everyone, irrespective of his or her particular national, state or other communal affiliation. In that respect, it differs from e.g. egalitarianism. In this article, I critically assess Parfit's argument. In particular, I argue that it is difficult to draw conclusions about the scope of prioritarianism simply from an inspection of its structure. I also make some suggestions as to what it would take to argue that prioritarianism (...) has either global or merely domestic scope. (shrink)

The article examines the relationship between a wrongdoer and his victim. Based on this examination, a justification for criminal punishment is proposed. It is argued that crime violates thea prioriequality of constituent boundaries and of infinite human value between the wrongdoer and the victim. Criminal punishment re-equalizes respective boundaries and infinite human value. To develop this argument, the article observes how subject-subject boundaries are essential for the formation of separateness between subjects - separateness which is recognized and acknowledged by them (...) in a cooperative process. The article further discusses the value of boundaries and the significance of theira prioriequality in every human relationship. It then shows how crime, which is intrusion of the victim’s boundaries, works to demolish the victim’s self-recognizing separateness and hence to create inequality in the parties’ value. Last, the article demonstrates that only punishment can reset the relationship between the parties and re-equate their (still infinite) human value in the relationship. (shrink)

Derek Parfit held that in evaluating the future, we should ignore the difference between necessary persons and merely possible persons. In this article, I look at one of the most prominent alternatives to Parfit's view, namely Michael Otsuka and Larry Temkin ‘shortfall complaints’ view. In that view, we aggregate future persons’ well-being and deduct intrapersonal shortfall complaints, giving extra weight to the complaints of necessary persons. I offer here a third view. I reject Parfit's no difference view in that I (...) register a difference between necessary and possible persons. But I also reject the Shortfall View and replace its intra-personal complaints with an inter-personal complaints mechanism. I argue that the value of a population is its aggregate prioritarian value minus the egalitarian complaints that necessary persons hold. I show that the egalitarian view has all the explanatory power of the Shortfall view in easy cases, while significantly improving on it in three sorts of tough cases. (shrink)

The paper considers a hierarchical theory that combines concern for two values: individual well-being – as a fundamental, first-order value – and (distributive) fairness – as a high-order value that its exclusive function is to complete the value of individual well-being by resolving internal clashes within it that occur in interpersonal conflicts. The argument for this unique conception of high-order fairness is that fairness is morally significant in itself only regarding what matters – individual well-being – and when it matters (...) – in interpersonal conflicts in which constitutive aspects of individual well-being clash. Consequently, the proposed theory is not exposed to claim that fairness comes at the expense of welfare. This theory is considered within a consequential framework, based on the standard version and, alternatively, on a novel interpretation of consequentialism. Thus, it refutes the claim that consequentialism does not take the distinction between persons seriously. (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)

The paper identifies a distinctive feature of friendship. Friendship, it is argued, is a relationship between two people in which each participant values the other and successfully communicates this fact to the other. This feature of friendship, it is claimed, explains why friendship plays a key role in human happiness, why it is praised by philosophers, poets, and novelists, and why we all seek friends. Although the characterization of friendship proposed here differs from other views in the literature, it is (...) shown that it accommodates key insights of other writers on the topic. Thus, in accordance with the Aristotelian strategy the paper employs, it is shown that the account on offer preserves the received opinions on friendship. (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.

Luck egalitarianism is a fairly prominent theory of justice. While there are many versions of LE, they all agree that, at least to some extent, it is unjust for individuals to lose the opportunity for welfare at least when that loss occurs through no fault of the individual’s own. Many writers take LE to have direct political implications; they write as if the truth of LE entails that resources should be taken from some – perhaps those who enjoy lots of (...) unearned welfare – and delivered to those who suffer through no fault of their own. I argue that luck egalitarians should refocus their thinking on what I call a “Systemic Model” of compensation. This model holds that what matters most to offsetting bad brute luck is that individuals have opportunities to make up for losses of welfare and political systems should be designed to prevent some individuals from capturing resources in a manner that frustrates the ability of others to offset their own losses due to unearned bad luck and political systems should aim to maximize the opportunities individuals have to make up for their own bad luck. (shrink)

The article assesses recent attempts to deflect two persistent objections to Positive Egalitarianism (PE), the view that equality adds to the goodness of a state of affairs. The first says that PE entails bringing into existence individuals who are equal to each other in leading horrible lives, such that they are worthnotliving. I assess three strategies for deflecting this objection: offering a restricted version of PE; biting the bullet; and pressing alevelling outcounter-objection. The second objection points out that for any (...) world A containing many individuals all leading very satisfying lives, and in perfect equality, PE prefers a much larger, perfectly equal population Z with much lower (yet positive) well-being. I review two main strategies for avoiding this Repellent Conclusion: a Capped Model and making egalitarianism sensitive to welfare levels. Both solutions, I show, are worse than the problems they are meant to solve. (shrink)

În acest capitol îmi revine sarcina de a prezenta unul dintre cele mai influente și mai dinamice curente din filosofia politică actuală. Este vorba, desigur, despre curentul care dă titlul acestui capitol: egalitarianismul.

Roughly, according to conditional egalitarianism, equality is non-instrumentally valuable, but only if it benefits at least one individual. Some political theorists have argued that conditional egalitarianism has the important virtue that it allows egalitarians to avoid the so-called objection. However, in the present article I argue that conditional egalitarianism does not offer the egalitarian a plausible escape route from this objection. First, I explain the levelling down objection and suggest some particular concerns from which it derives its force. Then I (...) provide a more precise definition of conditional egalitarianism. Finally, I give two arguments against this principle. According to the first, it violates the transitivity of the betterness relation (or more specifically, ). According to the second, there is no plausible explanation of why equality must benefit at least one individual in order to be non-instrumentally valuable. (shrink)