Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2pzkn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-19T18:28:34.069Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Welfare Diffusion Objection to Prioritarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2022

Tomi Francis Open the ORCID record for Tomi Francis [Opens in a new window]
Tomi Francis*
Affiliation:
Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford, Mill Street, Oxford OX2 0DJ, UK
*
Email: tomi.francis@philosophy.ox.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

According to the Welfare Diffusion Objection, we should reject Prioritarianism because it implies the ‘desirability of welfare diffusion’: the claim that it can be better for there to be less total wellbeing spread thinly between a larger total number of people, rather than for there to be more total wellbeing, spread more generously between a smaller total number of people. I argue that while Prioritarianism does not directly imply the desirability of welfare diffusion, Prioritarians are nevertheless implicitly committed to certain principles for comparing different-number populations which, together with the Prioritarian same-person axiology, imply the desirability of welfare diffusion.

Keywords

Prioritarianismpopulation ethicswelfare diffusionseparability
Type
Article
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , March 2024 , pp. 55 - 76
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adler, M.D. and Holtug, N. 2019. Prioritarianism: a reponse to critics. Politics, Philosophy & Economics 18, 101–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ahmed, A. 2017. Exploiting cyclic preference. Mind 126, 975–1022.Google Scholar
Bader, R.M. 2022. Person-affecting utilitarianism. In The Oxford Handbook of Population Ethics, eds. Arrhenius, G., Bykvist, K., Campbell, T. and Finneron-Burns, E., 251–270. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackorby, C., Bossert, W. and Donaldson, D. 1995. Intertemporal population ethics: critical-level utilitarian principles. Econometrica 63, 1303–1320.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blackorby, C., Bossert, W. and Donaldson, D. 2005. Population Issues in Social Choice Theory, Welfare Economics, and Ethics. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broome, J. 1999. Ethics Out of Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broome, J. 2004. Weighing Lives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broome, J. 2005. Should we value population? Journal of Political Philosophy 13, 399–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bykvist, K. 2007. The benefits of coming into existence. Philosophical Studies 135, 335–362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crisp, R. 2003. Equality, priority, and compassion. Ethics 113, 745–763.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cusbert, J. 2017. Acting on essentially comparative goodness. Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 6, 73–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fishburn, P.C. 1982. The Foundations of Expected Utility. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frick, J. 2014. ‘Making People Happy, Not Making Happy People’: A Defense of the Asymmetry Intuition in Population Ethics. PhD thesis, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Frick, J. 2017. On the survival of humanity. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 47, 344–367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frick, J. 2020. Conditional reasons and the procreation asymmetry. Philosophical Perspectives: Ethics 34, 53–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frick, J. 2022. Context-dependent betterness and the mere addition paradox. In Ethics and Existence: The Legacy of Derek Parfit, eds. McMahan, J., Campbell, T., Goodrich, J. and Ramakrishnan, K., 232–263. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greaves, H. 2015. Antiprioritarianism. Utilitas 27, 1–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gustafsson, J.E. (2022). Money-Pump Arguments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gustafsson, J.E. and Rabinowicz, W. 2020. A simpler, more compelling money pump with foresight. Journal of Philosophy 117, 578–589.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holtug, N. 2010. Persons, Interests, and Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huemer, M. 2012. Against equality and priority. Utilitas 24, 483–501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McClennen, E.F. 1985. Prisoner’s dilemma and resolute choice. In Paradoxes of Rationality and Cooperation: Prisoner’s Dilemma and Newcomb’s Problem, eds. Campbell, R. and Sowden, L., 94–104. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.Google Scholar
McMahan, J. 2009. Asymmetries in the morality of causing people to exist. In Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics and the Nonidentity Problem, eds. Roberts, M.A. and Wasserman, D.T., 49–68. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McMahan, J. 2013. Causing people to exist and saving people’s lives. Journal of Ethics 17, 5–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgenstern, O. and Von Neumann, J. 1944. Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Narveson, J. 1967. Utilitarianism and new generations. Mind 76, 62–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Otsuka, M. 2022. Prioritarianism, population ethics, and competing claims. In Ethics and Existence: The Legacy of Derek Parfit, eds. McMahan, J., Campbell, T., Goodrich, J. and Ramakrishnan, K., 527–551. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parfit, D. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Parfit, D. 1997. Equality and priority. Ratio 10, 202–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parfit, D. 2004. Overpopulation and the quality of life. In The Repugnant Conclusion: Essays on Population Ethics, eds. Ryberg, J. and Tännsjö, T., 145–164. London: Kluwer Academic.Google Scholar
Parfit, D. 2012. Another defence of the priority view. Utilitas 24, 399–440.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Persson, I. 2011. Prioritarianism, levelling down and welfare diffusion. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 14, 307–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Persson, I. 2012. Prioritarianism and welfare reductions. Journal of Applied Philosophy 29, 289–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rachels, S. 1998. Counterexamples to the transitivity of Better Than . Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76, 71–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rachels, S. 2001. A set of solutions to Parfit’s problems. Noûs 35, 214–238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rachels, S. 2004. Repugnance or intransitivity: a repugnant but forced choice. In The Repugnant Conclusion: Essays on Population Ethics, eds. Ryberg, J. and Tännsjö, T., 163–186. London: Kluwer Academic.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, M.A. 2011. The Asymmetry: a solution. Theoria 77, 333–367.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Savage, L.J. 1954. The Foundations of Statistics. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Temkin, L.S. 1987. Intransitivity and the mere addition paradox. Philosophy & Public Affairs 16, 138–187.Google Scholar
Temkin, L.S. 1996. A continuum argument for intransitivity. Philosophy & Public Affairs 25, 175–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Temkin, L.S. 2012. Rethinking the Good: Moral Ideals and the Nature of Practical Reasoning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zuber, S. et al. 2021. What should we agree on about the repugnant conclusion? Utilitas 33, 379–383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar