| 1. |
- Zuber, S., et al.
(författare)
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What Should We Agree on about the Repugnant Conclusion?
- 2021
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Ingår i: Utilitas. - : Cambridge University Press. - 0953-8208 .- 1741-6183. ; 33:4, s. 379-383
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Repugnant Conclusion is an implication of some approaches to population ethics. It states, in Derek Parfit's original formulation, For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better, even though its members have lives that are barely worth living. (Parfit 1984: 388) Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press.
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| 2. |
- Arrhenius, Gustaf, 1966-, et al.
(författare)
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Population ethics under risk
- 2023
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Ingår i: Social Choice and Welfare. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0176-1714 .- 1432-217X.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Population axiology concerns how to rank populations by the relation “is socially preferred to”. So far, population ethicists have (with important exceptions) focused less on the question of how to rank population prospects, that is, alternatives that contain uncertainty as to which population they will bring about. Most public policy choices, however, are decisions under uncertainty, including policy choices that affect the size of a population (such as climate policy choices). Here, we shall address the question of how to rank population prospects by the relation “is socially preferred to”. 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 are praised for avoiding in the risk-free settings. Moreover, we show how the axiom of State-Wise Dominance allow us to extend any impossibility theorem in population axiology to impossibility theorems for non-trivial population prospects, that is, prospects that confer probabilities strictly between zero and one on different populations. Finally, we formulate impossibility results that only involve probabilistic axioms.
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| 3. |
- Asker, Andrea S., et al.
(författare)
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Collective Responses to Covid-19 and Climate Change
- 2021
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Ingår i: Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics. - : Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics. - 1876-9098. ; 14:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Both individuals and governments around the world have willingly sacrificed a great deal to meet the collective action problem posed by Covid-19. This has provided some commentators with newfound hope about the possibility that we will be able to solve what is arguably the greatest collective action problem of all time: global climate change. In this paper we argue that this is overly optimistic. We defend two main claims. First, these two collective action problems are so different that the actions that individuals have taken to try to solve the problem posed by Covid-19 unfortunately provide little indication that we will be able to solve the problem posed by climate change. Second, the actions that states have taken in response to Covid-19 might—if anything—even be evidence that they will continue to fail to cooperate towards a solution to the climate crisis.
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| 4. |
- Bradley, Richard, et al.
(författare)
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Counterfactual Desirability
- 2017
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Ingår i: British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. - : University of Chicago Press. - 0007-0882 .- 1464-3537. ; 68:2, s. 485-533
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The desirability of what actually occurs is often influenced by what could have been. Preferences based on such value dependencies between actual and counterfactual outcomes generate a class of problems for orthodox decision theory, the best-known perhaps being the so-called Allais paradox. In this article we solve these problems by extending Richard Jeffrey’s decision theory to counterfactual prospects, using a multidimensional possible-world semantics for conditionals, and showing that preferences that are sensitive to counterfactual considerations can still be desirability-maximizing. We end the article by investigating the conditions necessary and sufficient for a desirability function to be a standard expected-utility function. It turns out that the additional conditions imply highly implausible epistemic principles.
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| 5. |
- Bradley, Richard, et al.
(författare)
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Fairness and risk attitudes
- 2023
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Ingår i: Philosophical Studies. - 0031-8116 .- 1573-0883. ; 180:10-11, s. 3179-3204
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- According to a common judgement, a social planner should often use a lottery to decide which of two people should receive a good. This judgement undermines one of the best-known arguments for utilitarianism, due to John C. Harsanyi, and more generally undermines axiomatic arguments for utilitarianism and similar views. In this paper we ask which combinations of views about (a) the social planner’s attitude to risk and inequality, and (b) the subjects’ attitudes to risk are consistent with the aforementioned judgement. We find that the class of combinations of views that can plausibly accommodate this judgement is quite limited. But one theory does better than others: the theory of chance-sensitive utility.
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| 6. |
- Bykvist, Krister, et al.
(författare)
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Epistemic transformation and rational choice
- 2017
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Ingår i: Economics and Philosophy. - 0266-2671 .- 1474-0028. ; 33:1, s. 123-136
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Most people at some point in their lives face transformative decisions that could result in experiences that are radically different from any that they have had, and that could radically change their personalities and preferences. For instance, most people make the conscious decision to either become or not become parents. In a recent but already influential book, L. A. Paul (2014) argues that transformative choices cannot be rational – or, more precisely, that they cannot be rational if one assumes what Paul sees as a cultural paradigm for rational decision-making. Paul arrives at this surprising conclusion due to her understanding of transformative experience as being both epistemically and personally transformative. An experience is epistemically transformative if it ‘teaches [a person] something she could not have learned without having that kind of experience’ (11), but it is personally transformative if it changes the person's point of view and her fundamental preferences (16).
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| 7. |
- Hattiangadi, Anandi, et al.
(författare)
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Radical interpretation and decision theory
- 2021
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Ingår i: Synthese. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0039-7857 .- 1573-0964. ; :199, s. 6473-6494
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper takes issue with an influential interpretationist argument for physicalism about intentionality based on the possibility of radical interpretation. The interpretationist defends the physicalist thesis that the intentional truths supervene on the physical truths by arguing that it is possible for a radical interpreter, who knows all of the physical truths, to work out the intentional truths about what an arbitrary agent believes, desires, and means without recourse to any further empirical information. One of the most compelling arguments for the possibility of radical interpretation, associated most closely with David Lewis and Donald Davidson, gives a central role to decision theoretic representation theorems, which demonstrate that if an agent's preferences satisfy certain constraints, it is possible to deduce probability and utility functions that represent her beliefs and desires. We argue that an interpretationist who wants to rely on existing representation theorems in defence of the possibility of radical interpretation faces a trilemma, each horn of which is incompatible with the possibility of radical interpretation.
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| 8. |
- Lundgren, Björn, et al.
(författare)
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Against the De Minimis Principle
- 2020
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Ingår i: Risk Analysis. - Herndon : Society for Risk Analysis. - 0272-4332 .- 1539-6924. ; 40:5, s. 908-914
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- According to the class of de minimis decision principles, risks can be ignored (or at least treated very differently from other risks) if the risk is sufficiently small. In this article, we argue that a de minimis threshold has no place in a normative theory of decision making, because the application of the principle will either recommend ignoring risks that should not be ignored (e.g., the sure death of a person) or it cannot be used by ordinary bounded and information‐constrained agents.
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| 9. |
- Lundgren, Björn, 1984-, et al.
(författare)
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Can the Normic de minimis Expected Utility Theory save the de minimis Principle?
- 2023
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Ingår i: Erkenntnis. - 0165-0106 .- 1572-8420.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recently, Martin Smith defended a view he called the “normic de minimis expected utility theory”. The basic idea is to integrate a ‘normic’ version of the de minimis principle into an expected utility-based decision theoretical framework. According to the de minimis principle some risks are so small (falling below a threshold) that they can be ignored. While this threshold standardly is defined in terms of some probability, the normic conception of de minimis defines this threshold in terms of abnormality. In this article, we present three independent arguments against the normic de minimis expected utility theory, focusing on its reliance on the de minimis principle.
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| 10. |
- Nebel, Jacob M., et al.
(författare)
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Calibration dilemmas in the ethics of distribution
- 2023
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Ingår i: Economics and Philosophy. - 0266-2671 .- 1474-0028. ; 39:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper presents a new kind of problem in the ethics of distribution. The problem takes the form of several 'calibration dilemmas', in which intuitively reasonable aversion to small-stakes inequalities requires leading theories of distribution to recommend intuitively unreasonable aversion to large-stakes inequalities. We first lay out a series of such dilemmas for prioritarian theories. We then consider a widely endorsed family of egalitarian views and show that they are subject to even more forceful calibration dilemmas than prioritarian theories. Finally, we show that our results challenge common utilitarian accounts of the badness of inequalities in resources.
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