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Intuitive Maximin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Joseph Mendola
Joseph Mendola*
Affiliation:
University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE68588-0321, USA
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Extract

One standard objection to familiar utilitarian consequentialism queries its troubling commitment to the maximization of overall value irrespective of distribution, for instance among the well and badly off. Call this ‘the objection from distribution.'

The simplest and most obvious alternative form of consequentialism deploys some sort of maximin principle. Maximin principles maximize the well-being of the worst off. Lexical maximin rules in particular, which are perhaps the simplest and most obvious subtype, maximize first the well-being of the worst-off, and then in case of ties among the worst-off, maximize the well-being of the second worst-off, and so forth. Maximin principles provide an obvious route to the unification of plausible concerns with maximization and with distributional equity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , September 2005 , pp. 429 - 439
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2005

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References

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12 Thanks to three anonymous referees for very helpful comments.