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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
In Inequality, Larry Temkin attacks ‘The Slogan’: ‘One Situation cannot be [morally] worse (or better) than another in any respect if there is no one for whom it is worse (or better) in any respect.’ Temkin notes that the Slogan has great intuitive appeal. It underlies, for example, the conviction that it is irrational to prefer a Pareto-inferior outcome; the transition from egalitarianism to the difference principle; Robert Nozick's Wilt Chamberlain example; defense of appropriation under the Lockean proviso; and Derek Parfit's Mere Addition Paradox. As an egalitarian, Temkin's main concern with the Slogan is the support it gives to the ‘leveling down objection’ to egalitarianism: the egalitarian finds it to be in some respect an improvement that the better-off are leveled down to the position of the worse-off, without any gain to the worse-off. The Slogan condemns this: leveling down cannot be better in any respect, since there is no one for whom it is better in any respect.
1 Larry Temkin, Inequality (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1993), 256, emphases omitted.
2 Not all of these arguments explicitly invoke the Slogan, but, as Temkin notes, much of their appeal may rest on the Slogan. For example, the Wilt Chamberlain example is most persuasive when we believe that giving to Wilt makes no one worse off (Temkin, 250-1).
3 For the phrase leveling down’ and discussion of the objection, see Derek Parfit, ‘Equality and Priority,’ Ratio 10 (1997) 202-21. For discussion of a different Temkin argument against the Slogan, posed by Parfit's ‘Non-Identity Problem,’ see Nils Holtug, ‘Egalitarianism and the Leveling Down Objection,’ Analysis 58 (1998) 166-74. Nothing I say is intended to meet the objection posed by the Non-Identity Problem.
4 Temkin, 260-1
5 In what follows, I assume that all preferences are informed.
6 Temkin, 270, quoting Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1984), 494
7 Temkin, 270. By ‘other-regarding/ Temkin means Jean's ‘desires about how others fare and how their lives progress, as well as any desires she may have about the world per se’ (269-70, emphases omitted).
8 Jeffrey Goldsworthy, ‘Well-Being and Value/ Utilitas 4 (1992), 6; L.W. Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon 1996), 125-8; Shelly Kagan, ‘The Limits of Weil-Being/ Social Philosophy and Policy 9 (1992), 180-7; D.W. Haslett, ‘What is Utility?’ Economics and Philosophy 6 (1990), 79-81. James Griffin feels the pull but resists: see Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance (Oxford: Clarendon 1986), 17-23. Parfit himself seems to take his example to motivate both a restriction to self-regarding desires — since he follows the example with a theory which ‘appeals only to someone's desires about his own life’ — and (as an editor noted) a restriction that excludes past desires — since he describes the unrestricted theory, directly before giving the example, as holding that ‘what is best for someone is what would best fulfill all of his desires, throughout his life,’ and the initial presentation of the example occurs in a discussion of past desires (Parfit, Reasons, 494,151,157). If one is convinced by the example because one excludes past desires, one's theory of welfare gives no reason to resist satisfying Jean's stronger preference f o r the graves, since that desire is a present desire. Temkin would, then, fail to show that the restrictions needed for a plausible theory of welfare lead to implausible judgments about outcomes.
9 For these objections to the unrestricted theory as a theory of welfare, see David Sobel, ‘Well-Being as an Object of Moral Consideration,’ Economics and Philosophy 14 (1998) pt. 1; Sumner, 134-5; Stephen Darwall, ‘Self-Interest and Self-Concern,’ Social Philosophy and Policy 14 (1997), 162-5; T.M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1998), 115. (Scanlon reads Parfif s stranger case as simply making the point that the satisfaction of some preferences does not contribute to welfare.) For a further worry about the unrestricted theory as a theory of welfare, see Darwall, 166-8,172.
10 Sumner, 128. Sumner's argument for adding an experience requirement is, however, puzzling. He concedes that many think their welfare can be affected by events after their deaths; he notes that hence ‘the fact that a theory of welfare entails the possibility of posthumous harms and benefits is not sufficient by itself to establish its descriptive inadequacy'; he points out that death is merely one way in which preference satisfaction can fail to affect us; and then concludes, oddly, that ‘[t]he obvious remedy is to impose on the desire theory … an experience requirement’ (127). If there is no inadequacy in a view that violates the experience requirement, there is nothing that needs a remedy. (Just as oddly, Sumner adds on the next page that ‘[a] theory of welfare can be descriptively adequate only if it incorporates some form of experience requirement’ [128].)
11 G.E. Moore, Ethics (New York: Henry Holt 1912), 239-46
12 See, in particular, Sumner, 153-4.
13 For a similar stress on how the complete absence of welfare gains can alter our judgment, see ibid., 204.
14 I owe this suggestion to Bob Bright. It is also made very effectively by Sobel (though not in the context of Temkin or the Slogan) (Sobel, esp. 269-71). Some preference theorists might be read as agreeing. Peter Railton, f o r example, takes his unrestricted account to be explaining a person's good, which he distinguishes from her welfare. S e e Railton, ‘Facts and Values,’ Philosophical Topics 14 (1986), 30 n.9.
15 Dennis McKerlie offers a revision of the Slogan that goes beyond welfare in a very different way: ‘The basic idea behind the slogan seems to be that to make an outcome better we must make at least some person's life better. We could understand making a life better in terms of adding objectively valuable states or activities to that life, whether or not this is counted as being in that person's self-interest’ Equality may be objectively valuable, but since it is not a feature of an individual's life, McKerlie's Slogan rules out egalitarianism. One worry is that it is unclear why outcomes are to be assessed only in terms of features of individual's lives, given the existence of objectively valuable relational properties. See Dennis McKerlie, ‘Critical Notice of Larry S. Temkin, Inequality,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 25 (1995), 634-5; Temkin, 273-5
16 Sumner does not endorse a preference theory of welfare, but his own more complex theory, on which preferences remain a source of welfare, puts these two restrictions on those preferences. The differences between Sumner's theory and a restricted preference theory are irrelevant here.
17 Sumner, 195
18 Ibid., 209-12
19 Ibid., 214-15. Sumner makes the same objection to hedonism, given that some people care about things other than mental states (93-8).
20 Sumner himself makes some of these points on 122-3.
21 Ibid., 192; also 217, 220
22 Ibid., 197
23 Ibid., 189. Sumner's point is not that aesthetic preferences are irrelevant because of their content. If I nominate some of my aesthetic preferences as part of my welfare, Sumner treats them as relevant (provided they are not excluded by an experience requirement). Sumner's point is that if my aesthetic preferences are excluded from my welfare, either by an experience requirement or by my choice, then they are irrelevant.
24 Ibid., 205-6,197. The unconscious friend example is from Amartya Sen, ‘Well-Being, Agency and Freedom/ Journal of Philosophy 82 (1985), 209-10. (Sen thinks that the friend should satisfy the stronger preference, but that society has no obligation to satisfy preferences outside welfare. See also Sen, Inequality Reexamined [Oxford: Clarendon 1992], 70-1.) For a different example that similarly separates preference satisfaction and welfare, see Darwall, 173-4. Darwall does not take it as obvious which should be promoted in such cases. Scanlon, citing Darwall, uses these cases as p a r t of his argument f o r thinking that the concept of well-being is not so important (135).
25 An editor noted that the violation of my choice is more severe for preferences excluded by the experience requirement than for preferences excluded as not part of my welfare. For I, not Sumner, make the latter exclusion; Jean could nominate her concern for the graves as contributing to her welfare, so that Liz will count it.
Sumner, however, does not see the nomination process in this light. Jean's nomination is to be guided by her understanding of the question ‘would the satisfaction of this preference contribute to the prudential value of your life?’ rather than by strategic thoughts about getting Liz to tend graves. See Sumner, 153-4.
26 I owe most of this defense of Sumner to Joyce Jenkins.
27 When I write of ‘giving reasons to others,’ here and below, I intend the sort of choice Liz faces: if she were going to satisfy one of the preferences, and can satisfy either with equal ease, she has most reason to satisfy Jean's preference for tended graves (or oil). I do not intend the stronger claim that everyone has a duty, or ought, to satisfy the preferences of other people. Whether that is true depends on further arguments connecting judgments of better and worse outcomes with duty- or ought-judgments.
28 For the charge of paternalism against welfarists, see Sobel, 269.
29 For this point, see ibid., 276-7.
30 I am grateful to Bob Bright and Joyce Jenkins for numerous discussions of this material. Without them, there would be no paper. Thanks also to two anonymous referees and one anonymous editor; an audience at Manitoba; and, for discussion of Liz and Jean, Kavita Joshi, Leah Steele, J e f f Verman, and Sandra Vettes