We propose to strengthen Popper’s notion of falsifiability by adding the requirement that when an observation is inconsistent with a theory, there must be a ‘short proof’ of this inconsistency. We model the concept of a short proof using tools from computational complexity, and provide some examples of economic theories that are falsifiable in the usual sense but not with this additional requirement. We consider several variants of the definition of ‘short proof’ and several assumptions about the difficulty of computation, and study their different implications on the falsifiability of theories.

We examine a general class of variable-value population principles. Our particular focus is on the extent to which such principles can avoid the repugnant and sadistic conclusions. We show that if a mild limit property is imposed, avoidance of the repugnant conclusion implies the sadistic conclusion. This result generalizes earlier observations by showing that they apply to a substantially larger class of principles. Our second theorem states that, under the limit property, the axiom of mere addition also conflicts with avoidance of the repugnant conclusion. This result is a consequence of a similar observation that appears in the earlier literature.

I argue that a liberal commitment to value neutrality is best honoured by maintaining a pure cardinality component in our rankings of opportunity sets. Two challenges to this claim are considered. The first holds that cardinality rankings are unnecessary for neutrality, since what matters from this perspective is the variety (and not the mere size) of opportunity sets. The second holds that pure cardinality metrics are insufficient for neutrality, because opportunities cannot be individuated into countable entities without presupposing some relevantly partisan evaluative perspective. In each case, a clear understanding of the liberal basis for valuing liberty yields a satisfying response.

According to an influential argument in business ethics and economics, firms are normatively required to maximize their contributions to social welfare, and the way to do this is to maximize their profits. Against Michael Jensen's version of the argument, I argue that even if firms are required to maximize their social welfare contributions, they are not necessarily required to maximize their profits. I also consider and reply to Waheed Hussain's ‘personal sphere’ critique of Jensen. My distinct challenge to Jensen seems to me fatal to any view according to which firms are normatively required to maximize their profits.

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.

In order to account for non-traditional preference relations the present paper develops a new, richer framework for preference relations. This new framework provides characterizations of non-traditional preference relations, such as incommensurateness and instability, that may hold when neither preference nor indifference do. The new framework models relations with swaps, which are conceived of as transfers from one alternative state to another. The traditional framework analyses dyadic preference relations in terms of a hypothetical choice between the two compared alternatives. The swap framework extends this approach by analysing dyadic preference relations in terms of two hypothetical choices: the choice between keeping the first of the compared alternatives or swapping it for the second; and the choice between keeping the second alternative or swapping it for the first.

This article challenges the general thesis that an unconditional basic income, set at the highest sustainable level, is required for maximizing the income-leisure opportunities of the least advantaged, when income varies according to the responsible factor of labor input. In a linear optimal taxation model (of a type suggested by Vandenbroucke 2001) in which opportunities depend only on individual productivity, adding the instrument of a uniform wage subsidy generates an array of undominated policies besides the basic income maximizing policy, including a “zero basic income” policy which equalizes the post-tax wage rate. The choice among such undominated policies may be guided by distinct normative criteria which supplement the maximin objective in various ways. It is shown that most of these criteria will be compatible with, or actually select, the zero basic income policy and reject the basic income maximizing one. In view of the model's limited realism, the force of this main conclusion is discussed both in relation to Van Parijs' argument for basic income in Real Freedom for All (1995) and to some key empirical conditions in the real world.

In this paper, I revisit the question of how and in what sense can individuals comprising a group be held responsible for morally reprehensible behaviour by that group. The question is tackled by posing a counterfactual: what would happen if selfish individuals became moral creatures? A game called the Samaritan’s Curse is developed, which sheds light on the dilemma of group moral responsibility, and raises new questions concerning ‘conferred morality’ and self-fulfilling morals, and also forces us to question some implicit assumptions of game-theory.

This paper examines two strands of literature regarding economic models of cooperation. First, payoff transformation theories assume that people may not be exclusively motivated by self-interest, but also care about equality and fairness. Second, team reasoning theorists assume that people might reason from the perspective of the team, rather than an individualistic perspective. Can these two theories be unified? In contrast to the consensus among team reasoning theorists, I argue that team reasoning can be viewed as a particular type of payoff transformation. However, I also demonstrate that many payoff transformations yield actions that team reasoning rules out.

The Small Improvement Argument (SIA) is the leading argument for value incomparability. All vagueness-based accounts of the SIA have hitherto assumed the truth of supervaluationism, but supervaluationism has some well-known problems. This paper explores the implications of epistemicism, a leading rival theory. We argue that if epistemicism is true, then options are comparable in small improvement cases. Moreover, even if SIAs do not exploit vagueness, if epistemicism is true, then options cannot be on a par. The epistemicist account of the SIA has an advantage over leading existing rival accounts of the SIA because it accounts for higher-order hard cases.

There is a simple joy in finding that the emperor has positively no clothes and especially when the finger is pointed in ribald good English. Donald McCloskey does this service in “The Rhetoric of Economics”, where he argues with force and wit that “modernism” (meaning, roughly, positivism, as in “Positive Economics”) will do as an account neither of what economists do nor of what it makes philosophical sense for them to attempt. Instead they should recognize that models are always metaphors and should make a virtue of the literary devices, which they in fact rely on. Armed with the craft of rhetoric and a new “poetics of economics,” they will achieve better writing, better teaching, better foreign relations, better science and better dispositions.

On parity views of mere addition if someone (or a group of people) is added to the world at a range of well-being levels – or ‘neutral range’ – leaving existing people unaffected, addition is on a par with the initial situation. Two distinct parity views – ‘rough equality’ and fitting-attitudes views – defend the ‘intuition of neutrality’. The first can be interpreted or adjusted so that it can rebut John Broome's objection that the neutral range is wide. The two views respond in distinct ways to two of Broome's other objections. Both views can, nonetheless, be plausibly defended against these objections.

This paper takes a simple, informal suggestion by Broome and another more explicit suggestion by Kamm for how to deal with asymmetric claims and shows how they can be interpreted to be consistent with two different social welfare functions: Sum-of-square-roots of individual utilities, and product of utilities. These functions are then used to analyze more complicated situations but I show that the first yields more intuitive results, and a better compromise of efficiency and justice, than the other.

This paper considers contractarianism as a method of justification. The analysis accepts the key tenets of contractarianism: expected utility maximization, unanimity as the criteria of acceptance, and social-scientific uncertainty of modelled agents. In addition to these three features, however, the analysis introduces a fourth feature: a criteria of rational belief formation, viz. Bayesian belief updating. Using a formal model, this paper identifies a decisive objection to contractarian justification. Insofar as contractarian projects approximate the Agreement Model, therefore, they fail to justify their conclusions. Insofar as they fail to approximate the Agreement Model, they must explain which modelling assumption they reject.

When it is most fair for a claimant to receive a particular chance of benefiting (e.g. 50%) but they instead receive a different chance of benefiting (e.g. 40%), this lower chance is not ideally fair. I specify the often-overlooked type of individual unfairness evident in differences of this kind and argue for four intuitively supported criteria that a measure of this unfairness must meet. I defend the Asymmetrical Proportional View, which meets these criteria and is a measure of how individually unfair any particular difference of this kind is. Finally I conclude with the View's implications for theories of distributive fairness.

Proponents of the public goods argument (‘PGA’) seek to ground the authority of the state on its putative indispensability as a means of providing public goods. But many of the things we take to be public goods – including many of the goods commonly invoked in support of the PGA – are actually what we might term publicized goods. A publicized good is any whose ‘public’ character results only from a policy decision to make some (otherwise private) good freely and universally available. This fact poses complications for the PGA, insofar as the set of possible publicized goods is quite extensive indeed.