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Against Equality and Priority

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 November 2012

MICHAEL HUEMER
MICHAEL HUEMER*
Affiliation:
University of [email protected]
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Abstract

I start from three premises, roughly as follows: (1) that if possible world x is better than world y for every individual who exists in either world, then x is better than y; (2) that if x has a higher average utility, a higher total utility, and no more inequality than y, then x is better than y; (3) that better than is transitive. From these premises, it follows that equality lacks intrinsic value, and that benefits given to the worse-off contribute no more to the world's value than equal-sized benefits given to the better-off.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , December 2012 , pp. 483 - 501
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

1 Temkin, Larry, ‘Inequality’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 15 (1986), pp. 99–121, at 100Google Scholar; Nielsen, Kai, Equality and Liberty (Totowa, NJ, 1985), p. 283Google Scholar.

2 Parfit, Derek, ‘Equality or Priority?’, The Ideal of Equality, ed. Clayton, Matthew and Williams, Andrew (New York, 2000), pp. 81–125Google Scholar; Thomas Nagel, ‘Equality’, The Ideal of Equality, pp. 60–80; Young, Robert, ‘Egalitarianism and Envy’, Philosophical Studies 52 (1987), pp. 261–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice, rev. edn. (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), p. 72Google Scholar. Even Temkin recognizes the Priority View's intuitive plausibility (‘Equality, Priority, and the Leveling Down Objection’, The Ideal of Equality, pp. 126–61, at 130).

3 Temkin, ‘Equality’, pp. 137–40.

4 Parfit, ‘Equality or Priority’, p. 115; Reasons and Persons (Oxford, 1987), pp. 422–5.

5 Kagan, Shelly, ‘The Additive Fallacy’, Ethics 99 (1988), pp. 5–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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7 Narveson, Jan, ‘Utilitarianism and New Generations’, Mind 76 (1967), pp. 62–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 67; Narveson, Jan ‘Moral Problems of Population’, The Monist 57 (1973), pp. 62–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 66; see also Broome, John, ‘The Welfare Economics of Population’, Oxford Economic Papers 48 (1996), pp. 177–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 179.

8 I defend this point at greater length in my ‘In Defence of Repugnance’, Mind 117 (2008), pp. 899–933.

9 A ‘utility distribution’ is a specification of how many individuals exist at each welfare level in a given possible world or state of affairs.

10 Since qualitatively similar examples can be constructed in which A+ has arbitrarily small advantages in total utility over A, and yet A+ remains better than A, we can infer that the value of equality must be zero.

11 See Parfit, Reasons and Persons, p. 356, ch. 17.

12 For example, Andrew Mason proposes that inequality is intrinsically bad, but only in circumstances in which it is to the disadvantage of someone (‘Egalitarianism and the Levelling Down Objection’, Analysis 61 (2001), pp. 246–54, at 248).

13 Blackorby, Charles, Bossert, Walter and Donaldson, David, ‘Critical-Level Population Principles and the Repugnant Conclusion’, The Repugnant Conclusion: Essays on Population Ethics, ed. Ryberg, Jesper and Tännsjö, Torbjorn (Dordrecht, 2004), pp. 45–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Derek Parfit, ‘Overpopulation and the Quality of Life’, The Repugnant Conclusion: Essays on Population Ethics, pp. 7–22, at 19.

15 Narveson, ‘Utilitarianism’; Narveson, ‘Moral Problems’; Broome, ‘Welfare Economics’. For further discussion of the Person-Affecting Principle, see Parfit, Reasons and Persons, p. 394, and Temkin, Larry, ‘Intransitivity and the Mere Addition Paradox’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 16 (1987), pp. 138–87Google Scholar, at 166–7.

16 Ng, Yew-Kwang, ‘What Should We Do About Future Generations? Impossibility of Parfit's Theory X’, Economics and Philosophy 5 (1989), pp. 135–253CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hurka, Thomas, ‘Value and Population Size’, Ethics 93 (1983), pp. 496–507CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sider, Ted, ‘Might Theory X Be a Theory of Diminishing Marginal Value?’, Analysis 51 (1991), pp. 265–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Rachels, Stuart, ‘Counterexamples to the Transitivity of Better Than’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76 (1998), pp. 71–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘A Set of Solutions to Parfit's Problems’, Nous 35 (2001), pp. 214–38; Temkin, Larry, ‘A Continuum Argument for Intransitivity’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 25 (1996), pp. 175–210CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Feldman, Fred, ‘Justice, Desert, and the Repugnant Conclusion’, Utilitarianism, Hedonism, and Desert (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 195–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 This stipulation also has the result that, according to justicism, world A+ would be worse than A (cf. Feldman, ‘Justice’, pp. 209–10). However, I remain persuaded, because of the considerations of section III.1 above, that justicism is wrong about this. Someone's being extremely praiseworthy and hence highly deserving cannot make it the case that it would be better if he did not exist, rather than existing and receiving a small benefit.

20 I have formulated the Repugnant Conclusion slightly differently from Parfit's (Reasons and Persons, p. 388) original formulation.

21 Anglin, Bill, ‘The Repugnant Conclusion’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7 (1977), pp. 745–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sikora, R. I., ‘Is It Wrong to Prevent the Existence of Future Generations?’, Obligations to Future Generations, ed. Sikora, R. I. and Barry, Brian (Philadelphia, 1978), pp. 112–66Google Scholar; Ng, ‘Future Generations’; Ng, ‘Welfarism and Utilitarianism: A Rehabilitation’, Utilitas 2 (1990), pp. 171–93; Attfield, Robin, The Ethics of Environmental Concern, 2nd edn. (Athens, Ga., 1991), pp. 127–30Google Scholar; Ryberg, Jesper, ‘Is the Repugnant Conclusion Repugnant?’, Philosophical Papers 25 (1996), pp. 161–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fotion, Nick, ‘Repugnant Thoughts About the Repugnant Conclusion Argument’, Contingent Future Persons, ed. Fotion, Nick and Heller, Jan C. (Dordrecht, 1997), pp. 85–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tännsjö, Torbjörn, ‘Why We Ought to Accept the Repugnant Conclusion’, Utilitas 14 (2002), pp. 339–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Broome, John, Weighing Lives (Oxford, 2004), pp. 210–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Huemer, ‘In Defence of Repugnance’.

22 See Rachels, ‘Counterexamples’, and Temkin, ‘Continuum’ (giving a variant of Rachels’ argument).

23 Temkin, ‘Intransitivity’, pp. 171–3.

24 This argument is from Donald Davidson, McKinsey, J. C. C. and Suppes, Patrick (‘Outlines of a Formal Theory of Value’, Philosophy of Science 22 (1955), pp. 140–60)Google Scholar, who credit Norman Dalkey.

25 Nozick, Robert, (The Nature of Rationality [Princeton, NJ, 1993], p. 140 n.)Google Scholar, Stuart Rachels (‘Counterexamples’, pp. 82–3), and Andreou, Chrisoula (‘Environmental Damage and the Paradox of the Self-Torturer’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 34 (2006), pp. 95–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar) question the implicit premise that it is always rational to choose the better of two options when one knows which option is better. None, however, appear to offer grounds for doubting this premise that are independent of the assumption of Intransitivity.

26 This is explicit in Broome's, John formulation of the Priority View (Weighing Goods: Equality, Uncertainty and Time (Oxford, 1991), pp. 179, 199–200)Google Scholar.

27 See the sources cited in n. 21 above.

28 Holmes, Oliver Wendell and Laski, Harold J., The Holmes–Laski Letters, vol. 2, ed. Howe, Mark DeWolfe (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), p. 942Google Scholar. Schoeck, Compare Helmut, Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior (New York, 1970), p. 231Google Scholar: ‘[T]he sense of equity, of justice and injustice[, is] inherent in man because of his capacity to envy’; Hayek, Friedrich, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago, 1960), p. 93Google Scholar: ‘[M]ost of the strictly egalitarian demands are based on nothing better than envy’. In my own informal surveys, about a third of undergraduate students feel that inequality is intrinsically bad, another third are unsure, and the rest feel that inequality is not intrinsically bad. This result must be taken with a grain of salt due to the surveys’ unscientific nature, as well as uncertainty regarding respondents’ understanding of the question. Nevertheless, I am inclined to doubt that the Egalitarian intuition is extremely widespread.

29 I would like to thank David Schmidtz, the other philosophers at the University of Arizona (where this article was presented as a paper) and the participants of the PEA Soup weblog for some stimulating discussions of the argument of this article.