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Prioritarian Welfare Functions -An Elaboration and Justification
Abstract
Apart from Rawls' maximin criterion, there are two main lines of correcting utilitarianism for considerations of distributional justice: egalitarianism (seeking to equalize utilities) and prioritarianism (giving more weight to improving the lot of those worse off). Though many people find prioritarianism appealing until now it has not been elaborated that much. The paper tries to help to fill several gaps left open. 1. A definition and mathematical distinction of egalitarian and prioritarian welfare functions will be given. 2. In an intuitive discussion of several candidates for prioritarian welfare functions one class of functions that are particularly apt to model prioritarian intuitions is filtered out, namely exponential functions. And some empirical findings are brought in for calibrating the functions' parameter for the degree of priority. 3. An internalistic justification of prioritarianism on the basis of sympathy is developed. Assuming an empirically founded (non-linear) function of our sympathy depending on the other person's well-being, it can be shown that prioritarianism optimises our sympathetic feelings.
... In IAMs, this would imply that poorer people are given a priority over richer people in terms of welfare, when deciding who should bear the burdens of mitigating climate change. It is different from the marginal utility of consumption described above, as the prioritarian parameters apply directly to well-being, not consumption (Lumer 2005;Adler 2011). 15 Prioritarian SWFs attach a weight to equality and, thus, have an egalitarian tendency. ...
This chapter explores how Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) can contribute to feasibility assessments of climate goals, building on the conceptual groundwork established in earlier chapters. It argues that feasibility judgments require considering all relevant constraints simultaneously and accounting for complex, dynamic pathways of change – strengths inherent to IAMs. Solvable scenarios within IAMs can serve as evidence for the feasibility of specific climate goals, but such evidential claims depend on context-sensitive background assumptions. The chapter critically examines current methods of evaluating these assumptions, arguing that existing practices of model evaluation in IAMs fall short. Empirical testing approaches, including “appeals to the past,” fail to provide robust support due to high uncertainty and misaligned epistemic aims. The chapter critiques one recent empirical framework for assessing feasibility with IAMs (Brutschin et al., 2021) in more detail, arguing that it does not adequately address these issues. The chapter argues that feasibility assessment must pay closer attention to value judgments. Bringing in the perspective of values in science will provide a more solid and transparent ground for assessing feasibility with IAMs.
... Der Prioritarismus ist von diversen Theoretikern entwickelt worden (u. a. Atkinson und Stiglitz 1980;Boadway und Bruce 1984;Lumer 1997aLumer , 2005bLumer , 2009McKerlie 1989McKerlie , 1994Nagel 1978;Parfit 1997 ...
... The idea of prioritarianism is supported e.g. by Nagel 1977 andParfit 1991;. Justification and quantitative specification: Lumer 2000, 589-632;Lumer 2006. Prioritarianism can be operationalized the simplest way with a concave moral desirability function: The x-axis shows the welfare of a whole life, the yaxis shows its moral desirability. ...
The first step of justification is to deduce,such norms,from even more general and abstract moral principles behind them. In the following, five such principles shall be presented, briefly motivated and differentiated from other critically competing principles. Subsequently, it shall be examined,what follows from them with respect to present problems ofgenerational justice. Principle 1: Ethical hedonism, welfare orientation: The welfare of human beings and more highly developed ,animals ,is the ,only thing intrinsically (i.e. in itself) morally ,relevant. “Welfare”here means the (individually sensed) well-being multiplied with its duration.1 Principle 1 determines ,what ,carries an intrinsic ,moral value or a ,moral value in itself (i.e. independent of its consequences) and what can be considered as a final moral goal. In other words, principle 1 expresses what is really important. Thus, other things than welfare – like income, material resources or stable ecosystems – are also important, but not in an intrinsic way but only for the reason and to the extent of influencing welfare. In the first place, the factual degree of influence ,,,,,,,,,,,,
... The name "prioritarian view" is younger, it goes back to: Parfit 1995. However, prioritarianism can also be justified quite differently, namely in an ethics of moral value as the moral value function stemming from sympathy: cf.Lumer <2000>/20092011. Introduction: The Relevance of Rational Decision Theory for Ethics ...
The dominant practice of AI alignment assumes (1) that preferences are an adequate representation of human values, (2) that human rationality can be understood in terms of maximizing the satisfaction of preferences, and (3) that AI systems should be aligned with the preferences of one or more humans to ensure that they behave safely and in accordance with our values. Whether implicitly followed or explicitly endorsed, these commitments constitute what we term a preferentist approach to AI alignment. In this paper, we characterize and challenge the preferentist approach, describing conceptual and technical alternatives that are ripe for further research. We first survey the limits of rational choice theory as a descriptive model, explaining how preferences fail to capture the thick semantic content of human values, and how utility representations neglect the possible incommensurability of those values. We then critique the normativity of expected utility theory (EUT) for humans and AI, drawing upon arguments showing how rational agents need not comply with EUT, while highlighting how EUT is silent on which preferences are normatively acceptable. Finally, we argue that these limitations motivate a reframing of the targets of AI alignment: Instead of alignment with the preferences of a human user, developer, or humanity-writ-large, AI systems should be aligned with normative standards appropriate to their social roles, such as the role of a general-purpose assistant. Furthermore, these standards should be negotiated and agreed upon by all relevant stakeholders. On this alternative conception of alignment, a multiplicity of AI systems will be able to serve diverse ends, aligned with normative standards that promote mutual benefit and limit harm despite our plural and divergent values.
Global justice is an exciting area of refreshing, innovative new ideas for a changing world facing significant challenges. Not only does work in this area often force us to rethink about ethics and political philosophy more generally, but its insights contain seeds of hope for addressing some of the greatest global problems facing humanity today. The Oxford Handbook of Global Justice has been selective in bringing together some of the most pressing topics and issues in global justice as understood by the leading voices from both established and rising stars across twenty-five new chapters. This Handbook explores severe poverty, climate change, egalitarianism, global citizenship, human rights, immigration, territorial rights, and much more.
‚Wunsch‘, ‚Präferenz‘, ‚Nutzen‘, ‚(nutzenaggregierende) moralische Wünschbarkeit‘ sind Begriffe, die in dieser Reihenfolge aufeinander aufbauen. Der Artikel folgt diesem definitorischen Aufbau und stellt diese Begriffe sowie die zugehörigen Begründungen vor. Der Zielpunkt ist die Darstellung von wohlfahrtsethischen Kriterien des Gemeinwohls, die die ‚moralische Wünschbarkeit‘ als Aggregation, z. B. Addition, von individuellen Nutzen definieren: Utilitarismus, Nutzenegalitarismus, Leximin, Prioritarismus.
This paper examines how people think about aiding others in a way that can inform both theory and practice. It uses data gathered from Kiva, an online, non-profit organization that allows individuals to aid other individuals around the world, to isolate intuitions that people find broadly compelling. The central result of the paper is that people seem to give more priority to aiding those in greater need, at least below some threshold. That is, the data strongly suggest incorporating both a threshold and a prioritarian principle into the analysis of what principles for aid distribution people accept. This conclusion should be of broad interest to aid practitioners and policy makers. It may also provide important information for political philosophers interested in building, justifying, and criticizing theories about meeting needs using empirical evidence.
Starting point The starting point of this paper is the following citation concerning the state of contemporary population ethics:Most discussion in population ethics has concentrated on how to evaluate populations in regard to their goodness, that is, how to order populations by the relations ‘is better than’ and ‘is as good as’. This field has been riddled with paradoxes which purport to show that our considered beliefs are inconsistent in cases where the number of people and their welfare varies. (Arrhenius 2004, 201)Type of problem The best known and most discussed example shattering our intuitions is Parfit's Mere Addition Paradox. This paper explores the potential of the Buddhist Truths to answer the following questions: What is at the source of the Mere Addition Paradox? and Why are paradoxes unavoidable in population ethics?Results The comparison of classical utilitarian and Buddhist intuitions demonstrates the close tie between intuitions and interests. The perplexing Buddhist intuition about non-existence can be explained (except for metaphysical reasons) by a radically different priority given to survival. The method of measuring the quality of life is not decisive for the existence of paradoxes; the Buddhist axiology changes but does not remove counter-intuitive combinations. If the conflict of interest (quantity versus quality) is described within a two-parameter model, it causes conflicting intuitions; in axiologies that favour quantity (utilitarianism) or quality (perfectionism), the conflicting intuitions inevitably lead to paradoxes. In order to find a compromise, one would have to find a universal interest and a corresponding universal intuition; the obvious candidate to meet this request is sympathy but, since there is no universal consensus on the desirable degree of sympathy, the normative force of such an approach is limited. Breaking out of the two-parameter model and accepting the incommensurability of certain qualities threatens the normative claim of population ethics.
Moralbegründungen schöpfen die zu begründenden Moralitätskriterien typischerweise aus einer Quelle wie z. B. Rationalität oder moralische Intuition. Ziel des Aufsatzes ist, zu klären, welche derartige Quelle zur triftigen Moralbegründung geeignet ist. (1) Formale Adäquatheitsbedingungen für triftige Moralbegründungen werden vorgestellt. (2) Nur ein rationalistischer Ansatz ist zur triftigen Moralbegründung im Sinne dieser Bedingungen geeignet. (3) Die Adäquatheitsbedingungen werden um Überlegungen zum Sinn einer sozial verbindlichen Moral erweitert, die ein prudentiell konsensualistisches Verständnis solch einer Moral nahelegen. (4) Unter den rationalistischen Konzeptionen führt nur eine prudentielle Verstärkung entscheidungstheoretischer Rationalitätskriterien zusammen mit einem Ansetzen an moralnahen Motiven (= prudentieller Altruismus), insbesondere am Mitgefühl, zu der konsensualistischen Moral. (5) Problem dieses Ansatzes ist jedoch, daß das zugrunde gelegte Motiv ziemlich schwach ist. Die Lösung dieses Problems (6) führt zu einer Historisierung der Moral. Moralbegründungen, d. h. ethische Begründungen von Moralkriterien, sind sehr vielgestaltig. Aber man kann bei ihnen typischerweise eine Quelle identifizieren, aus der sich das jeweilige Moralkriterium ergeben soll. Solche angenommenen Quellen der Moral sind z. B. die praktische Rationalität des Handelnden, moralische Intuitionen, moralische Gefühle oder grundlegende Sprachregeln. Ziel dieses Aufsatzes ist es, 1. anhand von Adäquatheitsbedingungen für Moralbegründungen zu untersuchen, welche solcher potentiellen Quellen der Moral zu einer triftigen Moralbegründung geeignet sind, und 2. die sich aus ihnen ergebende Art der materialen Ethik zu skizzieren. Anders gesagt: Adäquatheitsbedingungen zur Moralbegründung sind formal. Hier geht es darum, die ersten Schritte zur inhaltlichen Durchführung solch einer Begründung zu skizzieren, nämlich 1. (u. a.) mit Hilfe der Adäquatheitsbedingungen zu sondieren, aus welchen Quellen eine begründete Moral fließen kann, und 2. damit den Ansatz einer nach diesen Kriterien begründeten Moral festzulegen. Der resultierende Ansatz wird "prudentieller Altruismus" genannt.
Fairness from an egalitarianist standpoint is distributional equal-ity of chances. The general objection to social aggregation functions respecting fairness is the violation of the sure-thing principle and thus of dynamic con-sistency. We show that, nevertheless, in some situations dynamic consistency could still be established. This applies especially to situations, where the prob-abilities stem from randomization procedures of the agent in order to distribute an undividable good or limited resources by a fair procedure among a group of equally deserving people. We formulate a sufficient condition for a class of dynamically consistent procedures.
The economic value of environmental goods is commonly determined using the concepts of willingness to pay (WTP) or willingness to accept (WTA). However, the WTP/WTA observed in different countries (or between individuals) will differ according to socio-economic characteristics, in particular income. This notion of differentiated values for otherwise identical goods (say, a given reduction in mortality risk) has been criticized as unethical, most recently in the context of the 'social cost' chapter of the IPCC Second Assessment Report. These critics argue that, being a function of income, WTP/WTA estimates reflect the unfairness in the current income distribution, and for equity reasons uniform per-unit values should therefore be applied across individuals and countries. This paper analyses the role of equity in the aggregation of climate change damage estimates, using basic tools of welfare economics. It shows one way of how WTP/WTA estimates can be corrected in aggregation if the underlying income distribution is considered unfair. It proposes that in the aggregation process individual estimates be weighted with an equity factor derived from the social welfare and utility functions. Equity weighting can significantly increase aggregate (global) damage figures, although some specifications of weighting functions also imply reduced estimates. The paper also shows that while the postulate of uniform per-unit values is compatible with a wide range of 'reasonable' utility and welfare specifications, there are also cases where the common-value notion is not compatible with defensible welfare concepts. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1997
This paper tries to provide a complete list and classification of the motives for acting in accordance with morals, to explain the mechanisms underlying the less transparent among these motives, and to probe which of these motives are suited for justifying morals. (1) After giving reasons for the importance of an empirical theory of moral motives for ethics, and after specifying the exact question of the present study (2) a general model of moral action (3) and a main classification of the motives for acting morally is presented. (4) Self-transcendent motives, (5) motives close to morals, like sympathy and respect, (6) and moral motives in the narrow sense, which proceed from moral judgements, are scrutinized in detail. Only the motives near to morals and interest in cooperation but not the moral motives in the narrow sense are suited for justifying morals. (7) A concluding sketch of the development of moral judgements shows that only motives near to morals and interest in cooperation (but not e.g. pure reason) are also the sources of autonomously developed moral criteria.
This 1988 volume is a collection of thirteen seminal essays on ethics, free will, and the philosophy of mind. The essays deal with such central topics as freedom of the will, moral responsibility, the concept of a person, the structure of the will, the nature of action, the constitution of the self, and the theory of personal ideals. By focusing on the distinctive nature of human freedom, Professor Frankfurt is able to explore fundamental problems of what it is to be a person and of what one should care about in life.
The question for those who are concerned with inequalities is not whether to be an egalitarian or a prioritarian. That choice is mislabelled and misconceived. The relevant question is why distributive inequalities are of more than merely instrumental importance with respect to unrelated goals, such as maximizing well-being. The answer is that lessening inequalities in well-being serves a fundamental commitment to equality of moral status. Depending on the circumstances and what is to be distributed, the underlying concern with equality of moral status (coupled with non-distributional concerns about deprivation) might make one resemble a prioritarian, a non-prioritarian egalitarian, or neither.
Both egalitarianism and prioritarianism give value to equality. Prioritarianism has an additively separable value function whereas egalitarianism does not. I show that in some cases prioritarianism and egalitarianism necessarily have different implications: I describe two alternatives
G
and
H
such that egalitarianism necessarily implies
G
is better than
H
whereas prioritarianism necessarily implies
G
and
H
are equally good. I also raise a doubt about the intelligibility of prioritarianism.
In A Theory of Justice , John Rawls assumes that the principles of justice are for individuals in a society, and in general he assumes that the society is an ethnically homogeneous state. He thus follows the tradition associated with the dominant form of the social contract theory, which focuses on the individual and the state. His assumptions neglect the fact that almost all states are ethnically plural or heterogeneous, and that many of them confer special status and rights on ethnic groups as collective entities; for example, many of them confer special status and rights on indigenous groups, on groups disadvantaged by prior discrimination, and on minorities and other groups conceded a right to survive as distinct cultural entities. Status and rights for groups necessarily mean differentiation among individuals depending on their membership; and this in turn means that a theory of justice that focuses on the individual and neglects the group both fails to account for existing practices and fails to give guidance where the practices are at issue.
It is argued that Bayesian decision theory is a solution of an important philosophical problem, viz. the problem of how to define rational behavior under risk and uncertainty. The author has shown in earlier papers that if we take the Bayesian rationality postulates seriously, and take an individualistic point of view about social welfare, then our social welfare function must be a linear function of individual utilities: indeed, it must be their arithmetic mean. The present paper criticizes Diamond’s and Sen’s contention that one of the Bayesian postulates (viz. the sure-thing principle) does not apply to social decisions, even though it may apply to individual decisions. It also criticizes Sen’s proposal of making social welfare a nonlinear function of individual utilities. The social welfare function proposed by the author depends on interpersonal utility comparisons. The use of such comparisons is defended. It is also argued that anybody who feels that the utilitarian (i.e., linear) form of the social welfare function is not egalitarian enough, should reject the author’s individualism axiom, instead of trying to reject the Bayesian rationality axioms. However, this would be equivalent to giving egalitarian considerations a priority in many cases over humanitarian considerations. Finally, the paper discusses the reasons why even full agreement on the mathematical form of the social welfare function would not give rise to a Utopian state of moral consensus: moral controversies arising from disagreements about what predictions to make about future empirical facts would still remain.
This paper questions the distinction between egalitarianism and prioritarianism, arguing that it is important to separate the reasons for particular social preferences from the contents of these preferences, that it is possible to like equality and separability simultaneously, and that some egalitarians and prioritarians may therefore share the same social preferences (though for different reasons). The case of risky prospects, for which Broome has proposed an interesting example meant to show that egalitarians and prioritarians cannot share the same preferences, is scrutinized. The levelling down objection is also examined.
1. SUMMARY A ND P RELIMINARY R EMARKS Subsequently I shall develop a metaphysics-free normative model of individual ethical decision making for which a universal purview is claimed. I call it 'utilitarianism incorporating justice' (= UJ). In addition, UJ also allows to make ethical post factum assessments of actions. In contradistinction to normative models of individual rational decision making which permit the decision maker to evaluate possible actions by whatever criteria he chooses all ethical decision models are under an obvious constraint: The values of actions and their deontic status have to be determined exclusively by ethical criteria. The decisive question the different answers to which classify all systems which are presently on the fair of ethical decision models is then, of course, which are the right criteria one should apply in purely ethical decision making. In Section 2 I shall give my answer to this question. The criteria of moral rightness of an action presented there in the form of basic ethical requirements permit to construe UJ. As insinuates the name of this model UJ essentially is the result of enriching classical actutilitarianism (AU) by certain non-utility ingredients called 'elements of justice'. Formally this is accomplished by suitable weaving around the additive AU-utility-aggregation function a bunch of 'parameters of justice'. These aspects of justice the neglect of which by AU, according to a widely held opinion, has morally inacceptable implications are thus introduced into preference aggregation ethics. In concrete decision making all the variables of the ethical all-purpose optimisation principle thus gained have to be replaced by situationspecific constants. Subsequent to the technical development of this principle some of its logical implications will be exposed in the form of theorems mainly characterising the distributive properties of UJ. Before carrying out this programme in some detail let me already here draw the attention to some distinctive features of UJ.
An axiomatic basis for a social preference ordering with interval-scaled utility levels satisfying the principles of anonymity and pareto superiority is elaborated. The ordering is required to be sensitive to distributional equality: Redistribution of utility income from poor to rich persons without changing their social rank should lead to a superior evaluation. The axiom of separability is weakened in order to make it compatible with distributional equality. We prove that every continuous ordering satisfying the upper axioms can be represented by a utility function which is positively linear on the convex cone of rank-ordered utility vectors. A modified unnormalized Gini coefficient is one possible choice, but it contradicts, as well as related proposals, the principle of adequacy of means for some distribution problems.
The first part of this paper discusses various theories of distributive justice such as utilitarianism, Rawlsianism, approaches within cooperative bargaining theory, and the notion of fair allocations. The focus is on the different informational bases used in these solution concepts. The second part reports some results from empirical investigations where a particular distributive problem had to be solved by undergraduate students of economics and business administration. The question we are posing is whether the respondents' behaviour can, to some extent at least, be rationalized in terms of utilitarian ethics.
As the volume of research on quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) has increased, concern has begun to be expressed about the equity aspects of resource allocation decisions based on the results of this research. This paper suggests that a common theme running through the criticisms of the QALY approach is a concern about inequality. It also suggests that the method for incorporating distributional concerns which is currently being pursued by advocates of the QALY approach will only ever capture concerns other than a concern about inequality. The paper suggests a method for incorporating both sets of concerns into resource allocation decisions.
There is little evidence on unemployment duration and its determinants in developing countries. This study is on the duration aspect of unemployment in a developing country, Turkey. We analyze the determinants of the probability of leaving unemployment for employment or the hazard rate. The effects of the personal and household characteristics and the local labor market conditions are examined. The analyses are carried out for men and women separately. The results indicate that the nature of unemployment in Turkey exhibits similarities to the unemployment in both the developed and the developing countries.
- John C Harsanyi
Harsanyi, John C. (1955): Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility. In:
Journal of Political Economy 63. Pp. 309-321. -Reprinted in: John C. Harsanyi: Essays on Ethics, Social
Behaviour, and Scientific Explanation. Dordrecht; Boston: Reidel 1976. Pp. 6-23.
- John C Harsanyi
Harsanyi, John C. (1975a): Can the Maximin Principle Serve as a Basis for Morality? A Critique of John Rawls's
Theory. In: American Political Science Review 69. Pp. 594-606. -Reprinted in: John C. Harsanyi: Essays on
Ethics, Social Behaviour, and Scientific Explanation. Dordrecht; Boston: Reidel 1976. Pp. 37-63.
Measuring the Size of the Benefit and Its Moral Weight
- Klint Jensen
Klint Jensen, Karsten (1996): Measuring the Size of the Benefit and Its Moral Weight. In: Wlodek Rabinowicz (ed.):
Preference and Value. Preferentialism in Ethics. (= Studies in Philosophy 1996:1). Lund: Dept. of Philosophy,
Lund University. Pp. 114-145.
Utilex -Verteilungsgerechtigkeit auf Empathiebasis
- Christoph Lumer
Lumer, Christoph (1997): Utilex -Verteilungsgerechtigkeit auf Empathiebasis. In: Peter Koller;
The Greenhouse. A Welfare Assessment and Some Morals
- Christoph Lumer
Lumer, Christoph (2002a): The Greenhouse. A Welfare Assessment and Some Morals. Lanham, Md.; New York;
- Thomas Nagel
Nagel, Thomas (1978): Equality. Tanner Lecture, Stanford University 1977. In: Critica. Pp. 3-27. -Reprinted in:
Thomas Nagel: Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P. 1979. Pp. 106-127.
Equality or Priority? The Lindley Lecture
- Derek Parfit
Parfit, Derek (1991): Equality or Priority? The Lindley Lecture, University of Kansas, November 21, 1991. Kansas:
University of Kansas. 4°; 42 pp. -Reprinted in: Matthew Clayton;
Exploring Practical Philosophy. From Action to Values. Aldershot: Ashgate
- Wlodek Rabinowicz
Rabinowicz, Wlodek (2001): Prioritarianism and Uncertainty. On the Interpersonal Addition Theorem and the Priority
View. In: Egonsson; Josefson; Petersson; Ronnow-Rasmussen (eds.): Exploring Practical Philosophy. From
Action to Values. Aldershot: Ashgate. Pp. 139-165.
Distributive Justice. A Constructive Critique of the Utilitarian Theory of Distribution. Indianapolis; New York; Kansas City: Bobbs-Merrill. xvi
- Nicholas Rescher
Rescher, Nicholas (1966): Distributive Justice. A Constructive Critique of the Utilitarian Theory of Distribution.
Indianapolis; New York; Kansas City: Bobbs-Merrill. xvi; 166 pp.
Enlarged edition with a substantial annexe 'On Economic Inequality after a Quarter Century
- Amartya Sen
Sen, Amartya [Kumar] (1973): On Economic Inequality. Enlarged edition with a substantial annexe 'On Economic
Inequality after a Quarter Century'. Oxford: Clarendon 1997. xiii; 260 pp.