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Weighing Goods. Equality, Uncertainty and Time
... In recent years, a group of philosophers have taken up a position contrary to the hybrid view. According to time neutralists, near and future bias should not be evaluated 1 While discount rates feature prominently in economic models of decision making, there is an important difference between the discounting of positive and negative experiences-which John Broome (1991) calls "pure" discounting-and the discounting of commodities used by economists in cost-benefit analysis. This paper concerns pure discounting. ...
... But none of these things justifies our preferring a lesser present to a greater future good simply because of its nearer temporal position." (See also Lewis (1946); Nagel (1970); Broome (1991); and Brink (2011)). 3 Explicit supporters of the rationality of hedonic future bias include Prior (1959); Hare (2007Hare ( , 2008, and Heathwood (2008). ...
In recent years, a disagreement has erupted between two camps of philosophers about the rationality of bias toward the near (“near bias”) and bias toward the future (“future bias”). According to the traditional hybrid view, near bias is rationally impermissible, while future bias is either rationally permissible or obligatory. Time neutralists, meanwhile, argue that the hybrid view is untenable. They claim that those who reject near bias should reject both biases and embrace time neutrality. To date, experimental work has focused on future-directed near bias. The primary aim of this paper is to shed light on the debate by investigating past-directed near bias. If people treat the past and future differently with respect to near bias, by being future-directed but not past-directed near biased, then this supports a particular version of the hybrid view: temporal metaphysic hybridism. If people treat the past and future the same with respect to near bias, then this supports a simple version of time neutralism, which explains both future bias and near bias in terms of the functioning of a single mechanism: the anticipatory/retrospectory mechanism. Our results undermine the claim that people are future-directed, but not past-directed, near biased, and hence do not support temporal metaphysic hybridism. They also fail to support simple time-neutralism; instead, they suggest that there are multiple mechanisms that differently shape future- and past-directed preferences.
... But value rankings ranging over strategies are typically avoided. 76 A discussion of important related topics can be found in (Broome 1991;1999). 77 Modern representative utility is a dimensionless ranking rather than measuring a substantive quality like "pleasure". ...
... But value rankings ranging over strategies are typically avoided. 76 A discussion of important related topics can be found in (Broome 1991;1999). 77 Modern representative utility is a dimensionless ranking rather than measuring a substantive quality like "pleasure". ...
Classifying accounts of institutionalized social norms that rely on individual rule-following as ‘sociological’ and accounts based on individual opportunity-seeking behavior as ‘economic’, the paper rejects purely economic accounts on theoretical grounds. Explaining the realworkings of institutionalized social norms and social order exclusively in terms of self-regarding opportunityseeking individual behavior is impossible. An integrated sociological approach to the so-called Hobbesian problem of social order that incorporates opportunityseeking along with rule-following behavior is necessary. Such an approach emerges on the horizon if economic methods are put to good sociological use on the basis of recent experimental economic findings on rule-following behavior.
... For instance, people can be asked whether they would prefer to live a shorter amount of time in perfect health or a longer amount of time with some disease. 12 Because this approach allows respondents to draw upon their own goals and standards in expressing these preferences, it respects citizens' differing views about the good life, thus arguably satisfying the moral justifications for using subjective measures in liberal democracies. It also provides a way to put these otherwise incommensurable judgments about the subjective impact and value of different health states on more equivalent footing. ...
... For detailed discussions of the challenges of interpersonal comparability, see, for instance, Elster and Roemer[25], Hausman[33], Boot[9], Chang[17] and Broome[12].Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved. ...
Proposals for health care cost containment emphasize high-value care as a way to control spending without compromising quality. When used in this context, ‘value’ refers to outcomes in relation to cost. To determine where health spending yields the most value, it is necessary to compare the benefits provided by different treatments. While many studies focus narrowly on health gains in assessing value, the notion of benefit is sometimes broadened to include overall quality of life. This paper explores the implications of using subjective quality of life measures for value assessment. This approach is claimed to be more respectful of patients and better capture the perspectival nature of quality of life. Even if this is correct, though, subjective measurement also raises challenging issues of interpersonal comparability when used to study health outcomes. Because such measures do not readily distinguish benefits due to medical interventions from benefits due to personal or other factors, they are not easily applied to the assessment of treatment value. I argue that when the outcome of interest in value assessment is broadened to include quality of life, the cost side of these measures should also be broadened. I show how one philosophical theory of well-being, Jason Raibley’s “agential flourishing” theory, can be adapted for use in quality of life research to better fit the needs and aims of value assessment in health care. Finally, I briefly note some implications of this argument for debates about fairness in health care allocations.
... The common view seems to be that allocating equal chances is valuable not only for instrumental reasons (I refer to this view as the "Justice includes Chances View" or JCV). Specifically, many hold that when several potential beneficiaries, who are equal in every relevant respect, may benefit from an indivisible good, we should allocate this good in a way that awards each of them an equal chance (to receive the benefit) (see, e.g., Thomson 1973, 375;Taurek 1977, 303-12;Donagan 1984, 307;Broome 1984, 45-46;Broome 1991b;Griffin 1986, 208-13;Statman 1995, ch. 1;Kornhauser and Sager 1988;Timmermann 2004, 108;Hooker 2005, 348;Cohen 2008, 333;Saunders 2008, 359-61;Saunders 2009, 280, 285;Stark 2008, 368;Peterson 2010;Stone 2011;Temkin 2011, 71-75;Tadros 2011, 203;Parfit 2012, 431;Burri 2015, 146;Vong 2015). ...
... Beyond its intuitive appeal, there seem to be two more theoretical rationales, or types of rationale, for the JCV that are common. 5 The first is based on a concern for the fairness of the distribution in terms of the interests of the potential beneficiaries: in the paradigmatic case, equal chances are required since this is fair to the potential beneficiaries (Broome 1991b). In contrast, another rationale reflects a concern for the impartiality of the agent: equal chances are required in order to ensure that the agent does not deliberate in a way that is flawed, for example, because she considers a fact that is morally insignificant (a bad reason) or she is (otherwise) biased (Stone 2011, ch. ...
... This, however, is a subtle issue and adequate treatment is far beyond the scope of this paper. See Broome 2017Broome , 2004 for further reading on the moral weighing of goods and lives. 7 Again, there may be moral value to preventing the robot from being captured or destroyed, but that value will (arguably) not exceed the moral value of a human life. ...
... The proposal for the solution of the third problem is to study empirically how the degree of other persons' well-being influences our empathy. 2 More precisely: In the following an empirical model is developed, that calculates which extent of empathy (i.e. the integral of positive and negative empathy over time) occurs depending on the average well-being of an object of empathy. The expected extent of empathy is then the hedonistic and internalist moral reason for empathy-optimizing actions; and this empathy is also the basis and source of the internalist morality: The proposal equates the expected extent of empathy -which is identical to its expected hedonic desirability for the empathetic subject -with the moral value of the object's underlying well-being. ...
The article develops an internalist justification of welfare ethics based on empathy. It takes up Hume's and Schopenhauer's internalistic (but not consistently developed) justification approach via empathy, but tries to solve three of their problems: 1. the varying strength of empathy depending on the proximity to the object of empathy, 2. the unclear metaethical foundation, 3. the absence of a quantitative model of empathy strength.
1. As a solution to the first problem, the article proposes to limit the foundation of welfare ethics to certain types of empathy. 2. In response to the second problem, an internalistic metaethical conception of the justification of moral principles is outlined, the result of which is: The moral value of the well-being of persons is identical to the expected extent of (positive and negative) empathy arising from this well-being. 3. The contribution to the solution of the third problem and focus of the article is an empirical model of the (subject's) expected extent of empathy depending on (an object's) well-being. According to this model, the extent of empathy is not proportional to the expected empathy, but follows a concave function and is therefore prioritarian. Accordingly, the article provides a sketch of an internalist justification of prioritarianism.
... The locations problem in infinite ethics concerns the moral status of people relative to points in time, states of nature, and other categories of potential bearers of value. Following Broome (1991), the literature refers to such potential value bearers as the locations. The challenge is to determine which category of value bearers are of ultimate moral significance: the ultimate locations, for short. 1 One way to formulate this challenge is to ask over which locations the Pareto axiom is most appropriately imposed. 2 For utilitarians, the challenge is to describe the objects whose utilities should be included in the sum that determines which act brings about the greatest total utility. ...
The locations problem in infinite ethics concerns the relative moral status of different categories of potential bearers of value, the primary examples of which are people and points in time. The challenge is to determine which category of value bearers are of ultimate moral significance: the ultimate locations, for short. This paper defends the view that the ultimate locations are 'people at times'. A person at a time is not a specific person, but the person born at a specific point in time (de dicto). The main conclusion of the paper is that the unsettling implications of the time- and person-centered approaches to infinite ethics can be avoided by taking people at times as the ultimate locations. Most notably, a broad class of worlds that are incomparable using the person-centered approach can be strictly ranked.
... If one's interest is directed at population-level, and perspectives for improving overall wellbeing (as is typical of 14 For a formalized definition, and further specification, of separability, see Bader (2016). See also Broome (1991) for a similar notion. Raibley's (2012) understanding of holism is different, as he takes it to imply that momentary wellbeing and wellbeing over time are different thing (as does Velleman 1991), whereas our proposal allows for wellbeing over time to be calculated from the totality of factors and their interaction. ...
Hedonic adaptation has come to play a large role in wellbeing studies and in practical philosophy more generally. We argue that hedonic adaptation has been too closely assimilated to sensory adaptation. Sensation and selective attention do indeed play a role in adaptation; but so do judgment, articulation, contextualization and background assumptions, as well as coping strategies and features of one’s social and physical environment. Hence the notion of hedonic adaptation covers not a single uniform phenomenon, but a whole range of different processes and mechanisms. We present a taxonomy of different forms of hedonic adaptation, pointing especially to the importance of coping strategies and socially supported adaptation, which have been overlooked or misdescribed by adaptation theory, but implicitly recognized by empirical research. We further argue that the differences between types adaptive processes have ramifications for normative theories. Adaptation can work both for good and for bad, depending on the psychological and contextual details. Acknowledging the many forms of hedonic adaptation, and the ubiquitous role of mutual adjustments of values, standards of judgment, emotional tendencies, behavior and environmental factors in achieving wellbeing also gives support to a more complex and dynamic view of wellbeing as such.
... In our environment, the Pareto principles are the same as the principles of personal good byBroome (1991). Some authors such asMcCarthy (2006McCarthy ( , 2008 use this terminology. ...
In this paper, we reexamine the axiomatic foundation of prioritarianism in the problem of evaluating distributions of well-being. We introduce an axiom of priority based on the Priority View by Parfit (1991) and study its implications to equality, impartiality, and prioritarian social evaluation criteria. We also consider the importance of other axioms such as Pareto principles and continuity to prioritarian criteria.
... The supporters of the sure-thing principle, notably Broome (1991), reply that this popular preference don't conflict with the sure-thing principle, since the outcomes of the options have not been correctly individuated to take account of feelings people may have when faced with different choices. For example, for the evaluation between F and G, if G is selected, people might deeply regret their decisions. ...
In this article, I critique a moral argument developed in Frances Kamm’s Intricate Ethics: Rights, Responsibilities, and Permissible Harm. The argument, which I label the Best Outcome Argument, aims to criticize the Taurekian idea that it is not worse if more people die than if fewer do in conflict situations, where it is hard to distinguish individuals from one another solely by reference to the relative strength of their claims. I argue that the Best Outcome Argument is flawed for three reasons: (1) the symmetry feature defined by the impartiality principle holds only in a limited class of conflict situations; (2) individuals should be treated in a consistent way throughout the whole process of reasoning; (3) comparative evaluations gained in different contexts, at least in some cases, cannot be used in one and the same argument.
... 663-4. 17 Broome 1984Broome , 1991 choose A. 18 We can conclude, thus, that there is no good reason to include a principle of ex ante egalitarianism that requires equality of ex ante utility. 19 ...
... 663-4. 17 Broome 1984Broome , 1991 choose A. 18 We can conclude, thus, that there is no good reason to include a principle of ex ante egalitarianism that requires equality of ex ante utility. 19 ...
... This, however, is a subtle issue and adequate treatment is far beyond the scope of this paper. See Broome 2017Broome , 2004 for further reading on the moral weighing of goods and lives. 7 Again, there may be moral value to preventing the robot from being captured or destroyed, but that value will (arguably) not exceed the moral value of a human life. ...
Warfare is becoming increasingly automated, from automatic missile defense systems to micro-UAVs (WASPs) that can maneuver through urban environments with ease, and each advance brings with it ethical questions in need of resolving. Proponents of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) provide varied arguments in their favor, ranging from claims that LAWS will be more effective to arguments that they will be more moral warfighters than flesh-and-blood soldiers. However, the arguments only point in favor of autonomous weapons systems, failing to demonstrate why such systems should be lethal. In this paper I argue that if one grants the proponents' points in favor of LAWS, then, contrary to what might be expected, this leads to the conclusion that it would be both immoral and illegal to deploy lethal autonomous weapons, because the features that speak in favor of LAWS also undermine the need for them to be programmed to take lives. In particular, I argue that such systems, if lethal, would violate the moral and legal principle of necessity, which forbids the use of weapons that impose superfluous injury or unnecessary harm. I conclude by highlighting that the argument is not against autonomous weapons per se, but only against lethal autonomous weapons.
... Traditional intertemporal discount rates and weighting functions are replaced with a more dynamic and humanistic approach to capture intergenerational transfers paying attention to the need of subjective time discounting and social conscientiousness (Puaschunder, 2016a, b). Building on behavioral decision sciences and humane natural 'principles of personal good' (Broome, 1991;Laibson, 1997); behavioral economics insights on intergenerational equity find social responsibility and future orientation as prerequisites of intergenerationally-conscientious decision making (Wade-Benzoni & Tost, 2009;Puaschunder, 2016c;Puaschunder & Schwarz, 2012). ...
... For example, the order might reflect a person's actual or her idealised preferences. Or the order might reflect how good outcomes are relative to some objective welfare standard (Broome 1995). I here stick with a preference view, according to which we rank outcomes according to a person's preferences. ...
This is a preprint version of an article that is forthcoming in: Ethics (2019)
Abstract: The nudge approach seeks to improve people's decisions through small changes in their choice environments. Nudge policies often work through psychological mechanisms that deviate from traditional notions of rationality. Because of that, some object that nudging treats people as irrational. Such treatment might be disrespectful in itself and might crowd out more empowering policies. I defend nudging against these objections. By defending a non-standard, ecological model of rationality, I argue that nudging is not only compatible with rational agency but can even support it. Accordingly, a concern with rationality speaks for more rather than less public policy nudging.
... Traditional intertemporal discount rates and weighting functions are replaced with a more dynamic and humanistic approach to capture intergenerational transfers paying attention to the need of subjective time discounting page 2 of 29 and social conscientiousness (Puaschunder, 2016a, b). Building on behavioral decision sciences and humane natural 'principles of personal good' (Broome, 1991;Laibson, 1997); behavioral economics insights on intergenerational equity find social responsibility and future orientation as prerequisites of intergenerationally-conscientious decision making (Wade-Benzoni & Tost, 2009;Puaschunder, 2016c;Puaschunder & Schwarz, 2012). ...
... Whether the utilitarian criterion is actually appropriate in the context of risk, and whether the veil-of-ignorance idea is a good guide to think about redistribution, are two hotly debated topics in the literature. On the first issue, there are critics who point to the lack of attention of utilitarianism to inequalities, both ex ante (Diamond 1967) and ex post (Broome 1991). On the second issue, Dworkin (2000) has developed a theory of justice around the idea of mimicking what an insurance market would produce if individuals' characteristics were insurable from behind a veil of ignorance. ...
The achievements and limitations of the classical theory of optimal labor-income taxation based on social welfare functions are now well known. Even though utilitarianism still dominates public economics, recent interest has arisen for broadening the normative approach and making room for fairness principles such as desert or responsibility. Fairness principles sometimes provide immediate recommendations about the relative weights to assign to various income ranges, but in general require a careful choice of utility representations embodying the relevant interpersonal comparisons. The main message of this paper is that the traditional tool of welfare economics, the social welfare function framework, is flexible enough to incorporate many approaches, from egalitarianism to libertarianism.
... The prescriptive or regulatory approach, sometimes referred to as the "ethical approach", supposes SRTP is determined based on ethical motivations, and can be set to zero or less than zero [33][34][35][36][37][38][39]. SRTP is defined on the basis of the "Equation Ramsey" after Frank Ramsey, in which ρ and θ (the elasticity of the marginal utility) are decided and normally chosen in relation to ethical considerations, and in particular g C (t) (the expected rate of growth of per capita consumption-income), identified on the basis of empirical observations regarding the growth of consumption (i.e., it is a function of technological progress and the accumulation of resources in the country), determines SRTP at a certain time. ...
Although floods, as well as other natural disasters, can be considered as relevant causes of intra-generational inequalities, frequent catastrophes and the resulting damage to the territory can be seen as a consequence of a generalized indifference about future. Land protection is one of the societal issues typically concerning inter-generational solidarity, involving the administrative system in the implementation of proactive policies. In the last three decades, the widespread demand for subsidiarity has made local communities more and more independent, so that attention to the long-term effects—typically concerning the territorial system as a whole at geographical scale—has been dispersed, and the proactive policies that come from the central government have become more ineffective. Regarding the case of the 2009 flood in the Fiumedinisi-Capo Peloro river basin in North Eastern Sicily, we propose an economic valuation of the land protection policy. This valuation, compared to the cost of recovery of the damaged areas, can provide helpful information on the decision-making process concerning the trade-off between reactive and proactive land policy. The economic value of land protection was calculated by means of the method of the imputed preferences, to obtain a real measure of the social territorial value from the point of view of the harmony between social system and environment. This method consists of an estimate based on the attribution of the expenditures according to the importance of the different areas. Since the value of land protection has been calculated by discounting the expenditures stream, some considerations about the economic significance of the proactive policy are referred to the role played by the social discount rate in the inter-temporal economic calculation.
... However, this feature exposes their results to the criticisms that are typically made against each of the approaches, specifically, the violation of ex ante Pareto in the ex post approach and the violation of state-wise dominance in the ex ante approach. On this basis, and following the ex post approach proposed by Hammond (1983) and Broome (1991), Fleurbaey (2010) proposes, in the context of risk, a social welfare criterion that behaves as an ex ante criterion in cases where risk generates no inequalities, as an ex post criterion in cases where the final allocation of utilities to individuals is known ex ante; otherwise, the social welfare criterion is a smooth combination of the two approaches to equality. It is worth noting that, though the proposed welfare criterion violates ex ante Pareto, it satisfies both ex ante Pareto and ex ante equality in cases where both prospects are either riskless (that is, when each individual obtains the same units of utility, independent of the state of nature) or egalitarian (that is, when individuals obtain the same units of utility in each realized state of nature). ...
This paper aims to address two issues related to simultaneous aggregation of utilities and beliefs. The first one is related to how to integrate both inequality and uncertainty considerations into social decision making. The second one is related to how social decision should take disagreements in beliefs into account. To accomplish this, whereas individuals are assumed to abide by Savage model’s of subjective expected utility, society is assumed to prescribe, either to each individual when the ex ante individual well-being is favored or to itself when the ex post individual well-being is favored, acting in accordance with the maximin expected utility theory of Gilboa and Schmeidler (J Math Econ 18:141–153, 1989). Furthermore, it adapts an ex ante Pareto-type condition proposed by Gayer et al. (J Legal Stud 43:151–171, 2014), which says that a prospect Pareto dominates another one if the former gives a higher expected utility than the latter one, for each individual, for all individuals’ beliefs. In the context where the ex ante individual welfare is favored, our ex ante Pareto-type condition is shown to be equivalent to social utility taking the form of a MaxMinMin social welfare function, as well as to the individual set of priors being contained within the range of individual beliefs. However, when the ex post individual welfare is favored, the same Pareto-type condition is shown to be equivalent to social utility taking the form of a MaxMinMin social welfare function, as well as to the social set of priors containing only weighted averages of individual beliefs.
... It is relatively easy to see that one's view about personal identity may determine to whom the subscripts of the individual utility functions refer. For instance, Parfit's reductionist view of personal identity naturally leads to a "complete utilitarian" social welfare function according to which social states are ranked on the basis of the sum of the utilities of sub-personal selves (Broome, 1991). If indeed personal identity does not matter and thus has no axiological relevance, then there is clearly a case against taking the persons as the unit for the utility measures. ...
This paper argues about the importance to reflect over what constitutes the identity of the economic agent, both from the perspective of positive and normative economics. Regarding the former, we suggest that several aspects of social and personal identity are essential to explain market coordination on the basis of the existence of communities. Regarding the latter, we claim that the evaluation of social states through the aggregation of individual utilities depends on a commitment over an account of who the economic agent is.
With the increasing use of algorithms in high-stakes areas such as criminal justice and health has come a significant concern about the fairness of prediction-based decision procedures. In this article I argue that a prominent class of mathematically incompatible performance parity criteria can all be understood as applications of John Broome’s account of fairness as the proportional satisfaction of claims. On this interpretation these criteria do not disagree on what it means for an algorithm to be fair. Rather they express different understandings of what grounds a claim to a good being allocated by an algorithmic decision procedure. I then argue that an important implication of the Broomean interpretation is that it strengthens the case for outcome-based criteria. Finally, I consider how a version of the levelling-down objection to performance parity criteria arises within the Broomean account.
The goal of this research was to assess, if the current legal framework of obligations related to personal data breach under GDPR are purposefully applicable also in the context of internet of things and if so, then which changes can help to overcome eventual discovered challenges or obstacles to it. This issue is studied from four perspectives. The introduction to the topic is from the cyber security perspective. The term personal data breach is defined and explained in relation to the term security incident. Next are presented possible forms of personal data breach, offered evidence for the scope and frequency of this phenomenon and outlined the future trend of its development. Pursuant to that the potential harm for individuals from personal data breach is explained. After that, the topic is approached from the legal perspective. Within it is presented a comprehensive analysis of the legal frameworks with obligations aimed at prevention or mitigation of personal data breach in the EU, as well as in the United States. These are then discussed with the aim to identify challenges and limits applicable to them. The next chapter introduces the impact of technological change of the context, which is defined by the term internet of things. The attention is focused on the new challenges, which are brought by it to personal data processing. The variety of situations, which fall under this term, is captured through three partial scenarios: automated machine-to-machines communication, smart city environment and change in the role of microenterprises. These views are completed with an economic perspective. This is used for modelling the decision-making of the obliged parties regarding their compliance with the obligations related to personal data breach. Subsequently, the presented perspectives are merged, the obtained findings regarding personal data breach in the context of internet of things are summarized and then the possible solutions for the discovered challenges of compliance with the respective obligations are discussed.
Presentation of my book, Keynes on uncertainty and tragic happiness, Complexity and expectations, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021
ROPE WEBSeminar on 9th November 2021
link to the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgfPS3wHi28
This paper is about the role of interpersonal comparisons in Harsanyi’s aggregation theorem. Harsanyi interpreted his theorem to show that a broadly utilitarian theory of distribution must be true even if there are no interpersonal comparisons of well‐being. How is this possible? The orthodox view is that it is not. Some argue that the interpersonal comparability of well‐being is hidden in Harsanyi’s premises. Others argue that it is a surprising conclusion of Harsanyi’s theorem, which is not presupposed by any one of the premises. I argue instead that Harsanyi was right: his theorem and its weighted‐utilitarian conclusion do not require interpersonal comparisons of well‐being. The key to making sense of this possibility is to treat Harsanyi’s weights as dimensional constants rather than dimensionless numbers.
This chapter retraces Keynes’s way of reasoning on measure and on the role of tragic irreducible conflicts and dilemmas in his approach to international relations. The chapter shows how Keynes’s approach is a constant from his early Indian Currency and Finance (1913) to the General Theory and on to his Plan for Bretton Woods, the Clearing Union and his 1945 Memorandum. It also devotes great attention to the concept of the ‘fear of goods’ (a concept which stands for the love of money); a concept that Keynes borrows from mercantilism and he uses against mercantilist practices. This chapter again shows Keynes’s anti-utilitarian attitude and his dislike for the hoarding of money. Keynes is a moral scientist, a promoter of happiness scathingly critical of the love of money. The final part of the chapter is devoted to the current discussion on global imbalances and the euro-zone and to what Keynes would have proposed to overcome these global imbalances and the conditions for their reduction, had he been alive today.
This chapter deals with the centrality of Greek tragedy in Keynes’s thought and in shaping his way of reasoning. It shows how the tragic idea of moral and rational irreducible conflicts and dilemmas and the Aristotelian idea of pluralism, heterogeneity and variety of values, claims and reasons are at the root of Keynes’s idea of uncertainty. This is also connected with his philosophy of measure and his idea of complexity as organic interdependence.
Куманова, Александра. Game- и play-феноменология : двукнижие. Кн. 2, SOCRATICA. Александр Васильевич Мамонтов : game- и play-феноменология информационного пространства : юбил. энциклопед. кн. – компендиум по информ. моделированию (вторично-докум. информ. база Студенческ. науч. о-ва Гос. унив. библиотековедения и информ. технолог.) / Александра Куманова ; общ. ред. Николай Василев ; науч. ред. Стоян Денчев ; экспертн. ред. Аркадий Соколов, Милен Куманов ; терминолог. ред. Никола Казански ; яз. ред. Владимир Манчев ; библиогр. ред. Красимира Александрова, Марияна Максимова, Илияна Камбурова ; граф. ред. Василка Стефанова ; консульт. Дмитрий Равинский и др. ; рец. Леонид Джахая, Ирина Линден, Фредерик Ч. Линден ; предисловие Александра Куманова ; дейксис Николай Василев = Game- and Playphenomenology : duoteuch. Book 2, SOCRATICA. Alexandr Vasilievich Mamontov : Game- and Playphenomenology of the information space : jubil. encycloped. reference book – compendium in inform. modeling (secondary-docum. inform. base of the Student Sci. Soc. at the Univ. of Library Studies and Inform. Technologies) / Alexandra Kumanova ; gen. ed. Nikolay Vasilev ; sci. ed. Stoyan Denchev ; expert ed. Arkadiy Sokolov, Milen Kumanov ; terminolog. ed. Nikola Kazanski ; linguist. ed. Vladimir Manchev ; bibliogr. ed. Krasimira Alexandrova, Mariyana Maksimova, Iliyana Kamburova ; graf. ed. Vasilka Stefanova ; consult.: Dmitriy Ravinskiy et al. ; rev. Leonid Dzhahaya, Irina Lynden, Frederick Ch. Lynden ; pref. Alexandra Kumanova ; deixis Nikolay Vasilev. – София : За буквите – О писменехь, 2020. – 660 с. : с 30 портр., 3 илл., 3 табл., 13 сх., 2 к. – (Факлоносцы ; ХХVІІ)
Другие консульт.: Вяра Николова, Маргарита Мамонтова, Марк Мамонтов, Мария Свиченская, Елена Алексеева, Диана Стоянова, Калин Стоев, Соня Спасова, Надежда Томова, Диана Ралева, Силвия Филипова, Александра Андреева. – Библиогр. указ. лит.: 1) Список цит. тр. по дифференциации 1180 библиогр. форм, произведенной в их классификациях или с классификационным intentio (В связи с: 1) вторично-докум. деятельностью, зафиксированной в библиогр. и библиографоведч. источниках и 2) аспектами идеального информ. пространства, моделируемого библиогр. : ІІІ в. до н.э. – ХХІ в.) (отобранные из свода из более чем 5000 докум., обследованных de visu в 1975-2020 гг.: 1454 пронум. назв. работ к 2020 г. / 1244 пронум. назв. к 2007 г.) / состав. Александра Куманова ; 2) Game- и play-феноменология (637 ном. назв., подобранные и представленные по алфавитн. порядку на кириллице и латинице (англ., болг., исп., нем., пол., рус., фр. яз.), извлеч. из каталогов нац. б-к Болгарии, Великобритании, Германии, России и Конгр. библ. САШ за период 1995-2019 гг.) / состав. Александра Куманова, Марияна Максимова ; 3) Tabula gratulatorum (3006 ном. назв., представл. по хронолог.-алфавитн. порядку в виде полной информ. базы – публ. 1240 студентов ГУБИТ за период 2005-2019 г.) / состав. Александра Куманова, Николай Василев, Марияна Максимова. – Библиогр. и в конце разд. – Табл. Алфавитн. свод терминов и понятий, примен. евро- америк. специалистами в ХVІІІ-XXІ вв. для дифференциации библиогр. явлений, имеющих отношение к форме библиогр. информ. Классифик. ряды (вид библиогр., библиогр. деятельности, библиогр. пособий и библиогр. информации) ; Доп. ; Указ. / Александра Куманова. – Сх.: Информ. роза мировой (межд.) универс. библиогр. (Хронолог. классифик. : ІІІ в. до н.э. – ХХІ в.) ; Проекц. вид структурн. формы эмпирическ. признаков библиогр. информ. в трехмерн. пространстве : Многомерн. изометрия (Ризома) ; Архитектоника многоуровн. многомерн. информ. пространства ; Древо ист.-культурн. разв. человечества ; Морфология библиогр. уровня информ. пространства ; Морфология внутрен. структуры библиогр. информ. : Фронтальный вид информ. пространства (Фрейм) ; Вид сверху информ. пространства ; Эпистемология инфосферы : Информ. пространство (Дуга библиографии) ; Информ. роза : Абстрактн. лог. описание ; Абстрактн. сист. описание ; Методолог. вскрытие / Александра Куманова. – Справочно-информ. картогр. топонимов выхода в свет публ., связан. с играми Homo Sapiens : Европа ; Америка (карты) / Александра Куманова, Никол Борисова, Вероника Попова. – Именные индексы. – Топонимный индекс изд. публ. – Список сокр. – Список илл. – Синопс кн. на рус. и англ. яз. – Биогр. прим. о 29 персоналиях из Болгарии, Грузии, России и США на рус., болг. и англ. яз.
Юбил. изд. посвящено 90-лет. со дня рожд. Александра Васильевича Мамонтова.
ISBN 978-619-185-451-6
ISBN 978-619-185-314-4 online (e-book, pdf)
Кн. 1, SOGDIANA. Стоян Денчев : game- и play-феноменология на информационната среда. – София, 2019.
База э-б-к GLORICA, UNIVERSALICA.
Is an outcome where many people are saved and one person dies better than an outcome where the one is saved and the many die? According to the standard utilitarian justification, the former is better because it has a greater sum total of well-being. This justification involves a controversial form of moral aggregation, because it is based on a comparison between aggregates of different people’s well-being. Still, an alternative justification-the Argument for Best Outcomes-does not involve moral aggregation. I extend the Argument for Best Outcomes to show that any utilitarian evaluation can be justified without moral aggregation.
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/167897/1/jkoz.pdf
This paper shows that versions of prioritarianism that focus at least partially on well-being levels at certain times conflict with conventional views of prudential value and prudential rationality. So-called timeslice prioritarianism, and pluralist views that ascribe importance to timeslices, hold that a benefit matters more, the worse off the beneficiary is at the time of receiving it. We show that views that evaluate outcomes in accordance with this idea entail that an agent who delays gratification makes an outcome worse, even if it is better for the agent and worse for no one else. We take this to show that timeslice prioritarianism and some pluralist views violate Weak Pareto, and we argue that these versions of prioritarianism are implausible.
In this essay I propose a new measure of social welfare. It captures the intuitive idea that quantity , quality , and equality of individual welfare all matter for social welfare. More precisely, it satisfies six conditions: Equivalence , Dominance , Quality , Strict Monotonicity , Equality and Asymmetry . These state that (i) populations equivalent in individual welfare are equal in social welfare; (ii) a population that dominates another in individual welfare is better; (iii) a population that has a higher average welfare than another population is better, other things being equal; (iv) the addition of a well-faring individual makes a population better, whereas the addition of an ill-faring individual makes a population worse; (v) a population that has a higher degree of equality than another population is better, other things being equal; and (vi) individual illfare matters more for social welfare than individual welfare. By satisfying the six conditions, the measure improves on previously proposed measures, such as the utilitarian Total and Average measures, as well as different kinds of Prioritarian measures.
The paper investigates what type of motivation can be given for adopting a knowledge-based decision theory (hereafter, KBDT). KBDT seems to have several advantages over competing theories of rationality. It is commonly argued that this theory would naturally fit with the intuitive idea that being rational is doing what we take to be best given what we know, an idea often supported by appeal to ordinary folk appraisals. Moreover, KBDT seems to strike a perfect balance between the problematic extremes of subjectivist and objectivist decision theory. We argue that these alleged advantages do not stand up to a closer scrutiny: KBDT inherits the same kinds of problems as alternative decision theoretic frameworks but doesn’t retain any of the respective advantages. Moreover, differently from other knowledge-action principles advanced in the literature, KBDT cannot fully explain the intuitive connections between knowledge and rational action. We conclude that the most serious challenge for knowledge-based decision theorists is to provide a substantive rationale for the adoption of such a view.
https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030756642
Most economists who read the General Theory candidly admitted that they could not understand the theoretical apparatus and found it easy to recast it in traditional terms. This book provides a masterful guide to the generally unrecognized methodological revolution that supported the new theoretical concepts -- a veritable lodestone that complements and expands understanding on the treatment of the economic magnitudes appropriate to the ideal of generality in the social sciences, to the applicability of probability, to the formulation of decision-making under uncertainty, and the foundations of economic policy in interdependent economic systems. _Jan Kregel, Levy Economics Institute
Anna Carabelli sets out Keynes’s understanding of economics as a way of thinking, encompassing method and morals, rather than as a doctrine. She does so with her customary admirable scholarship and also her willingness to take controversial positions. I commend the volume most highly to Keynes scholars as a drawing-together and development of the themes that Carabelli has pursued since the publication of her 1988 classic, On Keynes’s Method. Further Keynes’s approach was designed to be applied to different contexts, so I enthusiastically recommend the volume also as a foundation and guide for anyone open to such a ‘new way of reasoning in economics’ for the modern era. _Sheila Dow, University of Stirling
This book examines the philosophy and methodology of Keynes, highlighting its novelty and how it presented a new form of economic reasoning. Exploring Keynes’s use of non-demonstrative logic, based on probability, commonalities are found in his economics, ethics, aesthetics, and international relations. Insights are provided into his reasoning and his approach to uncertainty, rationality, measurability of complex magnitudes, moral and rational dilemmas, and irreducible conflicts.
This book investigates methodological continuity within Keynes’s work, in particular in relation to uncertainty, complexity, incommensurability, happiness and openness. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in Keynes, probability, ambiguity, ethics and the history of economic thought.
Many egalitarians incorporate a concern for interpersonal welfare inequality as part of their favored axiology – that is, they take it to be a bad-making feature of outcomes. It is natural to think that, if inequality is in this sense a bad, it is an impersonal bad (one that makes an outcome worse, while not in itself being worse for any person). This natural thought has been challenged. Some writers claim that egalitarian judgments can be accommodated by adopting an expanded view of a person's good, according to which being worse off than others is one of the factors that, in itself, makes one's life go worse. The putatively impersonal bad of inequality is thereby “dispersed” among individuals. I argue that this dispersion strategy fails. In a slogan: if you care about inequality, do not disperse it.
This paper provides a critical reconstruction of Sugden’s intellectual itinerary with respect to his theory of team reasoning, starting from the beginning of his reflection in the early 1980s to his latest contributions in 2015. My reconstruction follows both a historical and an interpretative approach to show the continuity of different lines of thought, developed in different moments, notwithstanding the changes in the aims and scope of the theory from one period to another. I divide the evolution of Sugden’s team reasoning into four main stages. The first includes some works prior to 1993, and the second is from 1993 to 2000. The third and fourth stages are from 2001 to 2007 and from 2008 to 2015, respectively.
Are general lockdowns an appropriate response to the threat of Covid-19? Recent cost-benefit studies do not favour the case for them. Instead, since the virus practises a form of age discrimination (approximately 90% of coronavirus deaths are older than 65), some analysts have suggested an alternative. It is that younger citizens-the generation worst affected by lockdowns and the one that will predominantly pay the eventual tax bill for furlough-should be allowed to return to work to sustain the economy. Lockdown advocates argue that this would be dangerous, because older people would get infected by young workers living in the same home. We explore that claim. We find that 96% of UK workers under age 40 do not live with anyone over 65. In fact, 92% of all UK workers live in a household without anyone over 65 years old-and that holds true for white and BAME workers. Releasing young workers would thus expose only a small fraction of older citizens to intra-household transmission, although we recognize that the absolute number of people infected might eventually become considerable, and some vulnerable citizens could potentially be at risk if they live in large households. In general this paper's results illustrate the potential value of fine-tuning the lifting of restrictions. Our findings buttress the cost-benefit case for age-based policies. JEL code: I18
From a political–philosophical point of view, explaining what ‘equality’ exactly amounts to has turned out to be very tough. When equality is to be treated as a moral ideal, many issues come to the fore. Some of these deal with distributive justice. What is it that should be distributed equally? Should we strive for equal conditions or is it about equal endstates? Which political and social institutions are needed? Has equality implications for how people behave in daily life? These are just a few questions of a long list that has occupied the minds of our greatest political philosophers. In this chapter an overview is given of the most influential theories of egalitarianism.
What is the morally significant feature of discrimination? All of the following seem plausible – (i) discrimination is a kind of wrongdoing and it wrongs discriminatees, which is a matter of intrapersonal morality; (ii) in view of cases of indirect discrimination, significant normative features of discrimination are best captured in a discriminatee‐focused, or harm‐based, way; and (iii) discrimination, as an act‐type, necessarily involves interpersonal comparison. The first task of this article is to address which of intra‐ or interpersonal comparison is relevant to philosophical questions concerning discrimination. I submit that each of them has a place in the theory of discrimination; while interpersonal comparison is relevant in determining whether a differentiating act counts as discrimination, intrapersonal comparison is relevant in assessing whether it is morally wrong. The second task is to develop further a harm‐based answer to the latter question. My final proposal is as follows: discrimination is pro tanto morally wrong to the extent that it makes the discriminatees worse off than they would be were it not for the discrimination at issue, where one's well‐being is understood in terms of what one endorses in one's optimum form.
Although floods, as well as other natural disasters, can be considered relevant causes of intra-generational inequalities, the frequent catastrophes and the resulting damages to territory reflect the generalized indifference about inter-generational justice. Societal concerns, such as land protection, typically involve the administrative system performing proactive policies in the perspective of inter-generational solidarity, but subsidiarity has made more and more independent the local communities. As a consequence, the attention toward the long run effects – typically concerning the territorial system, as a whole, at the geographical scale – has been dispersed, and the proactive policies coming from the central government has became more ineffective. Regarding the case of the flood happened in 2009 in the Fiumedinisi-Capo Peloro hydraulic basin, in the northeastern part of Sicily, Italy, we propose an economic valuation – carried out by performing the method of the imputed preferences – in order to compare the expenses incurred by the public authorities responsible for protecting the territory to the costs of the rehabilitation of the damaged areas. Some considerations about the economic significance of the proactive policies for the arrangement of territory are addressed according to the role played by the social discount rate in the inter-temporal economic calculation.
I argue that a practical deliberator may have good reasons not to consider some option even though that option is what there is most reason, all things considered, for her to do. The most interesting reasons not to consider an option arise in cases where an agent cannot be compensated in kind for the loss of goods that she values. Where this is the case, an attitude of conservatism is warranted: it is reasonable to begin deliberation by considering only ‘no-regrets’ options, and to proceed to considering other possibilities only when the cost of continuing to consider only no-regrets options has become intolerably high. The account that I develop illuminates intuitions that help motivate deontological moral thought, and it can shed light on the complaint that there is something wrong with the way in which schematic thought experiments are frequently used in philosophy to drive moral theorizing.
A well-known objection to prioritarianism, famously levelled by Mike Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve, is that it wrongly ignores the unity of the individual in treating intra-personal cases like inter-personal cases. In this paper we accept that there should be a moral shift between these cases, but argue that this is because autonomy is a relevant consideration in intra-personal but not inter-personal cases, and one to which pluralist prioritarians ought to attend. To avoid this response, Otsuka and Voorhoeve must (and do) assume we know nothing about the subjective information of the person being chosen for. But we show that this commits them to two controversial assumptions: that welfare consists in an objective list of goods, and – if one accepts an unorthodox but plausible account of the relationship between risk aversion and rationality – that there is only a narrow range of rational risk aversions. Only prioritarians who accept both these assumptions are on the hook of Otsuka and Voorhoeve’s objection; for all others, the examples have insufficient information, and so lose their sting.
A standard liberal claim is that freedom of choice is not only instrumentally valuable but also intrinsically valuable, that is, valuable for its own sake. I argue that each one of five conditions should hold if freedom of choice is intrinsically valuable: First, if rational people may differ as to which option is the most preferred in an option set, the offered freedom of choice has some intrinsic value. Second, if an option set is expanded with an option that must be less preferred than the already available options by any rational person, the intrinsic value of the offered freedom of choice does not increase. Third, if an option set is expanded, the intrinsic value of the offered freedom of choice does not decrease. Fourth, if an option set has only one option, it does not offer any intrinsically good freedom of choice. And, fifth, the relation ‘at least as good freedom of choice as’ is transitive. The trouble is that there exists a counter-example to the conjunction of these conditions. Hence freedom of choice is not intrinsically valuable.
Prioritarianism is a moral view that ranks outcomes according to the sum of a strictly increasing and strictly concave transformation of individual well-being. Prioritarianism is ‘welfarist’ (namely, it satisfies axioms of Pareto Indifference, Strong Pareto, and Anonymity) as well as satisfying three further axioms: Pigou–Dalton (formalizing the property of giving greater weight to those who are worse off), Separability, and Continuity. Philosophical discussion of prioritarianism was galvanized by Derek Parfit’s 1991 Lindley Lecture. Since then, and notwithstanding Parfit’s support, a variety of criticisms of prioritarianism have been advanced: by utilitarians (such as John Broome and Hilary Greaves), egalitarians (such as Lara Buchak; Michael Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve; Ingmar Persson; and Larry Temkin), and sufficientists (Roger Crisp).
In previous work, we have each endorsed prioritarianism. This article sets forth a renewed defense, in the light of the accumulated criticisms. We clarify the concept of a prioritarian moral view (here addressing work by David McCarthy), discuss the application of prioritarianism under uncertainty (herein of ‘ex post’ and ‘ex ante’ prioritarianism), distinguish between person-affecting and impersonal justifications, and provide a person-affecting case for prioritarianism. We then describe the various challenges mounted against prioritarianism – utilitarian, egalitarian, and sufficientist – and seek to counter each of them.
I argue that any plausible decision theory for agents with incomplete preferences which obeys the Never Worse Principle will violate Transitivity. The Never Worse Principle says that, if one option never does worse than another, you shouldn’t disprefer it. Transitivity says that, if you prefer X to Y and you prefer Y to Z, then you should prefer X to Z. Violating Transitivity allows one to be money pumped. Although agents with incomplete preferences are already, in virtue of having incomplete preferences, vulnerable to being money pumped, I argue that the money pump argument for Transitivity is more serious than the one for Completeness.
This chapter examines problems of applying stated preference approaches to tree diseases. The approaches record respondents’ willingness to pay for a better environment, as they conceive it. The validity of these approaches has been challenged; known biases exist, have been addressed, but are still debated. Giving information to respondents, deemed essential for eliciting valid responses, could mislead respondents into valuing other-than-cultural services; unduly headlines particular problems; and makes samples atypical of wider populations. Responses may embody symbolic, apple-pie and citizen values, with “doing right” improperly attached to one particular option. Refusal to respond may be reduced by presenting information in a political context. The chapter concludes that valuations should focus on real outcomes of tree diseases judged by revealed, rather than stated, willingness to pay for actual environmental quality, rather than for abstract concepts.
en Social decisions in risky contexts raise a number of difficult questions, such as: (1) Should social decisions be more or less risk averse than the average person? (2) Should we try to avoid large catastrophes more than frequent but limited harms with similar expected impact? (3) Should social decisions be ambiguity averse or stick to the expected utility canon? This paper reviews the welfare economics of risk and uncertainty and examines possible answers to these questions, based on the pros and cons of utilitarianism, ex ante egalitarianism and ex post egalitarianism.
Résumé
fr La décision sociale dans le risque soulève un certain nombre de questions difficiles, telles que: (1) Les décisions pour la société doivent‐elles être plus ou moins averses au risque qu'une personne moyenne de la population? (2) Faut‐il essayer d'éviter les grandes catastrophes ou plutôt les petits événements fréquents, à niveau égal d'espérance de dommage? (3) Les décisions pour la société doivent‐elles être averses à l'ambiguïté, ou rester dans l'orthodoxie de l'espérance d'utilité? Cet article fait une recension de l'économie du bien‐être dans le risque et l'incertitude, et examine les réponses possibles à ces questions, sur la base des arguments pour et contre l'utilitarisme, l'égalitarisme ex ante, et l'égalitarisme ex post.
Population axiology is the study of the conditions under which one state of affairs is better than another, when the states of affairs in question may differ over the numbers and the identities of the persons who ever live. Extant theories include totalism, averagism, variable value theories, critical level theories, and “person-affecting” theories. Each of these theories is open to objections that are at least prima facie serious. A series of impossibility theorems shows that this is no coincidence: It can be proved, for various lists of prima facie intuitively compelling desiderata, that no axiology can simultaneously satisfy all the desiderata on the list. One's choice of population axiology appears to be a choice of which intuition one is least unwilling to give up.
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