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UTILITARIAN AGGREGATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2008

Russell Hardin
Russell Hardin
Affiliation:
Politics, New York University
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Abstract

There can be no relevant cardinal assessment of the welfares of individuals that would allow traditional comparisons of average and total welfare of whole societies to be made. Given that cardinally additive welfare measures are unavailable, I work out some of the implications of an ordinal utilitarian analysis of international distributional issues. I first address the general problem of utilitarian comparisons between aggregates, then the nature of ordinal transfers between groups or nations, and then the complications that population growth in impoverished nations entails for such comparisons. I conclude with remarks on the difficulties and the benefits of thinking ordinally in general.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 30 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 2008

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References

1 At this writing, Iceland's population is a bit more than three hundred thousand, and its GDP per capita is about $40,300. Bangladesh's population is about 150 million, and its GDP per capita is about $2,300.

2 Pareto, Vilfredo, Manual of Political Economy (1927), trans. Schwier, A. S. (New York: A. M. Kelley, 1971), 47–51Google Scholar.

3 Ibid. See also Hardin, Russell, “Efficiency,” in Goodin, Robert E. and Pettit, Philip, eds., Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993), 462–70, at pp. 464–67Google Scholar.

4 On ordinal utilitarianism, especially at the domestic level, see Hardin, Russell, Morality within the Limits of Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), chaps. 3–5Google Scholar.

5 See Hardin, Russell, David Hume: Moral and Political Theorist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), chap. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Horace, Ars Poetica, lines 133–34.

7 Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), ed. Norton, David Fate and Norton, Mary J. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 2.2.5.21Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as Hume, Treatise, followed by book, part, section, and paragraph numbers; see also Treatise, 3.3.1.7; and Hume, David, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), ed. Beauchamp, Tom L. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 5.18Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as Hume, Enquiry, followed by section and paragraph numbers. See also Penelhum, Terence, “Hume's Moral Psychology,” in Norton, David Fate, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hume (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 117–47, at p. 143CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 There was no need for him to explain; he could observe the phenomenon and could start from there (see Hume, Enquiry, 5.17n19).

9 The following discussion draws on Hardin, David Hume, 41–45.

10 There are recent studies that suggest other connections. Those who yawn when another yawns seem to score higher on empathy tests than those who do not mirror the yawns of others. Fountain, Henry, “Tarzan, Cheetah, and the Contagious Yawn,” New York Times, August 24, 2004, F1Google Scholar.

11 Rawls, John, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 21Google Scholar; see also Hardin, David Hume, 32–33.

12 See also Árdal, Páll, Passion and Value in Hume's Treatise (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1966), 47nGoogle Scholar.

13 The German psychologist Theodore Lipps coined the German term for empathy in 1903, and he described the phenomenon of mirroring. See Bower, Bruce, “Repeat after Me: Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Perception,” Science News 163 (May 24, 2003): 330–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Hume, Treatise, 2.2.5.21.

15 See various contributions to Meltzhoff, A. N. and Prinz, W., eds., The Imitative Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Miller, Greg, “Reflecting on Another's Mind,” Science (May 13, 2005): 945–47Google Scholar.

16 Hume, Enquiry, 3.40.

17 Chimpanzees and Macaque monkeys, even in infancy at three days, apparently mirror emotions of others. See Bower, Bruce, “Copycat Monkeys: Macaque Babies Ape Adults' Facial Feats,” Science News 170 (September 9, 2006): 163CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Hume, Treatise, 3.3.2.5. See also ibid., 2.1.11.6 and 8.

19 Mill, John Stuart, Principles of Political Economy (1848), in Robson, J. M., ed., Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, 7th ed., vols. 2 and 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965)Google Scholar.

20 Edgeworth, F. Y., Mathematical Psychics: An Essay on the Application of Mathematics to the Moral Sciences (London: C. Kegan Paul, 1881)Google Scholar.

21 Sidgwick, Henry, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1907)Google Scholar; Sidgwick, , The Principles of Political Economy (London: Macmillan, 1883)Google Scholar.

22 Moore, G. E., Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903)Google Scholar.

23 Pareto, Manual of Political Economy, 47–51.

24 Ibid.

25 See Hardin, Russell, Indeterminacy and Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), chap. 3Google Scholar.

26 Hodgson, D. H., Consequences of Utilitarianism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 38–42Google Scholar.

27 For further discussion, see Hardin, Morality within the Limits of Reason, 61–63.

28 Ibid., 53 and chaps. 4 and 8.