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Restricted Prioritarianism or Competing Claims?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2016

BENJAMIN LANGE
BENJAMIN LANGE*
Affiliation:
Lady Margaret Hall, [email protected]
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Abstract

I here settle a recent dispute between two rival theories in distributive ethics: Restricted Prioritarianism and the Competing Claims View. Both views mandate that the distribution of benefits and burdens between individuals should be justifiable to each affected party in a way that depends on the strength of each individual's separately assessed claim to receive a benefit. However, they disagree about what elements constitute the strength of those individuals’ claims. According to restricted prioritarianism, the strength of a claim is determined in ‘prioritarian’ fashion by both what she stands to gain and her absolute level of well-being, while, according to the competing claims view, the strength of a claim is also partly determined by her level of well-being relative to others with conflicting interests. I argue that, suitably modified, the competing claims view is more plausible than restricted prioritarianism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , June 2017 , pp. 137 - 152
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

1 I will here be mainly concerned with health-related well-being. Moreover, henceforth the term ‘well-being’ should be understood synonymously with ‘utility’, where both stand for how well an individual's life is going or would go.

2 When speaking of the prospective gains (benefits) in well-being throughout this article, I shall assume a cardinal, interpersonally comparable preference-based measure of well-being that satisfies the von Neumann–Morgenstern axioms. This measure is based on the ‘self-interested preferences that [an] individual would have after ideal deliberation while thinking clearly with full pertinent information regarding those preferences’ ( Arneson, Richard, ‘Primary Goods Reconsidered’, Noûs 24 (1990), pp. 429–54, at p. 448CrossRefGoogle Scholar). See also Otsuka, Michael and Voorhoeve, Alex, ‘Why It Matters That Some Are Worse Off Than Others: An Argument against the Priority View’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 37 (2009), pp. 171–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 172–3, n. 3. As Otsuka and Voorhoeve point out, note that endorsing this measure does not commit one to any particular view of what well-being is.

3 I am presupposing the moral significance of the contrast between the unity of the individual and the separateness of persons for this discussion. Some appear to disagree with this significance. For example, Hirose, Iwao, ‘Aggregation and the Separateness of Persons’, Utilitas 25 (2013), pp. 182–205 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, appears to find the separateness of persons an unilluminating concept if it does not rule out interpersonal aggregation and implausible if it does. In contrast with Hirose, I take it the value of the concept lies in its ruling out particular forms of utility-maximizing calculus that would be appropriate within the bounds of an individual's life.

4 See Williams, Andrew, ‘The Priority View Bites the Dust?’, Utilitas 24 (2012), pp. 315–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Voorhoeve, Alex and Fleurbaey, Marc, ‘Egalitarianism and the Separateness of Persons’, Utilitas 24 (2012), pp. 381–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Otsuka and Voorhoeve, ‘Why It Matters’, pp. 171–99. Note: I have modified the name of Williams's view slightly to make it more informative. In his own article, Williams uses the name ‘Restricted View’. I also use ‘the Priority View’ and ‘prioritarianism’ interchangeably throughout.

5 ‘The Priority View Bites the Dust?’, pp. 315–33.

6 All of the claims-based views that I will be considering can also potentially accommodate different forms of aggregation. For this see Voorhoeve, Alex, ‘How Should We Aggregate Competing Claims?’, Ethics 125 (2014), pp. 64–87 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 See Parfit, Derek, ‘Equality and Priority’, Ratio 10 (1997), pp. 202–21, at 212–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 ‘The Priority View Bites the Dust?’, p. 323.

9 Nagel, Thomas, The Possibility of Altruism (Princeton, 1970), p. 134 Google Scholar. (Also quoted in ‘The Priority View Bites the Dust?’, p. 326.)

10 Nagel, Thomas, ‘Equality’, Mortal Questions (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 55–65 Google Scholar, reprinted in The Ideal of Equality, ed. Matthew Clayton and Andrew Williams (Basingstoke, 2002); Nagel, Thomas, Equality and Partiality (New York, 1991), pp. 64–78 Google Scholar.

11 ‘Egalitarianism and the Separateness of Persons’, p. 397.

12 Otsuka and Voorhoeve, ‘Why It Matters’, pp. 183–4.

13 There are two reasons for this. First, as I noted, according to restricted prioritarianism's Nagelian rationale, it applies only to interpersonal conflicts. Second, if a proponent of restricted prioritarianism claimed that there could be prioritarian moral reasons to benefit absolutely worse off individuals in intrapersonal cases, then this would expose restricted prioritarianism to a separateness-of-persons-based objection. For this see Otsuka and Voorhoeve, ‘Why It Matters’, pp. 179–81; Otsuka, Michael, ‘Prioritarianism and the Separateness of Persons’, Utilitas 24 (2012), pp. 365–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Williams, ‘The Priority View Bites the Dust?’, p. 322 and p. 324.

15 Note that it here also matters that Anne and Betty have an equal chance of existing. It matters because it affects how much weight one ought to assign to their claims. See also ‘Prioritarianism and the Separateness of Persons’, pp. 372–3.

16 ‘Egalitarianism and the Separateness of Persons’, p. 397.

17 See Cohen, G. A., ‘On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice’, Ethics (1989), pp. 906–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Temkin, Larry S., ‘Inequality: A Complex, Individualistic, and Comparative Notion’, Philosophical Issues 11 (2001), pp. 327–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Equality, Priority, and the Levelling Down Objection’, The Ideal of Equality, ed. Matthew Clayton and Andrew Williams (Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 126–61.

18 ‘Inequality’, p. 334.

19 ‘Equality and Priority’, pp. 210–14.

20 Temkin, ‘Equality, Priority, and the Levelling Down Objection’, p. 126.

21 See Arneson, Richard, ‘Egalitarianism and Responsibility’, The Journal of Ethics (1999), pp. 232–3Google Scholar.

22 ‘Equality and Priority’, p. 211.

23 See Kamm, Frances, Intricate Ethics: Rights, Responsibilities, and Permissible Harm (Oxford, 2007), pp. 17–21, 348–9, and 412CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 See Dancy, Jonathan, Ethics without Principles (Oxford, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chs. 2 and 3.

25 Ethics without Principles, p. 45.

26 See also Mason, Andrew, ‘Egalitarianism and the Levelling Down Objection’, Analysis 61 (2001), pp. 246–54, at 249CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 As this case also shows, the claims-based approach finds its limit in those non-identity cases in which it is because of our actions that some individuals will exist as opposed to others. As Fleurbaey and Voorhoeve rightly note, if this problem cannot be overcome, then this means that the competing claims view can therefore only be ‘one element’ in a complete theory of distributive justice; see ‘Egalitarianism and the Separateness of Persons’, p. 398; and Otsuka, ‘Prioritarianism and the Separateness of Persons’, p. 372, n. 17.

28 Otsuka and Voorhoeve, ‘Why It Matters’, pp. 183–4, my emphasis.

29 ‘Equality and Priority’, p. 214.

30 I am grateful to David Healey, Geoff Keeling, Will MacAskill, James Matharu, and an anonymous referee for feedback on earlier drafts of this article. I am especially indebted to Mike Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve for extensive comments and discussion.