Many egalitarians believe that social inequalities are worse than natural ones. Others deny that one can coherently distinguish between them. I argue that although one can separate the influence of these factors by an analysis of variance, the distinction is morally irrelevant. It might be alleged that my argument in favour of moral irrelevance attacks a straw man. While I think this allegation is incorrect, I accommodate it by distinguishing between four claims that are related to, and sometimes confused with, the claim that social inequalities are worse. These are: that one has a stronger reason to eliminate inequalities that obtain between, or are produced by, members of one's own society; that inequalities that result from unfair treatment are worse; that inequalities that we make, rather than merely allowing to exist, are worse; and that it is bad if people are treated unfairly.

John Broome has argued that alleged cases of value incomparability are really examples of vagueness in the betterness relation. The main premiss of his argument is ‘the collapsing principle’. I argue that this principle is dubious, and that Broome's argument is therefore unconvincing.

In a recent article in Ethics, Elijah Millgram presents a novel reconstruction of J. S. Mill's ‘proof’ of the principle of utility. Millgram's larger purpose is to critique instrumentalist approaches to practical reasoning. His reading of the proof makes Mill out to be an instrumentalist, and Millgram thinks that the ultimate failure of Mill's argument usefully illustrates an inconsistency inherent in instrumentalism. Yet Millgram's interpretation of the proof does not succeed. Mill is not an instrumentalist. Millgram may be right that instrumentalism is incoherent, but he has chosen the wrong figure to illustrate the point.