Priority, Not Equality, for Possible People

How should we choose between uncertain prospects in which different possible people might exist at different levels of wellbeing? Alex Voorhoeve and Marc Fleurbaey offer an egalitarian answer to this question. I give some reasons to reject their answer and then sketch an alternative, which I call person-affecting prioritarianism

The Good, the Bad, and the Transitivity of _Better Than_

The Rachels–Temkin spectrum arguments against the transitivity of better than involve good or bad experiences, lives, or outcomes that vary along multiple dimensions—e.g., duration and intensity of pleasure or pain. This paper presents variations on these arguments involving combinations of good and bad experiences, which have even more radical implications than the violation of transitivity. These variations force opponents of transitivity to conclude that something good is worse than something that isn’t good, on pain of rejecting the good altogether. That is impossible, so we must reject the spectrum arguments

Rank-Weighted Utilitarianism and the Veil of Ignorance

Lara Buchak argues for a version of rank-weighted utilitarianism that assigns greater weight to the interests of the worse off. She argues that our distributive principles should be derived from the preferences of rational individuals behind a veil of ignorance, who ought to be risk averse. I argue that Buchak’s appeal to the veil of ignorance leads to a particular way of extending rank-weighted utilitarianism to the evaluation of uncertain prospects. This method recommends choices that violate the unanimous preferences of rational individuals and choices that guarantee worse distributions. These results, I suggest, undermine Buchak’s argument for rank-weighted utilitarianism

An Intrapersonal Addition Paradox

I present a new argument for the repugnant conclusion. The core of the argument is a risky, intrapersonal analogue of the mere addition paradox. The argument is important for three reasons. First, some solutions to Parfit’s original puzzle do not obviously generalize to the intrapersonal puzzle in a plausible way. Second, it raises independently important questions about how to make decisions under uncertainty for the sake of people whose existence might depend on what we do. And, third, it suggests various difficulties for leading views about the value of a person’s life compared to her nonexistence

A fixed-population problem for the person-affecting restriction

According to the person-affecting restriction, one distribution of welfare can be better than another only if there is someone for whom it is better. Extant problems for the person-affecting restriction involve variable-population cases, such as the nonidentity problem, which are notoriously controversial and difficult to resolve. This paper develops a fixed-population problem for the person-affecting restriction. The problem reveals that, in the presence of incommensurable welfare levels, the person-affecting restriction is incompatible with minimal requirements of impartial beneficence even in fixed-population contexts

Wild food plants in Graecanic communities in Calabria, southern Italy - ethnobotany, current role in Mediterranean diets and antioxidant activity

Dietary patterns are changing rapidly all over the world. The body of available local food knowledge, which forms the basis of many local traditions, is decreasing dramatically. In rural areas throughout the Mediterranean, vegetables and salads made from wild plants have been particularly important as local foods since ancient times. However, very little is known about the use of these wild food plants (WFPs) and about their contribution to health, while numerous clinical and pharmacological-biochemical studies have shown beneficial effects for major components of Mediterranean diets. This research project studied WFPs used in the Graecanic area in Calabria, Southern Italy as components of the local diet with potential antioxidant activity. It was embedded in an EU-funded project entitled "Local Food - Nutraceuticals". The research approach adopted for this interdisciplinary research combined ethnobotanical methods with pharmacology and nutritional sciences. The gathering, processing and consumption of these plants were studied using participant observation techniques and semi-structured interviews. Local perceptions about WFPs (beneficial health effects, health risks) and nutritional data were obtained through a socio-nutritional study conducted in Italy, Spain and Greece. More than 40 WFPs are used as condiments, or vegetables, including edible greens, called ta chòrta in the local language. Many are considered to be healthy because of their bitterness (e.g. Reseda alba). Furthermore, the antioxidant activity of WFPs from Italy, Spain and Greece, was evaluated using in vitro assays. Crude extracts were tested for free radical scavenging activity (FRSA), and for the inhibition of xanthine oxidase (XO). Only a small number of plant extracts showed significant antioxidant activity. However, some extracts had promising activity in the XO-system. This interdisciplinary research contributed not only to the understanding of locally used WFPs as a promising source of natural antioxidants, but also to the safeguarding of this rapidly vanishing local knowledge