Value without absolute convergence

We address how the value of risky options should be assessed in the case where the sum of the probability-weighted payoffs is not absolutely convergent and thus dependent on the order in which the terms are summed (e.g., as in the Pasadena Paradox). We develop and partially defend a proposal according to which options should be evaluated on the basis of agreement among admissible (e.g., convex and quasi-symmetric) covering sequences of the constituents of value (i.e., probabilities and payoffs).

Distribution of What?: An Introduction

http://klinechair.missouri.edu/on-line%20papers/vol%204-Distribution%20of%20What.docThis is the fourth volume of Equality and Justice, a six-volume collection of the most important articles of the twentieth century on the topic of justice and equality. This volume and the second part of Volume 5: Social Contract and the Currency of Justice address the question of what kinds of good are relevant for justice (welfare, initial opportunity for welfare, resources, capabilities, etc.) Other volumes address the following issues: (1) the concept of justice, (2) whether justice is primarily a demand on individuals or on societies, and (3) the relative merits of conceptions of justice based on equality, on priority for those who have less, and on ensuring that everyone has a basic minimum, of the relevant goods (Volume 1); whether justice requires equality of some sort (Volume 2); the question of who (animals, members of other societies, future people, etc.) is owed justice (Volume 3); contractarian conceptions of justice (part of Volume 5); and desert and entitlement conceptions of justice (Volume 6)

Against Maximizing Act-Consequentialism

http://klinechair.missouri.edu/on-line%20papers/consequentialism%20for%20Blackwell.docMaximizing act consequentialism holds that actions are morally permissible if and only if they maximize the value of consequences—if and only if, that is, no alternative action in the given choice situation has more valuable consequences. It is subject to two main objections. One is that it fails to recognize that morality imposes certain constraints on how we may promote value. Maximizing act consequentialism fails to recognize, I shall argue, that the ends do not always justify the means. Actions with maximally valuable consequences are not always permissible. The second main objection to maximizing act consequentialism is that it mistakenly holds that morality requires us to maximize value. Morality, I shall argue, only requires that we satisfice (promote sufficiently) value, and thus leaves us a greater range of options than maximizing act consequentialism recognizes. The issues discussed are, of course, highly complex, and space limitations prevent me from addressing them fully. Thus, the argument presented should be understood merely as the outline of an argument

Capabilities vs. Opportunities for Well-being

http://klinechair.missouri.edu/on-line%20papers/Capabilities%20vs%20opporutnitiesdoc.doc Also found in the book Capabilities Equality. ed. Alexander Kaufman. New York: Routledge, 2006. ISBN 9780415360555Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum have argued that justice is concerned, at least in part, with the distribution of capabilities (opportunities to function). Richard Arneson, G.A. Cohen, and John Roemer have argued that justice is concerned with something like the distribution of opportunities for well-being. I argue that, although some versions of the capability view are incompatible with some versions of the opportunity for well-being view, the most plausible version of the capability view is identical to a slight generalization of the opportunity for well-being view

Social Contract and the Currency of Justice: An Introduction

http://klinechair.missouri.edu/on-line%20papers/vol%205-Social%20Contract%20and%20Currency.docThis is the fifth volume of Equality and Justice, a six-volume collection of the most important articles of the twentieth century on the topic of justice and equality. This volume addresses two issues: (1) contractarian conceptions of justice, and (2) the question of what kinds of goods justice is concerned with (welfare, initial opportunity for welfare, resources, capabilities, etc.). The latter topic is a continuation from volume four (which could not contain all the relevant articles). Other volumes address the following issues: (1) the concept of justice, (2) whether justice is primarily a demand on individuals or on societies, and (3) the relative merits of conceptions of justice based on equality, on priority for those who have less, and on ensuring that everyone has a basic minimum, of the relevant goods (Volume 1); whether justice requires equality of some sort (Volume 2); the question of who (animals, members of other societies, future people, etc.) is owed justice (Volume 3); the question of what kinds of goods (welfare, initial opportunity for welfare, resources, capabilities, etc.) are relevant for justice (Volume 4 and part of this volume); and desert and entitlement conceptions of justice (Volume 6)

Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia

http://klinechair.missouri.edu/on-line%20papers/Nozick.docRobert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), along with John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971), radically changed the landscape in analytic political philosophy. For much of the preceding half-century, under the influence of logical positivism's heavy emphasis on empirical verifiability, much of moral philosophy was taken up with meta-ethics (e.g., the semantics of moral discourse)—with little attention given to normative moral theories. Moreover, to the extent that normative theories were considered, utilitarianism was the center of attention. This all changed with the publication of Rawls's articulation and defense of liberal egalitarianism and Nozick's libertarian challenge to the legitimacy of anything more than the night-watchman state. At the core of Nozick's book are two arguments. One is that a night-watchman state (which protects only against violence, theft, fraud, and breach of contract) could be legitimate, even without the consent of all those to be governed. The other is that nothing more extensive than the night-watchman state is legitimate, except with the consent of all. The argument is complex, and Nozick often inserts long—and very interesting—digressions. Below I shall focus only on his core argument. I shall thus not address his discussions of Rawls' theory of justice (Ch. 7, Section 2) and other arguments attempting to justify more than the night-watchman state (Ch. 8), nor his discussion of utopias (Ch. 10)

Brute Luck, Option Luck, And Equality Of Initial Opportunities

Article DOI: 10.1086/339275 Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/339275In the old days, material egalitarians tended to favor equality of outcome advantage, on some suitable conception of advantage (happiness, resources, etc.). Under the influence of Dworkin's seminal articles on equality , contemporary material egalitarians have tended to favor equality of brute luck advantage—on the grounds that this permits people to be held appropriately accountable for the benefits and burdens of their choices. I shall argue, however, that a plausible conception of egalitarian justice requires neither that brute luck advantage always be equalized nor that people always bear the full cost of their voluntary choices. Instead, justice requires that initial opportunities for advantage be equalized—roughly along the lines suggested by Arneson and Cohen. Brute luck egalitarianism and initial opportunity egalitarianism are fairly similar in motivation, and as a result they have not been adequately distinguished. Once the two views are more clearly contrasted, equality of opportunity for advantage will, I claim, be seen to be a more plausible conception of equality

Broome on Moral Goodness and Population Ethics

http://klinechair.missouri.edu/on-line%20papers/broome-ppr.docIn an earlier book, Weighing Goods , John Broome gave a sophisticated defense of utilitarianism for the cases involving a fixed population. In the present book, Weighing Lives, he extends this defense to variable population cases, where different individuals exist depending on which choice is made. Broome defends a version of utilitarianism according to which there is a vague positive level of individual wellbeing such that adding a life with more than that level of wellbeing makes things morally better and adding a life with less than that level makes things morally worse. This version of utilitarianism avoids the extreme—but perhaps not all— forms of the repugnant conclusion that the usual total version faces. As usual, Broome's work combines logical rigor with deep philosophical insight. There is much to learn from it. Nonetheless, I shall identify some problematic conditions used by Broome to derive utilitarianism and suggest that Broome's version of utilitarianism has implausible implications

Libertarisme, propriété de soi, et homicide consensuel

http://klinechair.missouri.edu/Vita_Revised.htm (#43 on the list)I argue that, under a broad range of circumstances, consensual killing (suicide, assisted suicide, and killing another person with their permission) is morally permissible and forcible prevention is not. The argument depends crucially on the following claims: (1) Agents have certain control rights over the use of their person (a form of self-ownership). (2) These rights are understood in choice-protecting terms. (3) The relevant consent is that of the agent at or prior to the time of action (and not that of the agent in the future). (4) There are no impersonal duties. (5) God, if he exists, has given us no commands not to use natural resources for the purposes of consensual killing

Introduction to Equality and Justice: The Demands of Equality

http://klinechair.missouri.edu/on-line%20papers/vol%202-%20Demands%20of%20Equality.docThis is the second volume of Equality and Justice, a six-volume collection of the most important articles of the twentieth century on the topic of justice and equality. This volume addresses the question of whether justice requires equality of some sort. Other volumes address the following issues: (1) the concept of justice, (2) whether justice is primarily a demand on individuals or on societies, and (3) the relative merits of conceptions of justice based on equality, on priority for those who have less, and on ensuring that everyone has a basic minimum, of the relevant goods (Volume 1); the question of who (animals, members of other societies, future people, etc.) is owed justice (Volume 3); the question of what kinds of goods (welfare, initial opportunity for welfare, resources, capabilities, etc.) are relevant for justice (Volume 4 and part of Volume 5); contractarian conceptions of justice (part of Volume 5); and desert and entitlement conceptions of justice (Volume 6)