Weighing Lives PDF
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OXFORD Weighing Lives JOHN BROOME John Broome is White's Professor of Moral Philosophy atthe University of Oxford. ALSO PUBLISHED BY OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Moral Dilemmas Philippa Foot Ethics Without Principles Jonathan Dancy ‘Moral Realism Russ Shafer-Landau Prolegomena to Ethics TH. Green ited by David O. Brink BRITISH MORAL PHILOSOPHERS ‘The Oxford Handbook of Practical Ethics Edited by Hugh LaFollerte Weighing Lives Weighing Lives John Broome UNIVERSITY PRESS Thie one 1XW4-NBU-ZU7D OXFORD Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP ‘Oxford University Press isa department of the Unversity of Oxford, It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, ‘and education by publishing worldwide in ‘Oxlord NewYork ‘Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dares Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata ‘Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai. Nairobi ‘Sdo Paulo Shanghai Taipet Tokyo Toronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press inthe UK and certain other countries Published inthe United States bby Oxford University ress Inc, New York ‘© John Broome 2004 ‘The moral rights ofthe author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2004 Allrights reserved. No pat ofthis publication may be reproduced, stored ina retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, “without the prior permiasion in writing of Oxord University Press, ras expressly permitted bylaw, or under terms agreed withthe appropriate ‘eprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction cutaide the scope ofthe above should be ant tothe Rights Department, ‘Oxford University Press, atthe address above ‘You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover ‘and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data, Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 0-19-924376-x 13579108642 ‘Typeset by the author Printed in Grest Britain ‘on acid-free paper by Biddies Led, Kings Lynn, Norfolk Preface This book completes my work on the value of life, which has occupied me, off and on, for a very long time. As I came to see the complexity of the issues, I realized they could not be dealt with in a single book. There were too many general questions about the aggregation of value that needed to be tackled even before I could come to the value of life. So 1 was first of all delayed by the need to write my earlier book Weighing Goods, which tackles those general questions and constitutes the background for the more particular arguments of Weighing Lives. Something else held me up for a long time. I find it hard to believe one of the main conclusions of this book; it offends my intuition. This is not a happy position for an author to be in. An account of value that is like mine in many respects appeared as long ago as 1984, in ‘Social criteria for evaluating population change’ by Charles Blackorby and David Donaldson. This account violates what I call in chapter 10 ‘the intuition of neutral existence’, an intuition that still grips me strongly. Because of that, it took me a long time to accept the Blackorby- Donaldson theory. This book records a few of my time-consuming attempts to find a way of preserving the intuition. I have now grudgingly concluded it has to be abandoned. In the meantime, Blackorby and Donaldson, in cooperation with Walter Bossert, have extended their theory and presented it in their Population Issues in Social Choice Theory, Welfare Economics and Ethics. The formula for value developed in this book is very similar to theirs. The influence of the published writings of these three authors is too pervasive through this book to be sufficiently registered by individual citations. The same is true of Derek Parfit’s pioneering writing on population ethics. Parfit’s Reasons and Persons first showed me the difficulties of the subject. My thinking about it was so much shaped by Parfit that I often forget how much of my thinking was originally his. A vast amount has been written about the value of life by other authors while this book has been undergoing its slow gestation. If had tried to do full justice to all this writing, I would never have finished my ‘own. I have developed my own argument, and now it will have to sink or swim with the competition. Of course, I mean no slight to the many authors I have not been able to respond to, During the writing of this book, I was immeasurably helped by vi Preface discussions with very many people, and by the written comments 1 received from many. I very much appreciate the contribution of each of them. I am sorry to say that so much time has passed I cannot remember everyone who has helped me. I apologize to everyone I omit to mention; please do not feel I did not value your contribution. Those I do remember include: Charles Blackorby, Walter Bossert, Geoffrey Brennan, Roger Crisp, David Donaldson, Nir Eyal, Susan Hurley, Frank Jackson, Frances Kamm, Lewis Kornhauser, Jeff McMahan, Adam Morton, Thomas Nagel, Jan Odelstad, Lars Paulsson, Derek Parfit, Wlodek Rabinowicz, and Hans-Peter Weikard. I must express special thanks to Erik Carlson and Richard Cookson, who each took the trouble to read a draft of the whole book and send me comments. Richard Bradley also gave me a particularly valuable set of comments. Special thanks too to those who sat through the seminars I gave on the book in Oxford. Some of them read the whole book and made very many valuable comments. They include Gustaf Arrhenius, Krister Bykvist, ‘Oswald Hanfling and Mozaffar Qizilbash. I think I have spent more time talking about weighing lives with Arrhenius than with anyone else. It includes the time I spent as the opponent at his defence of his import- ant doctoral thesis, Future Generations. The Hagerstrém Lectures I gave in Uppsala in 1994 were an early version of part of this book. The book’s writing was supported by grant number 132027301097, and some preparatory work by grant number 000233334, both from the UK Economic and Social Research Council I thank the ESRC for its generosity and patience while awaiting results. ‘The University of Bristol and later the University of St Andrews were both kind enough employers to tolerate my long absences, and allow me leave to take up these grants. Some of my work on the book was supported by a Visiting Fellowship at the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. I appreciate the generosity of the RSSS too. John Broome Contents _ Weighing lives 1 1.1 Examples 1 1.2 The general problem 2 Note 18 me technical matter: 0 2.1 The betterness ordering 20 2.2 Distributions described algebraically 23 3 The value funct 6 Notes 9 . Right and good 30 3.1 Teleology 31 3.2 Consequentialism 41 2.3 Distributi 43 Nate: 48 Features of Goodni 0 4.1 The transitivity of betterness 50 ‘4.2 General, personal, and temporal goodness 63 4.3 Relativity 68 ‘ates 6 . Quantities of lifetime wellbeing 78 5.1 Expected utility theory 80 5.2 A cardinal scale of individual wellbeing 86 5.3 Comparing wellbeing between people 91 Ne 8 Quantities of temporal wellbeing 99 6.1 A cardinal scale of temporal wellbeing 99 6.2 Comparing wellbeing between times 101 Ne 103 viii Contents 7. Separability of times 104 7.1 Routes to aggregation 104 7.2 ‘The objection to separability of times 106 7.3 Separatism 109 7.4 Dispersing the value of longevity 110 7.5 Can dispersion be successful? 113 Note 116 8. Separability of lives 117 8.1 _Separability of people and separability of lives 117 8.2 The argument for separability of lives 120 8.3 Discounting for time 126 8.4 The people route to aggregation 129 8.5 The rectangular field assumption. 130 Notes 131 9. Same-number aggregation 132 9.1 The same-mi 9.2 _ Introduction to different-number aggregation 138 Notes 139 10. The neutral level for existence 40 10.1 A single neutral level of wellbeing 140 10.2 The intuition of neutrality 143 10.3 Counterexamples to the principle of equal existence 146 Notes 149 LL Nonstandard betterness. 151 11.1 Intransitive betterness 11.2 Conditional hett LS Relative betterness 1 Notes 16: 12. Indeterminate betterness 164 12.1 Incommensuratenes: 16: 12.2 Vague betterness versus incommensurateness 171 12.3. Supervaluation 17: 12.4 The vague value of existence 179 12.8 The way forward 183 Notes 18! Contents ix 13. Separability of people 187 13.1 The argument to this point, 187 13.2 What the neutral level may depend on 189 13.3 Average wellbeing 191 13.4 Numbers of people 197 Mates 19 14. The standardized total principle 199 14.1 Derivation of the principle 199 14.2 Vagueness and the intuition of neutrality, again 202 14.3 What isthe neutrallevel? 208 14.4 Objections 210 te 214 15. Same-lifetime aggregation 215 15.1 Intertemporal aggregation 216 15.2 The principle of temporal good 218 15.3 Other val 223 15.4 Temporal impartiality 229 Nate: 2 16. A life worth living 233 16.1_A neutral level for continuing to live 233 16.2 Is death typically neutral? 235 Ne 240 17_The value of a life 41 17.1 Is the neutral level for continuing to live constant? 241 17.2 The standardized total principle for lives 248 17.3 ‘The badness of death 49 Notes 252 18. The theory of weighing lives 254 18.1 The integrated total principle 254 18.2 Separatism and complete utilitarianism 256 18.8 What next 60 Notes 264 Bibliography 265 Ind 3
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