Priority or Equality for Possible People?

Voorhoeve, Alex, and Marc Fleurbaey. "Priority or equality for possible people?." Ethics 126.4 (2016): 929-954.

39 Pages Posted: 9 Aug 2021

See all articles by Alex Voorhoeve

Alex Voorhoeve

Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, LSE

Marc Fleurbaey

Paris School of Economics

Date Written: 2016

Abstract

Suppose that you must make choices that may influence the well-being and the identities of the people who will exist, though not the number of people who will exist. How ought you to choose? This paper answers this question. It argues that the currency of distributive ethics in such cases is a combination of an individual’s final well-being and her expected well-being conditional on her existence. It also argues that this currency should be distributed in an egalitarian, rather than a prioritarian, manner.

Keywords: Egalitarianism, Prioritarianism, Risk, Population ethics

Suggested Citation

Voorhoeve, Alex and Fleurbaey, Marc, Priority or Equality for Possible People? (2016). Voorhoeve, Alex, and Marc Fleurbaey. "Priority or equality for possible people?." Ethics 126.4 (2016): 929-954., Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3885114 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3885114

Alex Voorhoeve (Contact Author)

Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, LSE ( email )

Houghton Street
London, WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://personal.lse.ac.uk/voorhoev

Marc Fleurbaey

Paris School of Economics ( email )

48 Boulevard Jourdan
Paris, 75014 75014
France

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
36
Abstract Views
317
PlumX Metrics