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Notes
I am grateful to Michael Otsuka for discussion of Adler’s objection to veil of ignorance reasoning.
Yet another leading conception of personal identity requires psychological continuity, defined as an overlapping chain of strong connectedness (see Parfit 1987). Since psychological connectedness between Zelda behind the veil and Arthur and Bob is low, the required identification may be problematic on this view also.
Quoted in Williams (1972, p. 76).
Adler (pp. 518–524) remarks that he finds ex ante Pareto attractive in cases in which there is no outcome inequality because all individuals’ outcomes are perfectly correlated. He therefore expresses sympathy for Fleurbaey (2010) proposal to evaluate an outcome by its “equally-distributed equivalent”—the level of utility that, if equally distributed, would be as valuable as that outcome. Fleurbaey’s SWF respects ex ante Pareto in cases in which there is no outcome inequality, but violates ex ante Pareto in Case 2, in which there is outcome inequality. The difficulty for Adler is that since he does not regard outcome inequality as in itself unfair, he cannot countenance this distinction between these cases. It would therefore be inconsistent of him to adopt Fleurbaey’s proposed SWF.
I am grateful to Luc Bovens and Joe Mazor for comments and to Princeton University’s Center for Human Values for the Faculty Fellowship which supported the writing of this review.
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Voorhoeve, A. Matthew D. Adler: Well-being and fair distribution: beyond cost-benefit analysis. Soc Choice Welf 42, 245–254 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-013-0721-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-013-0721-7