Abstract
I discuss Ingmar Persson’s recent argument that the Levelling Down Objection could be worse for prioritarians than for egalitarians. Persson’s argument depends upon the claim that indifference to changes in the average prioritarian value of benefits implies indifference to changes in the overall prioritarian value of a state of affairs. As I show, however, sensible conceptions of prioritarianism have no such implication. Therefore prioritarians have nothing to fear from the Levelling Down Objection.
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Notes
For the contrast between absolute prioritarianism and one other form, relational prioritarianism, see Persson 2001: 35.
Often, but not always. Some philosophers have argued that versions of the egalitarianism that is taken to be vulnerable to the Levelling Down Objection can be described which do not incorporate any suggestion that the relevant Pareto improvements are even in one respect bad (see for example Jensen 2003: 100–1; Tungodden 2003: 9–10). Others have argued that there is nothing particularly implausible about supposing that the relevant Pareto improvements are bad in one respect (see for example Brown 2003).
The egalitarians in question are what Parfit calls ‘teleological’ egalitarians. They appeal to their favoured egalitarian principles to evaluate states of affairs. Parfit distinguishes teleological egalitarians from ‘deontological’ egalitarians, who evaluate not states of affairs but the way states of affairs are produced. See Parfit 1995: 3–9.
In almost all cases prioritarians think that it is better that a unit of utility is being enjoyed rather than not, because in almost all cases they give units of utility positive moral weight. But they do give a unit of utility less moral weight to the extent that the person enjoying it has a higher total utility level, as I go on to explain in the main text. Some prioritarians may take units beyond a given total to have no moral weight at all. Such prioritarians would be indifferent between a state of affairs in which such units are being enjoyed and one in which they are absent. So long as prioritarians never give units of utility negative moral value, however, this will not straightforwardly expose them to a version of the levelling down objection. For even though eliminating units with zero moral value will not be in any respect worse from such prioritarians’ point of view, it will not be in any respect better either. I shall ignore this complication in the main text.
Persson 2008: 301.
This is Parfit’s ‘Repugnant Conclusion’ (Parfit 1984: 388).
Of course, the decrease that classical utilitarians miss is a decrease in average utility per person, not per unit of benefit. In the sorts of Pareto improvement discussed by Persson, average prioritarian value per person actually incresases. In this respect, the example is not analogous to the prioritarian example under consideration. But the example of classical utilitarianism nevertheless gives us reason to be cautious about concentrating on changes in total value at the expense of changes in average value. I am grateful to a referee for Ethical Theory and Moral Practice for pressing me on this.
What follows is a reconstruction of Persson’s trilemma in my own words.
Strictly speaking, since the average prioritarian value of benefits would in this case be the total prioritarian value (i.e. 0) divided by the number of units (i.e. 0), what would have been brought about would not be a reduction in the average prioritarian value—for 0/0 is indeterminate. (I am grateful to a referee for Ethical Theory and Moral Practice for pointing this out.) I let this pass, however, for the sake of argument.
Indifference to changes in average prioritarian value does, however, appear to expose prioritarians to Parfit’s Repugnant Conclusion, since the addition of new individuals with even minimal levels of utility will increase the total prioritarian value of a state of affairs, and will therefore be better from a prioritarian point of view. But moderate egalitarianism is also fairly badly exposed to the Repugnant Conclusion, since the addition of new individuals with minimal levels of utility may in some cases (where the utility value of their benefits is not outweighed by the disvalue of any inequality that their existence creates) be better from a moderate egalitarian point of view. Moreover, moderate egalitarianism is vulnerable to the Levelling Down Objection as well. So, this does not constitute a reason to think that prioritarianism is no more attractive than egalitarianism.
I consider in footnote 12 below a view which does not make this assumption.
Prioritarianism is also immune to Persson’s objection on a conception that identifies actual prioritarian unit value with the marginal contribution of each unit to the total prioritarian value of all the units that a person was enjoying, and so drops the assumption that I describe in the text to note 11 above. As with the alternative conception that I describe in the main text, this view cannot be defended from Persson’s objection on the grounds that changes in the average value of a person’s benefits do not entail changes in their actual value. But—as with the alternative conception, and for similar reasons—it can resist Persson’s claim that indifference to changes in actual value entails indifference to changes in overall value.
This conception of actual prioritarian unit value is ultimately unsatisfactory for the reasons I adduce in Section 6 below for rejecting the alternative conception in favour of the standard conception, viz., that it gives no way to make sense of the prioritarian assignment of different prioritarian values to each of the units of benefit in an increase of two such units. For the marginal contribution of each unit in a given total to the prioritarian value of all the units taken together will be the same. I am grateful to a referee for Ethical Theory and Moral Practice for making me see the need to discuss this conception of actual unit value.
References
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Acknowledgment
Earlier versions of this paper were presented to the Ockham Society, Oxford, and to the 2009 Joint Session of the Mind Association and Aristotelian Society. I thank audience members for their comments and suggestions. I am also particularly grateful to Michael Otsuka and the editors of Ethical Theory and Moral Practice for extensive discussion and criticism.
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Porter, T. Prioritarianism and the Levelling Down Objection. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 14, 197–206 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-010-9231-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-010-9231-1