Prioritarianism
In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics
"Prioritarianism" published on by Oxford University Press.
In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics
"Prioritarianism" published on by Oxford University Press.
In: Cambridge elements. Elements in ethics
Prioritarianism holds that improvements in someone's life (gains in well-being) are morally more valuable, the worse off the person would otherwise be. The doctrine is impartial, holding that a gain in one person's life counts exactly the same as an identical gain in the life of anyone equally well off. If we have some duty of beneficence to make the world better, prioritarianism specifies the content of the duty. Unlike the utilitarian, the prioritarian holds that we should not only seek to increase human well-being, but also distribute it fairly across persons, by tilting in favor of the worse off. A variant version adds that we should also give priority to the morally deserving - to saints over scoundrels. The view is a standard for right choice of individual actions and public policies, offering a distinctive alternative to utilitarianism (maximize total well-being), sufficiency (make everyone's condition good enough) and egalitarianism (make everyone's condition the same).
In: Prioritarianism in Practice (Matthew D. Adler and Ole F. Norheim, eds.; Cambridge University Press, 2022)
SSRN
In: This paper is a draft of chapter 2 of Matthew D. Adler and Ole F. Norheim, eds., Prioritarianism in Practice (Cambridge University Press, Forthcoming).
SSRN
"Prioritarianism is a framework for ethical assessment that gives extra weight to the worse off. Unlike utilitarianism, which simply adds up well-being numbers, prioritarianism is sensitive to the distribution of well-being across the population of ethical concern. Prioritarianism in Practice examines the use of prioritarianism as a policy-evaluation methodology-across a range of policy domains, including taxation, health policy, risk regulation, climate change, education, and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic-and as an indicator of a society's condition (as contrasted with GDP). This chapter is an introductory chapter to the Prioritarianism in Practice volume. It surveys the intellectual roots of prioritarianism: in the philosophical literature, in welfare economics, and in scholarship about public health. And it provides brief summaries of each of the volume's chapters. This chapter provides theoretical foundations for the Prioritarianism in Practice volume, by clarifying the features of prioritarian social welfare functions (SWFs). A prioritarian SWF sums up individuals' well-being numbers plugged into a strictly increasing and strictly increasing transformation function. Prioritarian SWFs, like the utilitarian SWF, fall within the "generalized utilitarian" class of SWFs. Generalized-utilitarian SWFs are additive and, hence, especially tractable for purposes of policy analysis. The chapter reviews the axiomatic properties of generalized utilitarian SWFs and, specifically, of prioritarian SWFs. Prioritarianism satisfies the Pigou-Dalton axiom (a pure, gap-diminishing transfer of well-being from a better-off to a worse-off person is an ethical improvement), while utilitarianism does not. Pigou-Dalton is the axiomatic expression of the fact that a prioritarian SWF gives extra weight (priority) to well-being changes affecting worse-off individuals. The chapter also discusses the informational requirements of prioritarian SWFs (as regards interpersonal well-being comparisons). It reviews the various methodologies for applying a prioritarian SWF under uncertainty. And it describes the two main subfamilies of prioritarian SWFs, namely Atkinson and Kolm-Pollak SWFs"--
SSRN
Working paper
In: Agmon, Shai, and Matt Hitchens. "Prioritarianism: a (Pluralist) defense." J. Ethics & Soc. Phil. 15 (2019): 19.
SSRN
In: Politics, philosophy & economics: ppe, Band 13, Heft 1, S. 45-61
ISSN: 1741-3060
In this paper, I present and explore an alternative to a standard prioritarian axiology. Equality-tempered prioritarianism holds that the value of welfare increases should be balanced against the value of equality. However, given that, under prioritarianism, the value of marginal welfare benefits decreases as the welfare of beneficiaries increases, equality-tempered prioritarianism holds that the intrinsic value of equality will be sufficient to alter a prioritarian verdict only in cases in which welfare benefits are granted to the very well-off. I argue that this view, suitably refined, solves a persistent problem for prioritarianism, and is superior to alternatives.
In: Politics, philosophy & economics, Band 13, Heft 1, S. 45-61
ISSN: 1741-3060
In this paper, I present and explore an alternative to a standard prioritarian axiology. Equality-tempered prioritarianism holds that the value of welfare increases should be balanced against the value of equality. However, given that, under prioritarianism, the value of marginal welfare benefits decreases as the welfare of beneficiaries increases, equality-tempered prioritarianism holds that the intrinsic value of equality will be sufficient to alter a prioritarian verdict only in cases in which welfare benefits are granted to the very well-off. I argue that this view, suitably refined, solves a persistent problem for prioritarianism, and is superior to alternatives. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]
In: The journal of political philosophy, Band 23, Heft 1, S. 1-22
ISSN: 1467-9760
Here I present a challenge to prioritarianism, which is, in Derek Parfit's words, the view that 'we have stronger reasons to benefit people the worse off these people are.' We have such reasons, according to this view, simply by virtue of the fact that a person's utility has diminishing marginal moral importance i.e., that equal improvements in a person's well-being matter less, morally speaking, the better off she is in absolute terms. It follows, from this view, that one might have stronger reason to benefit someone who is less well off rather than someone who is better off, even when this benefit would amount to a lesser increase in utility than a benefit to the better off person. In discussions of prioritarianism, it is often left unspecified what constitutes a greater, lesser, or equal improvement in a person's utility. In his own defence of prioritarianism, for example, Parfit explicitly prescinds from 'difficult questions... about what it would be for some benefits to be greater than others' and 'simply assume[s] that we can distinguish between the size of different possible benefits.' Parfit just stipulates numerical benefits of different magnitudes that comprise intervals along a whole number cardinal scale that is meant to represent the absolute levels of people's utility in linear fashion. We are supposed to assume that this scale provides an accurate representation of people's utility. But we are not offered an account of what constitutes the measure of the size of the units on this scale. I shall argue that prioritarianism cannot be assessed in such abstraction from an account of the measure of utility. Rather, the soundness of this view crucially depends on what counts as a greater, lesser, or equal increase in a person's utility. In particular, prioritarianism cannot accommodate a normatively compelling measure of utility that is captured by the axioms of John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern's expected utility theory. Nor can it accommodate a plausible and elegant generalization of this theory that has been offered in response to challenges to von Neumann and Morgenstern. This is, I think, a theoretically interesting and unexpected source of difficulty for prioritarianism, which I shall explore in the remainder of this article. Adapted from the source document.
In: Politics, philosophy & economics: ppe, Band 18, Heft 2, S. 101-144
ISSN: 1741-3060
Prioritarianism is a moral view that ranks outcomes according to the sum of a strictly increasing and strictly concave transformation of individual well-being. Prioritarianism is 'welfarist' (namely, it satisfies axioms of Pareto Indifference, Strong Pareto, and Anonymity) as well as satisfying three further axioms: Pigou–Dalton (formalizing the property of giving greater weight to those who are worse off), Separability, and Continuity. Philosophical discussion of prioritarianism was galvanized by Derek Parfit's 1991 Lindley Lecture. Since then, and notwithstanding Parfit's support, a variety of criticisms of prioritarianism have been advanced: by utilitarians (such as John Broome and Hilary Greaves), egalitarians (such as Lara Buchak; Michael Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve; Ingmar Persson; and Larry Temkin), and sufficientists (Roger Crisp).In previous work, we have each endorsed prioritarianism. This article sets forth a renewed defense, in the light of the accumulated criticisms. We clarify the concept of a prioritarian moral view (here addressing work by David McCarthy), discuss the application of prioritarianism under uncertainty (herein of 'ex post' and 'ex ante' prioritarianism), distinguish between person-affecting and impersonal justifications, and provide a person-affecting case for prioritarianism. We then describe the various challenges mounted against prioritarianism – utilitarian, egalitarian, and sufficientist – and seek to counter each of them.
In: The journal of political philosophy, Band 23, Heft 1, S. 1-22
ISSN: 0963-8016
SSRN
In: IZA Discussion Paper No. 14100
SSRN
Working paper
In: Humean Moral Pluralism, S. 76-91