Table Of ContentOXFORD
Weighing Lives
JOHN BROOME
John Broome is White's Professor of Moral
Philosophy atthe University of Oxford.
ALSO PUBLISHED BY
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
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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
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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
