Prioritarianism: A (Pluralist) Defence

Abstract

A well-known objection to prioritarianism, famously levelled by Mike Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve, is that it wrongly ignores the unity of the individual in treating intra-personal cases like inter-personal cases. In this paper we accept that there should be a moral shift between these cases, but argue that this is because autonomy is a relevant consideration in intra-personal but not inter-personal cases, and one to which pluralist prioritarians ought to attend. To avoid this response, Otsuka and Voorhoeve must (and do) assume we know nothing about the subjective information of the person being chosen for. But we show that this commits them to two controversial assumptions: that welfare consists in an objective list of goods, and – if one accepts an unorthodox but plausible account of the relationship between risk aversion and rationality – that there is only a narrow range of rational risk aversions. Only prioritarians who accept both these assumptions are on the hook of Otsuka and Voorhoeve’s objection; for all others, the examples have insufficient information, and so lose their sting.

Promoting racial equity in COVID-19 resource allocation

“…If MLS results in unacceptably inequitable outcomes, what system ought we use? We hold the prioritarian view that ‘welfare gains matter more, morally, the worse off you are’, 25 and agree with O’Neill’s stance that it is ‘fanciful to think that any “single principle” distributive view…could capture the full truth about the ethics of distribution’. 11 As MLS and equity are both worthy factors for a COVID-19 allocation scheme, we find value in pluralist prioritarianism’s allowance for ‘holding that more than one thing matters morally’.…”

“… 11 As MLS and equity are both worthy factors for a COVID-19 allocation scheme, we find value in pluralist prioritarianism’s allowance for ‘holding that more than one thing matters morally’. 25 In the interest of prioritising equity alongside saving the most lives, we reject a singular focus on utility maximisation, preferring a system that balances the value of saving the most lives with the value of equity.…”

Enough is too much: the excessiveness objection to sufficientarianism

“…Sufficientarians rarely constrain their sufficiency principles by identifying other principles of the same fundamental weight, as egalitarians and prioritarians routinely do by endorsing thoroughly pluralistic views (Arneson 1999;Arneson 2000;Knight 2009: Ch. 6;Segall 2010;Segall 2014;Temkin 2011;Agmon and Hitchens 2019). Indeed, while Axelsen and Nielsen emphasize that, on their capability sufficientarian account, 'justice is : : : pluralist in nature', this is only in the sense that 'being sufficiently well-off means being free from pressure against succeeding in each of the central areas' (Axelsen and Nielsen 2015: 407).…”