The Axiomatic Approach to Population Ethics

Blackorby, Charles; Bossert, Walter; Donaldson, David

doi:10.1177/1470594x030023004

Cited by 15 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 38 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…To illustrate the condition, consider the following example (see Blackorby, Bossert and Donaldson [2001]). Suppose that, in the near future, a small group of humans leaves Earth on a space ship and, after travelling through space for several generations, establishes a colony on a planet that belongs to a distant star.…”

Section: Critical-level Generalized Utilitarianismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are principles that are closely related to the critical-level generalized-utilitarian principles with positive critical levels. They are the restricted critical-level generalizedutilitarian principles (Blackorby, Bossert and Donaldson [2001]) and they satisfy anonymity, strong Pareto, continuity and weak existence of critical levels and, furthermore, they avoid both the repugnant conclusion and the strong sadistic conclusion. The positive critical level for a critical-level generalized-utilitarian principle becomes the critical-level parameter for the corresponding restricted principle.…”

Section: Restricted Critical-level Principlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In that case, the alternatives are ranked with classical utilitarianism and y is better than x. Restricted number-dampened utilitarianism (see Blackorby, Bossert and Donaldson [2001] and Hurka [2000]) suffers from the same problem because it fails to satisfy existence independence.…”

Section: Restricted Critical-level Principlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Classical utilitarianism is obtained if this function is proportional to population size, and average utilitarianism results if the function is constant. See Ng [1986] and, for variations and further discussions, Arrhenius [2000], Blackorby, Bossert and Donaldson [2001], Carlson [1998], Hurka [2000] and Sider [1991].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For further discussions, seeArrhenius [2000],Blackorby, Bossert, Donaldson and Fleurbaey [1998],Blackorby, Bossert and Donaldson [2001],Blackorby and Donaldson [1991] andNg [1989].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Critical-Level Population Principles And The Repugnant Conclusion

Blackorby

Bossert

Donaldson³

The Repugnant Conclusion

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Critical-level generalized-utilitarian population principles with positive critical levels provide an ethically attractive way of avoiding the repugnant conclusion. We discuss the axiomatic foundations of critical-level generalized utilitarianism and investigate its relationship to the sadistic and strong sadistic conclusions. A positive critical level avoids the repugnant conclusion. We demonstrate that, although no critical-level generalizedutilitarian principle can avoid both the repugnant and strong sadistic conclusions, principles that avoid both have significant defects.

show abstract

Section: Critical-level Generalized Utilitarianismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Restricted Critical-level Principlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Restricted Critical-level Principlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For further discussions, seeArrhenius [2000],Blackorby, Bossert, Donaldson and Fleurbaey [1998],Blackorby, Bossert and Donaldson [2001],Blackorby and Donaldson [1991] andNg [1989].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Critical-Level Population Principles And The Repugnant Conclusion

Blackorby

Bossert

Donaldson³

The Repugnant Conclusion

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Population

Roberts¹

2013

The International Encyclopedia of Ethics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The choices we make today have consequences for what life will be like for future people, how many future people there will be, and who those future people are. Such quality, quantity , and identity issues – and more besides – fall within the domain of population ethics . A widely accepted goal within moral philosophy is the design of a moral theory that plausibly instructs whether an agent's choice to distribute well‐being across a given population in a given way is morally permissible in light of alternative distributions of well‐being across that same population available to that agent at the critical time. Closely related is the design of a theory that plausibly ranks one such distribution against another in terms of the respective moral value, or degree of goodness, of each. The recognition that drives population ethics is that any adequate moral theory must also take into account that the very choices under evaluation for their permissibility may themselves produce distinct populations – some larger, some smaller, some that overlap in terms of identities of their membership, and some that do not. An adequate moral theory must give a plausible account, in other words, of both “Same People” (and hence “Same Number”) cases and “Different People” (whether “Same Number” or not) cases (Parfit 1987: 356, 351–454; Blackorby et al. 1997, 2005).

show abstract

Population

Roberts¹

2020

The International Encyclopedia of Ethics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The choices we make today have consequences for what life will be like for future people, how many future people there will be, and who those future people are. Such quality, quantity, and identity issues fall within the domain of population ethics. A widely accepted goal within moral philosophy is the design of a moral theory that plausibly instructs whether an agent's choice to distribute well‐being across a given population in a given way is morally permissible in light of alternative distributions of well‐being across that same population available to that agent at the critical time. Closely related is the design of a theory that plausibly ranks one such distribution against another in terms of the respective moral value, or degree of goodness, of each. The recognition that drives population ethics is that any adequate moral theory must also take into account that the very choices under evaluation for their permissibility may themselves produce distinct populations – some larger, some smaller, some that overlap in terms of identities of their membership, and some that do not. An adequate moral theory must give a plausible account, in other words, of both “same people” (and hence “same number”) cases and “different people” (whether “same number” or not) cases.

show abstract

The Axiomatic Approach to Population Ethics

Cited by 15 publications

References 38 publications

Critical-Level Population Principles And The Repugnant Conclusion

Critical-Level Population Principles And The Repugnant Conclusion

Population

Population

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About