IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/pophec/v14y2015i4p343-364.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

In defense of priority (and equality)

Author

Listed:
  • Shlomi Segall

    (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)

Abstract

In a recent article, Michael Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve argue that prioritarianism fails to account for the shift in moral significance in gains to individuals in interpersonal as compared to intrapersonal cases. In this article, I show that the priority view escapes this objection but in a way that deprives it of (some of) its anti-egalitarian stance. Despite Otsuka and Voorhoeve, prioritarianism, rightly understood, provides consistent and attractive recommendations in both single- and multi-person cases. Yet prioritarians, the article goes on to show, cannot do so while availing themselves of the leveling down objection (LDO) to egalitarianism. They may not do so because similarly to egalitarianism, prioritarianism also must reject the principle of personal good. That is, egalitarians and prioritarians may sometime recommend certain actions and outcomes even when these are better for no one. Prioritarians may survive the Otsuka–Voorhoeve critique, but to do so they must abandon their anti-egalitarian stance (or at the very least, the LDO).

Suggested Citation

  • Shlomi Segall, 2015. "In defense of priority (and equality)," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 14(4), pages 343-364, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:pophec:v:14:y:2015:i:4:p:343-364
    DOI: 10.1177/1470594X14550966
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1470594X14550966
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1470594X14550966?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mckerlie, Dennis, 1994. "Equality and Priority," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 6(1), pages 25-42, May.
    2. Williams, Andrew, 2012. "The Priority View Bites the Dust?," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(3), pages 315-331, September.
    3. Peterson, Martin & Hansson, Sven Ove, 2005. "Equality and Priority," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(3), pages 299-309, November.
    4. Voorhoeve, Alex & Fleurbaey, Marc, 2012. "Egalitarianism and the Separateness of Persons," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(3), pages 381-398, September.
    5. Rabinowicz, Wlodek, 2002. "Prioritarianism for Prospects," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(1), pages 2-21, March.
    6. Ramsay, Marc, 2005. "Teleological Egalitarianism vs. the Slogan," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(1), pages 93-116, March.
    7. Parfit, Derek, 2012. "Another Defence of the Priority View," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(3), pages 399-440, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Matthew Adler & David Anthoff & Valentina Bosetti & Greg Garner & Klaus Keller & Nicolas Treich, 2017. "Priority for the worse-off and the social cost of carbon," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 7(6), pages 443-449, June.
    2. Matthew Adler & Nicolas Treich, 2015. "Prioritarianism and Climate Change," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 62(2), pages 279-308, October.
    3. Matthew D Adler & Nils Holtug, 2019. "Prioritarianism: A response to critics," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 18(2), pages 101-144, May.
    4. Alex Voorhoeve, 2014. "Matthew D. Adler: Well-being and fair distribution: beyond cost-benefit analysis," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 42(1), pages 245-254, January.
    5. Kristof Bosmans & Erwin Ooghe, 2013. "A characterization of maximin," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 1(2), pages 151-156, November.
    6. Joseph Millum, 2023. "Should health research funding be proportional to the burden of disease?," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 22(1), pages 76-99, February.
    7. Anders Herlitz & David Horan, 2017. "A Model and Indicator of Aggregate Need Satisfaction for Capped Objectives and Weighting Schemes for Situations of Scarcity," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 133(2), pages 413-430, September.
    8. Anders Herlitz & David Horan, 2016. "Prioritizing the “worse off” under attainability constraints: An indeterminacy problem for distributive fairness," Working Papers 201608, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    9. Philippe Van Basshuysen, 2017. "Towards a Fair Distribution Mechanism for Asylum," Games, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-19, September.
    10. Antoine Bommier & Stéphane Zuber, 2008. "Can preferences for catastrophe avoidance reconcile social discounting with intergenerational equity?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 31(3), pages 415-434, October.
    11. Nora Lustig & Valentina Martinez Pabon, 2022. "Universal Basic Income, Taxes, and the Poor," Working Papers 2205, Tulane University, Department of Economics.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:pophec:v:14:y:2015:i:4:p:343-364. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.