IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/pophec/v18y2019i2p101-144.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Prioritarianism: A response to critics

Author

Listed:
  • Matthew D Adler

    (Duke University, USA)

  • Nils Holtug

    (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew D Adler & Nils Holtug, 2019. "Prioritarianism: A response to critics," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 18(2), pages 101-144, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:pophec:v:18:y:2019:i:2:p:101-144
    DOI: 10.1177/1470594X19828022
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1470594X19828022
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1470594X19828022?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. Hyams, Keith, 2015. "Hypothetical Choice, Egalitarianism and the Separateness of Persons," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(2), pages 217-239, June.
    2. Marc Fleurbaey, 2010. "Assessing Risky Social Situations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(4), pages 649-680, August.
    3. Brown, Campbell, 2005. "Priority Or Sufficiency €¦Or Both?," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(2), pages 199-220, October.
    4. Adler, Matthew D., 2018. "Prioritarianism: Room for Desert?," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 30(2), pages 172-197, June.
    5. Hausman, Daniel M., 2015. "Equality Versus Priority: A Misleading Distinction," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 31(2), pages 229-238, July.
    6. Moreno-Ternero, Juan D. & Roemer, John E., 2008. "The Veil Of Ignorance Violates Priority," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(2), pages 233-257, July.
    7. Bovens, Luc, 2015. "Concerns For The Poorly Off In Ordering Risky Prospects," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 31(3), pages 397-429, November.
    8. Gilboa,Itzhak, 2009. "Theory of Decision under Uncertainty," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521741231, January.
    9. McCarthy, David, 2008. "Utilitarianism And Prioritarianism Ii," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(1), pages 1-33, March.
    10. Ord, Toby, 2015. "A New Counterexample to Prioritarianism," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(3), pages 298-302, September.
    11. McCarthy, David, 2017. "The Priority View," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 33(2), pages 215-257, July.
    12. Williams, Andrew, 2012. "The Priority View Bites the Dust?," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(3), pages 315-331, September.
    13. Temkin, Larry S., 2003. "Equality, Priority Or What?," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(1), pages 61-87, April.
    14. Otsuka, Michael, 2012. "Prioritarianism and the Separateness of Persons," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(3), pages 365-380, September.
    15. Bognar, Greg, 2012. "Empirical and Armchair Ethics," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(4), pages 467-482, December.
    16. Broome, John, 2015. "Equality Versus Priority: A Useful Distinction," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 31(2), pages 219-228, July.
    17. Porter, Thomas, 2012. "In Defence of the Priority View," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(3), pages 349-364, September.
    18. Crisp, Roger, 2011. "In Defence of the Priority View: A Response to Otsuka and Voorhoeve," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(1), pages 105-108, March.
    19. 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)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jenny von Platten & Karl de Fine Licht & Mikael Mangold & Kristina Mjörnell, 2021. "Renovating on Unequal Premises: A Normative Framework for a Just Renovation Wave in Swedish Multifamily Housing," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-32, September.
    2. Thoma, Johanna, 2021. "Weighing the costs and benefits of public policy: on the dangers of single metric accounting," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 112689, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Antoinette Baujard, 2022. "Ethics and Technique in Welfare Economics: How Welfarism Evolves in the Making," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 73(6), pages 1039-1053.
    4. Øystein Ariansen Haaland & Frode Lindemark & Kjell Arne Johansson, 2019. "A flexible formula for incorporating distributive concerns into cost-effectiveness analyses: Priority weights," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(10), pages 1-12, October.

    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. Dean Spears & Stéphane Zuber, 2023. "Foundations of utilitarianism under risk and variable population," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 61(1), pages 101-129, July.
    4. Shlomi Segall, 2015. "In defense of priority (and equality)," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 14(4), pages 343-364, November.
    5. McCarthy, David & Mikkola, Kalle & Thomas, Teruji, 2016. "Utilitarianism with and without expected utility," MPRA Paper 72578, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Dean Spears & Mark Budolfson, 2021. "Repugnant conclusions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 57(3), pages 567-588, October.
    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. Abatemarco, Antonio & Stroffolini, Francesca, 2017. "The Economics of Justice as Fairness," EconStor Preprints 176843, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    9. Philippe Mongin & Marcus Pivato, 2021. "Rawls’s difference principle and maximin rule of allocation: a new analysis," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 71(4), pages 1499-1525, June.
    10. Thijs De Coninck & Frederik Van De Putte, 2023. "Original position arguments and social choice under ignorance," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 94(2), pages 275-298, February.
    11. Adler, Matthew D. & Treich, Nicolas, 2017. "Utilitarianism, prioritarianism, and intergenerational equity: A cake eating model," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 94-102.
    12. Takashi Hayashi & Michele Lombardi, 2019. "Fair social decision under uncertainty and belief disagreements," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 67(4), pages 775-816, June.
    13. 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.
    14. McCarthy, David & Mikkola, Kalle & Thomas, Teruji, 2020. "Utilitarianism with and without expected utility," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 77-113.
    15. Christopher P. Chambers & Federico Echenique & Eran Shmaya, 2014. "The Axiomatic Structure of Empirical Content," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(8), pages 2303-2319, August.
    16. Bommier, Antoine & Lanz, Bruno & Zuber, Stéphane, 2015. "Models-as-usual for unusual risks? On the value of catastrophic climate change," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 1-22.
    17. Itzhak Gilboa & Andrew Postlewaite & Larry Samuelson & David Schmeidler, 2019. "What are axiomatizations good for?," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 86(3), pages 339-359, May.
    18. Gilboa, Itzhak & Samuelson, Larry & Schmeidler, David, 2013. "Dynamics of inductive inference in a unified framework," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(4), pages 1399-1432.
    19. Hougaard, Jens Leth & Moreno-Ternero, Juan D. & Østerdal, Lars Peter, 2013. "A new axiomatic approach to the evaluation of population health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 515-523.
    20. Che-Yuan Liang, 2017. "Optimal inequality behind the veil of ignorance," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 83(3), pages 431-455, October.

    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:18:y:2019:i:2:p:101-144. 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.