IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/120063.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Better than nothing: on defining the valence of a life

Author

Listed:
  • Brown, Campbell

Abstract

The valence of a life – that is, whether it is good, bad or neutral – is an important consideration in population ethics. This paper examines various definitions of valence. The main focus is ‘temporal’ definitions, which define valence in terms of the ‘shape’ of a life’s value over time. The paper argues that temporal definitions are viable only with a restricted domain, and therefore are incompatible with certain substantive theories of well-being. It also briefly considers some popular non-temporal definitions, and raises some problems for these.

Suggested Citation

  • Brown, Campbell, 2023. "Better than nothing: on defining the valence of a life," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 120063, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:120063
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/120063/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blackorby,Charles & Bossert,Walter & Donaldson,David J., 2005. "Population Issues in Social Choice Theory, Welfare Economics, and Ethics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521532587.
    2. Johansson, Jens, 2010. "Being and Betterness," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(3), pages 285-302, September.
    3. Blackorby, Charles & Bossert, Walter & Donaldson, David, 1997. "Critical-Level Utilitarianism and the Population-Ethics Dilemma," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(2), pages 197-230, October.
    4. Arrhenius, Gustaf, 2000. "An Impossibility Theorem for Welfarist Axiologies," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(2), pages 247-266, October.
    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. Yves Arrighi & Mohammad Abu‐Zaineh & Bruno Ventelou, 2015. "To Count or Not to Count Deaths: Reranking Effects in Health Distribution Evaluation," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(2), pages 193-205, February.
    2. Christian Tarsney & Teruji Thomas, 2020. "Non-Additive Axiologies in Large Worlds," Papers 2010.06842, arXiv.org.
    3. Claudio Zoli, 2009. "Variable population welfare and poverty orderings satisfying replication properties," Working Papers 69/2009, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    4. Kohei Kamaga, 2016. "Infinite-horizon social evaluation with variable population size," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 47(1), pages 207-232, June.
    5. BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2006. "Population Ethics," Cahiers de recherche 2006-15, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
      • BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2006. "Population Ethics," Cahiers de recherche 14-2006, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    6. de la Croix, David & Doepke, Matthias, 2021. "A soul’s view of the optimal population problem," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 98-108.
    7. Geir B. Asheim & Stéphane Zuber, 2017. "Rank-discounting as a resolution to a dilemma in population ethics," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 17041, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    8. Stéphane Zuber, 2018. "Population-adjusted egalitarianism," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-01937766, HAL.
    9. Aurélie Méjean & Antonin Pottier & Marc Fleurbaey & Stéphane Zuber, 2020. "Catastrophic climate change, population ethics and intergenerational equity," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 163(2), pages 873-890, November.
    10. 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.
    11. Spears, Dean & Budolfson, Mark, 2019. "Why Variable-Population Social Orderings Cannot Escape the Repugnant Conclusion: Proofs and Implications," IZA Discussion Papers 12668, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Leslie Shiell, 2008. "The Repugnant Conclusion and Utilitarianism under Domain Restrictions," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 10(6), pages 1011-1031, December.
    13. Spears, Dean, 2019. "The Asymmetry of Population Ethics: Experimental Social Choice and Dual-Process Moral Reasoning," IZA Discussion Papers 12537, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. BOSSERT, Walter, 2006. "Consistent Relations," Cahiers de recherche 2006-03, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
    15. Simone Marsiglio, 2010. "Endogenous Growth, Population Growth and the Repugnant Conclusion," UNIMI - Research Papers in Economics, Business, and Statistics unimi-1103, Universitá degli Studi di Milano.
    16. Spataro, Luca & Renström, Thomas I., 2012. "Optimal taxation, critical-level utilitarianism and economic growth," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(9-10), pages 727-738.
    17. Donaldson, David & Pendakur, Krishna, 2015. "Applications of Population Principles: A Note," Economics working papers david_donaldson-2015-22, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 03 Sep 2015.
    18. BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2002. "Critical-Level Population Principles and the Repugnant Conclusion," Cahiers de recherche 2002-15, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
    19. Walter Bossert & Susumu Cato & Kohei Kamaga, 2023. "Thresholds, critical levels, and generalized sufficientarian principles," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 75(4), pages 1099-1139, May.
    20. Marcus Pivato, 2020. "Rank-additive population ethics," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 69(4), pages 861-918, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    well-being; life; population ethics; CUP deal;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:ehl:lserod:120063. 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    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.