•  1976
    VIII—Epicurus on Pleasure, a Complete Life, and Death: A Defence
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 118 (3): 225-253. 2018.
    Epicurus argued that the good life is the pleasurable life. He also argued that ‘death is nothing to us’. These claims appear in tension. For if pleasure is good, then it seems that death is bad when it deprives us of deeply enjoyable time alive. Here, I offer an Epicurean view of pleasure and the complete life which dissolves this tension. This view is, I contend, more appealing than critics of Epicureanism have allowed, in part because it assigns higher value to pleasures that we produce by ex…Read more
  •  1478
    Making Fair Choices on the Path to Universal Health Coverage
    with Ole Frithjof Norheim, Trygve Ottersen, Bona Chitah, Richard Cookson, Norman Daniels, Nir Eyal, Walter Flores, Axel Gosseries, Daniel Hausman, Samia Hurst, Lydia Kapiriri, Toby Ord, Shlomi Segall, Frehiwot Defaye, and Alicia Yamin
    World Health Organisation. 2014.
    This report by the WHO Consultative Group on Equity and Universal Health Coverage addresses how countries can make fair progress towards the goal of universal coverage. It explains the relevant tradeoffs between different desirable ends and offers guidance on how to make these tradeoffs.
  •  1417
    Decide As You Would With Full Information! An Argument Against Ex Ante Pareto
    In Ole Norheim, Samia Hurst, Nir Eyal & Dan Wikler (eds.), Inequalities in Health: Concepts, Measures, and Ethics, Oxford University Press. 2013.
    Policy-makers must sometimes choose between an alternative which has somewhat lower expected value for each person, but which will substantially improve the outcomes of the worst off, or an alternative which has somewhat higher expected value for each person, but which will leave those who end up worst off substantially less well off. The popular ex ante Pareto principle requires the choice of the alternative with higher expected utility for each. We argue that ex ante Pareto ought to be rejecte…Read more
  •  1285
    Faire Des Choix Justes Pour Une Couverture Sanitaire Universelle
    with Ole Frithjof Norheim, Trygve Ottersen, Bona Chitah, Richard Cookson, Norman Daniels, Frehiwot Defaye, Nir Eyal, Walter Flores, Axel Gosseries, Daniel Hausman, Samia Hurst, Lydia Kapiriri, Toby Ord, Shlomi Segall, Gita Sen, Daniel Wikler, Alicia Yamin, Tessa T. T. Edejer, Andreas Reis, Ritu Sadana, and Carla Saenz
    World Health Organization. 2015.
    This report from the WHO Consultative Group on Equity and Universal Health Coverage offers advice on how to make progress fairly towards universal health coverage.
  •  1133
    Egalitarianism and the Separateness of Persons
    Utilitas 24 (3): 381-398. 2012.
    The difference between the unity of the individual and the separateness of persons requires that there be a shift in the moral weight that we accord to changes in utility when we move from making intrapersonal tradeoffs to making interpersonal tradeoffs. We examine which forms of egalitarianism can, and which cannot, account for this shift. We argue that a form of egalitarianism which is concerned only with the extent of outcome inequality cannot account for this shift. We also argue that a view…Read more
  •  1114
    Who Am I? Beyond 'I Think, Therefore I Am'
    with Frances Kamm, Elie During, Timothy Wilson, and David Jopling
    Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1234 (1): 134-148. 2011.
    Can we ever truly answer the question, “Who am I?” Moderated by Alex Voorhoeve (London School of Economics), neuro-philosopher Elie During (University of Paris, Ouest Nanterre), cognitive scientist David Jopling (York University, Canada), social psychologist Timothy Wilson (University of Virginia),and ethicist Frances Kamm (Harvard University) examine the difficulty of achieving genuine self-knowledge and how the pursuit of self-knowledge plays a role in shaping the self.
  •  1041
    Cómo tomar decisiones justas en el camino hacia la cobertura universal de salud
    with Ole Frithjof Norheim, Trygve Ottersen, Bona Chitah, Richard Cookson, Norman Daniels, Frehiwot Defaye, Nir Eyal, Walter Flores, Axel Gosseries, Daniel Hausman, Samia Hurst, Lydia Kapiriri, Toby Ord, Shlomi Segall, Gita Sen, Tessa T. T. Edejer, Andreas Reis, Ritu Sadana, Carla Saenz, Alicia Yamin, and Daniel Wikler
    Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO). 2015.
    La cobertura universal de salud está en el centro de la acción actual para fortalecer los sistemas de salud y mejorar el nivel y la distribución de la salud y los servicios de salud. Este documento es el informe fi nal del Grupo Consultivo de la OMS sobre la Equidad y Cobertura Universal de Salud. Aquí se abordan los temas clave de la justicia (fairness) y la equidad que surgen en el camino hacia la cobertura universal de salud. Por lo tanto, el informe es pertinente para cada agente que infl uy…Read more
  •  1040
    How Should We Aggregate Competing Claims
    Ethics 125 (1): 64-87. 2014.
    Many believe that we ought to save a large number from being permanently bedridden rather than save one from death. Many also believe that we ought to save one from death rather than a multitude from a very minor harm, no matter how large this multitude. I argue that a principle I call “Aggregate Relevant Claims” satisfactorily explains these judgments. I offer a rationale for this principle and defend it against objections.
  •  947
    How Much Ambiguity Aversion? Finding Indifferences between Ellsberg's Risky and Ambiguous Bets
    with Ken Binmore and Lisa Stewart
    Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 45 (3): 215-38. 2012.
    Experimental results on the Ellsberg paradox typically reveal behavior that is commonly interpreted as ambiguity aversion. The experiments reported in the current paper find the objective probabilities for drawing a red ball that make subjects indifferent between various risky and uncertain Ellsberg bets. They allow us to examine the predictive power of alternative principles of choice under uncertainty, including the objective maximin and Hurwicz criteria, the sure-thing principle, and the prin…Read more
  •  769
    Ambiguity Attitudes, Framing and Consistency
    with Ken G. Binmore, Arnaldur Stefansson, and Lisa Stewart
    Theory and Decision 81 (3): 313-337. 2016.
    We use probability-matching variations on Ellsberg’s single-urn experiment to assess three questions: (1) How sensitive are ambiguity attitudes to changes from a gain to a loss frame? (2) How sensitive are ambiguity attitudes to making ambiguity easier to recognize? (3) What is the relation between subjects’ consistency of choice and the ambiguity attitudes their choices display? Contrary to most other studies, we find that a switch from a gain to a loss frame does not lead to a switch from ambi…Read more
  •  755
    Equality versus Priority
    In Serena Olsaretti (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Distributive Justice, Oxford University Press. pp. 65-85. 2018.
    We discuss two leading theories of distributive justice: egalitarianism and prioritarianism. We argue that while each has particular merits and shortcomings, egalitarian views more fully satisfy a key requirement of distributive justice: respect for both the unity of the individual and the separateness of persons.
  •  743
    Vaulting Intuition: Temkin's Critique of Transitivity
    Economics and Philosophy 29 (3): 409-425. 2013.
    In 'Rethinking the Good', Larry Temkin makes two core claims. First, the goodness of a distribution is sometimes ‘essentially comparative’ – it sometimes depends on which alternative distribution(s) it is compared to. Second, such cases threaten the transitivity of ‘all things considered better than’. I argue that the goodness of a distribution may indeed depend on what other distributions are feasible. But contrary to Temkin, I also argue that transitivity holds even when the goodness of a dis…Read more
  •  719
    Review of Matthew D. Adler: Well-Being and Fair Distribution. Beyond Cost-Benefit Analysis (review)
    Social Choice and Welfare 42 (1): 245-54. 2014.
    In this extended book review, I summarize Adler's views and critically analyze his key arguments on the measurement of well-being and the foundations of prioritarianism.
  •  632
    Priority or Equality for Possible People?
    Ethics 126 (4): 929-954. 2016.
    Suppose that you must make choices that may influence the well-being and the identities of the people who will exist, though not the number of people who will exist. How ought you to choose? This paper answers this question. It argues that the currency of distributive ethics in such cases is a combination of an individual’s final well-being and her expected well-being conditional on her existence. It also argues that this currency should be distributed in an egalitarian, rather than a prioritari…Read more
  •  606
    Erasmus: a snapshot
    The Philosophers' Magazine 48 98-100. 2004.
    In the summer of 1514, Desiderius Erasmus (c.1467-1536) was beginning to establish his name as the leading humanist scholar of his age, when he was recalled to his monastery in his native Holland.
  •  598
    Why One Should Count Only Claims with which One Can Sympathize
    Public Health Ethics 10 (2): 148-156. 2017.
    When one faces competing claims of varying strength on public resources for health, which claims count? This paper proposes the following answer. One should count, or aggregate, a person’s claim just in case one could sympathize with her desire to prioritize her own claim over the strongest competing claim. It argues that this principle yields appealing case judgments and has a plausible grounding in both sympathetic identification with each person, taken separately, and respect for the person f…Read more
  •  598
    Why Sore Throats Don't Aggregate against a Life, but Arms Do
    Journal of Medical Ethics 41 (6): 492-493. 2015.
    When do claims to be saved of a small or moderate harm aggregate against a competing claim to be saved from an early death? In this short response to Kamm's Bioethical Prescriptions, I argue for the following answer: aggregation of weaker claims against a life is permitted just in case, in a one-to-one contest, a person with a weaker claim would have a personal prerogative to prioritize her claim over a stranger’s competing claim to life.
  •  543
    We argue that there is a marked shift in the moral weight of an increment in a person's well-being when one moves from a case involving only intra-personal trade-offs to a case involving only inter-personal trads-offs. This shift, we propose, is required by the separateness of persons. We also argue that the Priority View put forward by Parfit cannot account for such a shift. We also outline two alternative views, an egalitarian view and a claims-based view, that can account for this shift.
  •  538
    Why Health-Related Inequalities Matter and Which Ones Do
    In Ole F. Norheim, Ezekiel J. Emanuel & Joseph Millum (eds.), Global Health Priority-Setting: Beyond Cost-Effectiveness, Oxford University Press. pp. 145-62. 2019.
    I outline and defend two egalitarian theories, which yield distinctive and, I argue, complementary answers to why health-related inequalities matter: a brute luck egalitarian view, according to which inequalities due to unchosen, differential luck are bad because unfair, and a social egalitarian view, according to which inequalities are bad when and because they undermine people’s status as equal citizens. These views identify different objects of egalitarian concern: the brute luck egalitarian …Read more
  •  533
    In search of the deep structure of morality: an interview with Frances Kamm
    with Frances Kamm
    Imprints 9 (2): 93-117. 2006.
    An extended discussion with Frances Kamm about deontology and the methodology of ethical theorizing. (An extended and revised version appears in Alex Voorhoeve, Conversations on Ethics, OUP 2009).)
  •  507
    Assessing the Wellbeing Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Three Policy Types: Suppression, Control, and Uncontrolled Spread
    with Matthew D. Adler, Richard Bradley, Maddalena Ferranna, Marc Fleurbaey, and James Hammitt
    Thinktank 20 Policy Briefs for the G20 Meeting in Saudi Arabia 2020. 2020.
    The COVID-19 crisis has forced a difficult trade-off between limiting the health impacts of the virus and maintaining economic activity. Welfare economics offers tools to conceptualize this trade-off so that policy-makers and the public can see clearly what is at stake. We review four such tools: the Value of Statistical Life (VSL); the Value of Statistical Life Years (VSLYs); Quality-Adjusted Life-Years (QALYs); and social welfare analysis, and argue that the latter are superior. We also discus…Read more
  •  503
    On the social and personal value of existence
    In Iwao Hirose & Andrew Reisner (eds.), Weighing and Reasoning: Themes From the Philosophy of John Broome, Oxford University Press. pp. 95-109. 2015.
    If a potential person would have a good life if he were to come into existence, can we coherently regard his coming into existence as better for him than his never coming into existence? And can we regard the situation in which he never comes into existence as worse for him? In this paper, we argue that both questions should be answered affirmatively. We also explain where prominent arguments to differing conclusions go wrong. Finally, we explore the relevance of our answers to issues in populat…Read more
  •  489
    Introduction to the Symposium on Equality versus Priority
    Economics and Philosophy 31 (2): 201-202. 2015.
    This paper introduces a symposium on Equality versus Priority. It explains how cases involving risk are key to distinguishing these views and discusses a 'social egalitarian' critique of both 'telic egalitarians' and 'telic prioritarians'.
  •  481
    Preference Change and Interpersonal Comparisons of Welfare
    In Serena Olsaretti (ed.), Preferences and Well-Being, Cambridge University Press. pp. 265-79. 2006.
    Can a preference-based conception of welfare accommodate changes in people's preferences? I argue that the fact that people care about which preferences they have, and the fact that people can change their preferences about which preferences it is good for them to have, together undermine the case for accepting a preference-satisfaction conception of welfare.
  •  427
    Equal opportunity, equality, and responsibility
    Dissertation, University of London. 2005.
    This thesis argues that a particular version of equal opportunity for welfare is the best way of meeting the joint demands of three liberal egalitarian ideals: distributional equality, responsibility, and respect for individuals’ differing reasonable judgements of their own good. It also examines which social choice rules best represent these demands. Finally, it defends the view that achieving equal opportunity for welfare should not only be a goal of formal public institutions, but that just c…Read more
  •  426
    Similarity and the trustworthiness of distributive judgements
    with Arnaldur Stefansson and Brian Wallace
    Economics and Philosophy 35 (3): 537-561. 2019.
    When people must either save a greater number of people from a smaller harm or a smaller number from a greater harm, do their choices reflect a reasonable moral outlook? We pursue this question with the help of an experiment. In our experiment, two-fifths of subjects employ a similarity heuristic. When alternatives appear dissimilar in terms of the number saved but similar in terms of the magnitude of harm prevented, this heuristic mandates saving the greater number. In our experiment, this lead…Read more
  •  417
    May a Government Mandate More Comprehensive Health Insurance than Citizens Want for Themselves?
    In David Sobel, Peter Vallentyne & Steven Wall (eds.), Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, Vol 4, Oxford University Press. pp. 167-191. 2018.
    I critically examine a common liberal egalitarian view about the justification for, and proper content of, mandatory health insurance. This view holds that a mandate is justified because it is the best way to ensure that those in poor health gain health insurance on equitable terms. It also holds that a government should mandate what a representative prudent individual would purchase for themselves if they were placed in fair conditions of choice. I argue that this common justification for a man…Read more
  •  408
    Three Case Studies in Making Fair Choices on the Path to Universal Health Coverage
    with Tessa Edejer, Kapiriri Lydia, Ole Frithjof Norheim, James Snowden, Olivier Basenya, Dorjsuren Bayarsaikhan, Ikram Chentaf, Nir Eyal, Amanda Folsom, Rozita Halina Tun Hussein, Cristian Morales, Florian Ostmann, Trygve Ottersen, Phusit Prakongsai, and Carla Saenz
    Health and Human Rights 18 (2): 11-22. 2016.
    The goal of achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) can generally be realized only in stages. Moreover, resource, capacity and political constraints mean governments often face difficult trade-offs on the path to UHC. In a 2014 report, Making fair choices on the path to UHC, the WHO Consultative Group on Equity and Universal Health Coverage articulated principles for making such trade-offs in an equitable manner. We present three case studies which illustrate how these principles can guide pr…Read more
  •  394
    The house that Jack built
    The Philosophers' Magazine 22 (22): 28-31. 2003.
    A critical overview of John ('Jack') Rawls' key ideas.
  •  391
    Balancing small against large burdens
    Behavioural Public Policy 2 (1): 125-142. 2018.
    Common principles for resource allocation in health care can prioritize the alleviation of small health burdens over lifesaving treatment. I argue that there is some evidence that these principles are at odds with a sizable share of public opinion, which holds that saving a life should take priority over any number of cures for minor ailments. I propose two possible explanations for this opinion, one debunking and one vindicatory. I also outline how well-designed surveys and moral inquiry could …Read more