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Risk, Non-Identity, and ExtinctionThe Monist 107 (2). 2024.This paper examines a recent argument in favour of strong precautionary action—possibly including working to hasten human extinction—on the basis of a decision-theoretic view that accommodates the risk-attitudes of all affected while giving more weight to the more risk-averse attitudes. First, we dispute the need to take into account other people’s attitudes towards risk at all. Second we argue that a version of the non-identity problem undermines the case for doing so in the context of future p…Read more
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Ex-Ante Pareto and the Opaque-Identity PuzzleJournal of Philosophy. forthcoming.Anna Mahtani describes a puzzle meant to show that the Ex-Ante Pareto Principle is incomplete as it stands and, since it cannot be completed in a satisfactory manner, decades of debate in welfare economics and ethics are undermined. In this paper, we provide a better solution to the puzzle which saves the Ex-Ante Pareto Principle from this challenge. We also explain how the plausibility of our solution is reinforced by its similarity to a standard solution to an analogous puzzle in quantified ep…Read more
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A New Puzzle for Limited AggregationAnalysis (XX). 2024.
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People in SuitcasesJournal of Moral Philosophy 20 (1-2): 3-30. 2022.
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Transfinitely Transitive ValuePhilosophical Quarterly 72 (1): 108-134. 2021.This paper develops transfinite extensions of transitivity and acyclicity in the context of population ethics. They are used to argue that it is better to add good lives, worse to add bad lives, and equally good to add neutral lives, where a life's value is understood as personal value. These conclusions rule out a number of theories of population ethics, feed into an argument for the repugnant conclusion, and allow us to reduce different-number comparisons to same-number ones. Challenges to the…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
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Persons |
Topics in Decision Theory |
Game Theory |
Objects |
Deontological Moral Theories |
Consequentialism |
Decision Theory |
Causation |
Population Ethics |