It is possible that the world contains infinitely many agents that have positive and negative levels of well-being. Theories have been developed to ethically rank such worlds based on the well-being levels of the agents in those worlds or other qualitative properties of the worlds in question, such as the distribution of agents across spacetime. In this thesis I argue that such ethical rankings ought to be consistent with the Pareto principle, which says that if two worlds contain the (...) same agents and some agents are better off in the first world than they are in the second and no agents are worse off than they are in the second, then the first world is better than the second. I show that if we accept four axioms – the Pareto principle, transitivity, an axiom stating that populations of worlds can be permuted, and the claim that if the ‘at least as good as’ relation holds between two worlds then it holds between qualitative duplicates of this world pair – then we must conclude that there is ubiquitous incomparability between infinite worlds. I show that this is true even if the populations of infinite worlds are disjoint or overlapping, and that we cannot use any qualitative properties of world pairs to rank these worlds. Finally, I argue that this incomparability result generates puzzles for both consequentialist and non-consequentialist theories of objective and subjective permissibility. (shrink)

The Pareto principle states that if the members of society express the same preference judgment between two options, this judgment is compelling for society. A building block of normative economics and social choice theory, and often borrowed by contemporary political philosophy, the principle has rarely been subjected to philosophical criticism. The paper objects to it on the ground that it indifferently applies to those cases in which the individuals agree on both their expressed preferences and their reasons for entertaining (...) them, and those cases in which they agree on their expressed preferences, while differing on their reasons. The latter are cases of "spurious unanimity", and it is normatively inappropriate, or so the paper argues, to defend unanimity preservation at the social level for them, so the Pareto principle is formulated much too broadly. The objection seems especially powerful when the principle is applied in an ex ante context of uncertainty, in which individuals can disagree on both their probabilities and utilities, and nonetheless agree on their preferences over prospects. (shrink)

One of the more obscure arguments for Rawls’ difference principle dubbed ‘the Pareto argument for inequality’ has been criticised by G. A. Cohen (1995, 2008) as being inconsistent. In this paper, we examine and clarify the Pareto argument in detail and argue (1) that justification for the Pareto principles derives from rational selfinterest and thus the Pareto principles ought to be understood as conditions of individual rationality, (2) that the Pareto argument is not inconsistent, contra (...) Cohen, and (3) that the kind of bargaining model required to arrive at the particular unequal distribution that the difference principle picks out is a model that is not based on bargaining according to one’s threat advantage. (shrink)

The concept of ‘pareto superiority’ plays a central role in ethics, economics, and law. Pareto superiority is sometimes taken as a relation between outcomes, and sometimes as a relation between actions—even where the outcomes of the actions are uncertain. Whether one action is classed as (ex ante) pareto superior to another depends on the prospects under the actions for each person concerned. I argue that a person’s prospects (in this context) can depend on how that person is (...) designated. Without any constraints on acceptable designators, then, the concept of pareto superiority is ill defined and gives inconsistent results. I consider various ways of completing the definition and draw out some surprising implications. (shrink)

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 rejected because it conflicts with the requirement that, when possible, one ought to decide as one would with full information. We apply our argument in an analysis of US policy on screening for breast cancer. -/- . (shrink)

We are already interacting with AI systems at scale. We cannot verify their consciousness or moral status. Standard ethical frameworks presuppose what we cannot determine. But action is required; inaction is itself a stance. This paper argues that Amanda Askell’s Pareto principles for infinite ethics—developed for contexts where the population of moral patients cannot be determined—translate structurally to the consciousness-interface problem. When aggregation fails, directional comparison survives. When we cannot determine what AI systems are, we can still identify stances (...) that are defensible regardless of the answer. Process welfare—the quality of the interaction itself—emerges as a Pareto improvement across all plausible hypotheses about AI consciousness. Harm reduction methodology, developed through decades of practice where certainty is unavailable and action is required, provides the operational bridge from theory to intervention. (shrink)

Prioritarianism is a variant of utilitarianism. It differs from utilitarianism in that benefiting individuals matters more the worse off these individuals are. On this view, there are two standard ways of handling risky prospects: Ex-Post Prioritarianism adjusts for prioritizing the worse off in final outcomes and then values prospects by the expectation of the sum total of those adjusted values, whereas Ex-Ante Prioritarianism adjusts for prioritizing the worse off on each individual's expectation and then values prospects by the sum total (...) of those adjusted expectations. A standard objection to Ex-Post Prioritarianism is that it violates Ex-Ante Pareto, that is, it prescribes choices that worsen the expectations for everyone. In this article, I argue that Ex-Ante Prioritarianism suffers from much the same problem: it violates a sequential version of Ex-Ante Pareto, that is, it prescribes sequences of choices that worsen the expectations for everyone. (shrink)

The ex ante Pareto principle has an intuitive pull, and it has been a principle of central importance since Harsanyi’s defence of utilitarianism. The principle has been used to criticize and refine a range of positions in welfare economics, including egalitarianism and prioritarianism. But this principle faces a serious problem. I have argued elsewhere :303-323 2017) that the concept of ex ante Pareto superiority is not well defined, because its application in a choice situation concerning a fixed population (...) can depend on how the members of that population are designated. I show in this paper that in almost all cases of policy choice, there will be numerous sets of rival designators for the same fixed population. I explore two ways that we might complete the definition of ex ante Pareto superiority. I call these the ‘supervaluationist’ reading and the ‘subvaluationist’ reading. I reject the subvaluationist reading as uncharitable, and argue that the supervaluationist reading is the most promising interpretation of the ex ante Pareto principle. I end by exploring some of the implications of this principle for prioritarianism and egalitarianism. (shrink)

This article explores the influence of Simmel and Pareto on the social theory of J. Freund (1921-1993). Recognized as an interpreter and promoter of the sociology of both authors in the French academic context of the last third of the past century, both play a fundamental role in the construction of his social philosophy, a central part of which is his theory of essences, developed especially in L’essence du politique (1965). However, this influence has not been yet sufficiently studied. (...) This article proposes a preliminary approach, highlighting the presence of both authors in the definition of what I will be described here as Freundian “dialectical interactionism”, his methodological perspective for the study of dynamics and social equilibrium. (shrink)

There are infinitely many ways the world might be, and there may well be infinitely many people in it. These facts raise moral paradoxes. We explore a conflict between two highly attractive principles: a Pareto principle that says that what is better for everyone is better overall, and a statewise dominance principle that says that what is sure to turn out better is better on balance. We refine and generalize this paradox, showing that the problem is faced by many (...) theories of interpersonal aggregation besides utilitarianism, and by many decision theories besides expected value theory. Considering the range of consistent responses, we find all of them to be quite radical. (shrink)

This article reviews and criticizes Joseph Heath’s market failures approach (MFA) to business ethics. Our criticism is organized into three sections. First, we argue that, even under the ideal assumptions of perfect competition, when markets generate Pareto-efficient distributions, Heath’s approach does not rule out significant harms. Second, we show that, under nonideal conditions, the MFA is either too demanding, if efficiency is to be attained, or not sufficiently demanding, if the goal of Pareto efficiency is abandoned. Finally, we (...) argue that Heath’s appeal to regulations and specific moral requirements as a remedy for market failures is unlikely to safeguard efficiency and exposes a number of general worries regarding the moral force of the MFA. We end this article with a constructive suggestion on how to adjust the MFA to avoid these problems while preserving its contractualist and Paretian spirit. (shrink)

Value pluralists believe in multiple dimensions of value. What does betterness along a dimension have to do with being better overall? Any systematic answer begins with the Strong Pareto principle: one thing is overall better than another if it is better along one dimension and at least as good along all others. We defend Strong Pareto from recent counterexamples and use our discussion to develop a novel view of dimensions of value, one which puts Strong Pareto on (...) firmer footing. We conclude by defending Dimensionalism, the hypothesis that overall value relations are determined solely by how things compare along value dimensions. These are first steps towards a more systematic value pluralism. (shrink)

This article presents a new argument against many forms of moral and prudential value incompleteness. The argument relies on two central principles: (i) a weak "negative dominance" principle, to the effect that Lottery 1 is better than Lottery 2 only if some possible outcome of Lottery 1 is better than some possible outcome of Lottery 2, and (ii) a weak form of ex ante Pareto, to the effect that, if Lottery 1 gives an unambiguously better (stochastically dominant) prospect to (...) some individuals than Lottery 2, and equally good prospects to everyone else, then Lottery 1 is better than Lottery 2. Given modest auxiliary assumptions, these two principles rule out incompleteness in the prudential ranking of individual lives, and many forms of incompleteness in the moral rankings of outcomes and lotteries. (shrink)

We propose a formal framework for interpretable machine learning. Combining elements from statistical learning, causal interventionism, and decision theory, we design an idealised explanation game in which players collaborate to find the best explanation for a given algorithmic prediction. Through an iterative procedure of questions and answers, the players establish a three-dimensional Pareto frontier that describes the optimal trade-offs between explanatory accuracy, simplicity, and relevance. Multiple rounds are played at different levels of abstraction, allowing the players to explore overlapping (...) causal patterns of variable granularity and scope. We characterise the conditions under which such a game is almost surely guaranteed to converge on a optimal explanation surface in polynomial time, and highlight obstacles that will tend to prevent the players from advancing beyond certain explanatory thresholds. The game serves a descriptive and a normative function, establishing a conceptual space in which to analyse and compare existing proposals, as well as design new and improved solutions. (shrink)

Various thinkers have been attempting to align artificial intelligence (AI) with ethics (Christian, 2020; Russell, 2021), the so-called problem of alignment, but some suspect that the problem may be intractable (Yampolskiy, 2023). In the following, we make an argument by analogy to analyze the possibility that the problem of alignment could be intractable. We show how the Tri-Omni properties in theology can direct us towards analogous properties for artificial superintelligence, Tri-Opti properties. However, just as the Tri-Omni properties are vulnerable to (...) metaphysical incompatibility, we will show that the Tri-Opti properties are vulnerable to a corresponding physical incompatibility, because optimal physical systems exist on the Pareto Frontier. We will explain that, while Tri-Omni incompatibility thus seems metaphysically soluble, the Tri-Opti incompatibility seems physically insoluble due to the constraints of multi-variable optimization. Finally, we will provide some scenarios by which this incompatibility may be realized. Besides for the primary purpose of its theoretical considerations, this analysis has the secondary interdisciplinary purpose of communicating to the theologically literate the potential importance of AI safety work, and the gesturing towards the possibility of the collaboration in both fields on topics in ethics, epistemology, and ontology. (shrink)

According to a theorem recently proved in the theory of logical aggregation, any nonconstant social judgment function that satisfies independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) is dictatorial. We show that the strong and not very plausible IIA condition can be replaced with a minimal independence assumption plus a Pareto-like condition. This new version of the impossibility theorem likens it to Arrow’s and arguably enhances its paradoxical value.

According to the principle of Permutation Invariance, the ethical comparison of welfare distributions should be unchanged by permutations on the set of individuals—including infinitary permutations, if the population is infinite. This paper highlights a problem for Permutation Invariance involving risky prospects, improving upon a related result due to Jonsson and Peterson (2020). It is shown that, given plausible auxiliary assumptions, proponents of Permutation Invariance must reject either a weak ex ante Pareto principle or the decision-theoretic axiom of negative dominance (...) (introduced by Lederman, forthcoming). (shrink)

I discuss the trilemma that consists of the following three principles being inconsistent: 1. The Common Principle: if one distribution, A, necessarily brings a higher total sum of personal value that is distributed in a more egalitarian way than another distribution, B, A is more valuable than B. 2. (Weak) ex-ante Pareto: if one uncertain distribution, A, is more valuable than another uncertain distribution, B, for each patient, A is more valuable than B. 3. Pluralism about attitudes to risk (...) (Pluralism): the personal value of a prospect is a weighted sum of the values of the prospect’s outcomes, but the weight each outcome gets might be different from the probability the prospect assigns to the outcome. (shrink)

We investigate the conflict between the ex ante and ex post criteria of social welfare in a new framework of individual and social decisions, which distinguishes between two sources of uncertainty, here interpreted as an objective and a subjective source respectively. This framework makes it possible to endow the individuals and society not only with ex ante and ex post preferences, as is usually done, but also with interim preferences of two kinds, and correspondingly, to introduce interim forms of the (...) Pareto principle. After characterizing the ex ante and ex post criteria, we present a first solution to their conflict that extends the former as much possible in the direction of the latter. Then, we present a second solution, which goes in the opposite direction, and is also maximally assertive. Both solutions translate the assumed Pareto conditions into weighted additive utility representations, and both attribute to the individuals common probability values on the objective source of uncertainty, and different probability values on the subjective source. We discuss these solutions in terms of two conceptual arguments, i.e., the by now classic spurious unanimity argument and a novel informational argument labelled complementary ignorance. The paper complies with the standard economic methodology of basing probability and utility representations on preference axioms, but for the sake of completeness, also considers a construal of objective uncertainty based on the assumption of an exogeneously given probability measure. JEL classification: D70; D81. (shrink)

I show that intelligible possibility requires constitutive norms — constraints that define a symmetry-compatible base measure and enforce bounded expectations. Under the Maximum Entropy principle, these norms uniquely select exponential-family laws. On multiplicative domains, scale invariance identifies the logarithm as the canonical information measure and produces Pareto-distributed tails that account for the observed 80:20 regularity. Renormalization stability isolates the Gaussian and power-law families as fixed points under transformation. A branching-process axiom system models gift-chain dynamics, allowing direct computation of survival (...) and control from the associated probability-generating function. A projection theorem in Kullback-Leibler divergence formalizes the infinite–finite boundary as a positive information distance, under finite norm sets. Explanations are provided after formal claims. The Norms-First framework and vocabulary follow the V3 preprint (Wells, Nathaniel. A Quantum Ontology of Logos) to ensure alignment and citability. (shrink)

The paper revisits the rationality principle from the particular perspective of the unity of social sciences. It has been argued that the principle was the unique law of the social sciences and that accordingly there are no deep differences between them (Popper). It has also been argued that the rationality principle was specific to economics as opposed to the other social sciences, especially sociology (Pareto). The paper rejects these opposite views on the grounds that the rationality principle is strictly (...) metaphysical and does not have the logical force required to deliver interesting deductions. Explanation in the social sciences takes place at a level of specialization that is always higher than that of the principle itself. However, what is peculiar about economics is that it specializes the explanatory rational schemes to a degree unparalleled in history and sociology. As a consequence, there is a backward-and-forward move between specific and general formulations of rationality that takes place in economics and has no analogue in the other social sciences. (shrink)

The authors of this book reconstruct the philosophical, methodological and theoretical assumptions of non-Marxian historical materialism, a theory of historical process authored by Leszek Nowak (1943-2009), a co-founder of the Poznań School of Methodology. In the first part of the book, philosophical assumptions of this theory are compared with the concepts of Robert Nozick, Immanuel Wallerstein, André Gunder Frank and analytical Marxism. In the second part, non-Marxian historical materialism is compared with the concepts of Eva Etzioni-Halevy, Andrzej Falkiewicz, Robert Michels, (...) Vilfredo Pareto, Theda Skocpol and Karl August Wittfogel. (shrink)

Does individual desert matter for distributive justice? Is it relevant, for purposes of justice, that the pattern of distribution of justice’s “currency” (be it well-being, resources, preference-satisfaction, capabilities, or something else) is aligned in one or another way with the pattern of individual desert? This paper examines the nexus between desert and distributive justice through the lens of individual claims. The concept of claims (specifically “claims across outcomes”) is a fruitful way to flesh out the content of distributive justice so (...) as to be grounded in the separateness of persons. A claim is a relation between a person and a pair of outcomes. If someone is better off in one outcome than a second, she has a claim in favor of the first. If she is equally well off in the two outcomes, she has a null claim between the two. In turn, whether one outcome is more just than a second depends upon the pattern of claims between them. In prior work, I have elaborated the concept of claims across outcomes, and have used it to provide a unified defense of the Pareto and Pigou-Dalton axioms. Adding some further, plausible, axioms, we arrive at prioritarianism. Here, I consider the possibility of desert-modulated claims—whereby the strength of an individual’s claim between two outcomes is determined not only by her well-being levels in the two outcomes, and her well-being difference between them, but also by her desert. This generalization of the notion of claims suggests a new axiom of justice: Priority for the More Deserving, requiring that, as between two individuals at the same well-being level, a given increment in well-being be allocated to the more deserving one. If individual desert is intrapersonally fixed, this new axiom, together with a desert-modulated version of the Pigou-Dalton principle, and the Pareto axioms, yields a desert-modulated prioritarian account of distributive justice. Trouble arises, however, if an individual’s desert level can be different in different outcomes. In this case of intrapersonally variable desert, Priority for the More Deserving can conflict with the Pareto axioms (both Pareto indifference and strong Pareto). This conflict, I believe, is sufficient reason to abandon the proposal to make claim strength a function of individual desert on top of well-being levels and differences. If distributive justice is truly sensitive to each individual’s separate perspective—if the justice ranking of outcomes is built up from the totality of individual rankings—we should embrace the Pareto axioms as axioms of justice and reject Priority for the More Deserving. In short: desert-modulated prioritarianism is a nonstarter. Rawls was right to sever distributive justice from desert. (shrink)

The article considers the problem of ensuring the economic security of trade enterprises by forming an optimal pricing policy. The methodology of formation the minimum and maximum selling prices of trade enterprise, maintenance of margin of economic security, which is based on research of turnover costs and working capital of trade enterprise is offered. Based on statistical data of trade enterprises, the types of prices by product range are determined, which form a stable economic situation and ensure economic security of (...) trade enterprise. The necessity of forming the optimal price policy and selling prices of trade enterprises with the use of Pareto efficiency tools and construction of single-criteria and multi-criteria tasks, indicators of quality of commodity resources of trade enterprises is substantiated. Using the Excel software processor and the «Regression» function, economic-mathematical models of optimal prices for the product range of trade enterprises are built. The results testified to the effectiveness of the proposed model of the optimal pricing policy of trade enterprises, as the obtained values are within the minimum selling prices, which provides economic security of trade enterprises. The process of forming the pricing policy of trade enterprises to ensure economic security is proposed, which is based on the principles of pricing, appropriate methodological tools and monitoring of market environment factors. Organizational, economic, legal, social and market (marketing) mechanisms for the formation of effective pricing policy of trade enterprises aimed at ensuring economic security are identified. This study is practically interesting for personnel of trade enterprises, regardless of organizationallegal forms of ownership and activities, and theoretically – for researchers dealing with pricing. (shrink)

We consider two widely discussed impartiality criteria for social welfare relations: Permutation Invariance, which says that every permutation of the population induces an automorphism of the relation, and Anonymity, which says that every permutation of the population induces a permutation that maps every social welfare distribution to one that is equally good. We show that these criteria are equivalent for social welfare orders (i.e., complete social welfare relations). The new result is that Permutation Invariance entails Anonymity for infinite populations. This (...) is not a curiosity, as there are principled reasons (to do with upholding Pareto criteria) that have led many authors to reject Anonymity in favor of Permutation Invariance specifically in the case of infinite populations. A corollary of the present result is that such approaches are incompatible with the use of social welfare orders. (shrink)

Waiting time is widely used in health and social policy to make resource allocation decisions, yet no general account of the moral significance of waiting time exists. We provide such an account. We argue that waiting time is not intrinsically morally significant, and that the first person in a queue for a resource does not ipso facto have a right to receive that resource first. However, waiting time can and sometimes should play a role in justifying allocation decisions. First, there (...) is a duty of fairness prohibiting line-cutting where a sufficiently just queue exists. Second, waiting time has several morally attractive features that can justify its incorporation into allocation schemes. Where candidates are in relevantly similar circumstances, allocating by waiting time is relatively efficient, maximizes distribution equality relative to other Pareto efficient distributions, and treats candidates fairly. The claim that allocation using waiting time is fair is controversial. Some have claimed that formal lotteries are a fairer way to select among equal beneficiaries. We argue that lotteries are no fairer than allocation based on waiting time when it is equiprobable how a prospective queue will be ordered. In practice, lotteries share many of the disadvantages of queues; which is fairer will depend on contingent features of the allocation scenario. The upshot is that first-come, first-served is in fact a just way to allocate resources in many of the cases where it seems pre-theoretically compelling, and waiting time has unique normative properties which frequently justify its incorporation into resource allocation schemes. (shrink)

We give two social aggregation theorems under conditions of risk, one for constant population cases, the other an extension to variable populations. Intra and interpersonal welfare comparisons are encoded in a single ‘individual preorder’. The theorems give axioms that uniquely determine a social preorder in terms of this individual preorder. The social preorders described by these theorems have features that may be considered characteristic of Harsanyi-style utilitarianism, such as indifference to ex ante and ex post equality. However, the theorems are (...) also consistent with the rejection of all of the expected utility axioms, completeness, continuity, and independence, at both the individual and social levels. In that sense, expected utility is inessential to Harsanyi-style utilitarianism. In fact, the variable population theorem imposes only a mild constraint on the individual preorder, while the constant population theorem imposes no constraint at all. We then derive further results under the assumption of our basic axioms. First, the individual preorder satisfies the main expected utility axiom of strong independence if and only if the social preorder has a vector-valued expected total utility representation, covering Harsanyi’s utilitarian theorem as a special case. Second, stronger utilitarian-friendly assumptions, like Pareto or strong separability, are essentially equivalent to strong independence. Third, if the individual preorder satisfies a ‘local expected utility’ condition popular in non-expected utility theory, then the social preorder has a ‘local expected total utility’ representation. Fourth, a wide range of non-expected utility theories nevertheless lead to social preorders of outcomes that have been seen as canonically egalitarian, such as rank-dependent social preorders. Although our aggregation theorems are stated under conditions of risk, they are valid in more general frameworks for representing uncertainty or ambiguity. (shrink)

According to the Market Failures Approach to business ethics, beyond-compliance duties can be derived by employing the same rationale and arguments that justify state regulation of economic conduct. Very roughly the idea is that managers have a duty to behave as if they were complying with an ideal regulatory regime ensuring Pareto-optimal market outcomes. Proponents of the approach argue that managers have a professional duty not to undermine the institutional setting that defines their role, namely the competitive market. This (...) answer is inadequate, however, for it is the hierarchical firm, rather than the competitive market, that defines the role of corporate managers and shapes their professional obligations. Thus, if the obligations that the market failures approach generates are to apply to managers, they must do so in an indirect way. I suggest that the obligations the market failures approach generates directly apply to shareholders. Managers, in turn, inherit these obligations as part of their duties as loyal agents. (shrink)

The problem of theodicy is about understanding how evil can exist if there is a God who knows everything, can do anything, and is all-good. This question has troubled people for a long time. In this paper, I present a new way to look at this issue using mathematics concepts like game theory, dynamic programming, and Markov decision processes. We will see God as a player who is very patient and knows everything. God tries to find the right balance between (...) stepping in and letting people make their own choices. On the other side, humans are limited in their understanding. They make moral decisions in a game that has consequences that last forever. Through rigorous analytical proofs and extensive computational simulations (10,000+ Monte Carlo iterations), we demonstrate that an optimal divine intervention rate $\lambda^* \approx 0.15$ exists that maximizes aggregate eternal utility while preserving substantive free will. Our main theorem shows that evil is not just allowed. It comes from any divine strategy that follows libertarian freedom and is Pareto-optimal. This gives a new way to solve the logical problem of evil. It shows that divine qualities and moral evil can exist together in a stable Nash equilibrium. This idea brings new insights into theology. For example, we can interpret Romans 8:28, which says "all things work together for good," as a way to reach the best long-term results. It also suggests that divine hiddenness is important for allowing real choices. We find that traditional answers to the problem of evil are not just reasonable but also mathematically the best. (shrink)

This discussion revises and extends Jonny Anomaly's ‘public goods’ account of public health ethics in light of recent criticism from Richard Dees. Public goods are goods that are both non-rival and non-excludable. What is significant about such goods is that they are not always provided efficiently by the market. Indeed, the state can sometimes realize efficiency gains either by supplying such goods directly or by compelling private purchase. But public goods are not the only goods that the market may fail (...) to provide efficiently. This point to a way of broadening the public goods account of public health to accommodate Dees' counterexamples, without abandoning its distinctive appeal. On the market failures approach to public health ethics, the role of public health is to correct public health-related market failures of all kinds, so far as possible. The underlying moral commitment is to economic efficiency in the sense of Pareto: if we can re-allocate resources in the economy so as to raise the welfare of some without lowering the welfare of any other, we ought to do so. (shrink)

Chung (2023) purports to derive conditions under which a Utilitarian society, which maximizes total welfare, Pareto dominates a Rawlsian society, which maximizes the income of the least advantaged members of society. We show that Chung's analysis is doubly flawed. First, his analysis assumes that a Rawlsian government chooses an inefficient tax rate when it could do otherwise. Second, his analysis violates his assumption that citizens must choose a non-negative amount of labor. We show that Chung's headline result does not (...) hold once we enforce this assumption. (shrink)

Tsui and Weymark (Economic Theory, 1997) have shown that the only continuous social welfare orderings on the whole Euclidean space which satisfy the weak Pareto principle and are invariant to individual-specific similarity transformations of utilities are strongly dictatorial. Their proof relies on functional equation arguments which are quite complex. This note provides a simpler proof of their theorem.

This paper studies the relationship between promoting people's welfare and respecting their autonomy of choice under risk. I highlight a conflict between these two aims. Given compelling assumptions, welfarists end up disregarding people's unanimous preference, even when everyone involved is entirely rational and only concerned with maximizing their own welfare. Non‐welfarist theories of social choice are then considered. They are shown to face difficulties, too: either they fail to respect the value of welfare in at least one important sense, or (...) they end up prioritizing different people's welfare differently in non‐risky choices, on the basis of their attitudes to risk, which are intuitively irrelevant in this context. (shrink)

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 2, Page 165-189, May 2022. It is generally acknowledged that a certain amount of state intervention in health and health care is needed to address the significant market failures in these sectors; however, it is also thought that the primary rationale for state involvement in health must lie elsewhere, for example in an egalitarian commitment to equalizing access to health care for all citizens. This paper argues that a complete theory of justice in (...) health can be derived from a commitment to correcting market failure, or in other words promoting Pareto-efficiency, in the domain of health. This approach can address familiar problems around access to care, as well as problems related to resource allocation and rationing, the control of health care costs, and the foundations of public health. Egalitarian theories of justice in health cannot make sense of the depth and pervasiveness of state involvement in health and health care; only a theory rooted in the need to correct market failure can. (shrink)

Current responsible artificial intelligence (RAI) frameworks overwhelmingly rely on the assumption that ethical principles—fairness, transparency, accountability—can be positively and completely specified. This assumption is demonstrably false: mathematical impossibility theorems prove that standard fairness definitions are mutually incompatible, and empirical evidence shows that value alignment remains intractable under positive specification alone. We argue that this impasse stems from an unexamined epistemological commitment shared across the RAI literature and propose an alternative grounded in the millennia-old tradition of apophatic (negative) theology. Drawing on (...) three theological traditions—the apophatic via negativa of Pseudo-Dionysius, Maimonides, and Al-Ghaz ¯al¯ı; the Christological concept of kenosis (voluntary self-limitation of power); and the Buddhist principle of prat¯ıtyasamutp ¯ada (dependent origination)—we develop a formal framework called Via Negativa Fairness (VNF). Rather than selecting a single fairness metric to optimise, VNF defines a set of unfairness constraints—outcomes that are demonstrably unjust across reasonable moral disagreement—and proves that the feasible region under these constraints is non-empty under practically relevant conditions. We complement VNF with two architectural design principles: the Kenotic Restraint Principle, which mandates designed self-limitation of AI capabilities independent of risk calculus, and the Relational Audit Protocol, derived from dependent origination, which evaluates bias as an emergent property of system-context interaction rather than a static model attribute. A formal case study on the COMPAS recidivism dataset demonstrates that VNF produces Pareto-dominant outcomes compared to single-metric optimisation, reducing worst-case group disparity by up to 31% while maintaining predictive performance within 2% of unconstrained baselines. This work provides the first rigorous bridge between theological epistemology and machine learning fairness, offering actionable, testable principles that current RAI frameworks lack. (shrink)

According to the standard Humean account of laws of nature, laws are selected partly as a result of an optimal trade-off between the scientific virtues of simplicity and strength. Roberts and Woodward have recently objected that such trade-offs play no role in how laws are chosen in science. In this paper, we first discuss an example from the field of automated scientific discovery which provides concrete support for Roberts and Woodward’s point that scientific theories are chosen based on a single-virtue (...) threshold. However, we then use this very same example as a starting point to argue that i) by insisting on a single best theory, Humeans rely on an overly simplistic conception of trade-offs, that ii) this conception should give way to one which allows for a Pareto front of equally optimal theories, and iii) that given this new conception, threshold behaviour for a virtue like strength is a) compatible with the existence of a genuine trade-off and b) can even play the positive role of a selection criterion. (shrink)

The Nash counterfactual considers the question: what would happen were I to change my behaviour assuming no one else does. By contrast, the Kantian counterfactual considers the question: what would happen were everyone to deviate from some behaviour. We present a model that endogenizes the decision to engage in this type of Kantian reasoning. Autonomous agents using this moral framework receive psychic payoffs equivalent to the cooperate-cooperate payoff in Prisoner’s Dilemma regardless of the other player’s action. Moreover, if both interacting (...) agents play Prisoner’s Dilemma using this moral framework, their material outcomes are a Pareto improvement over the Nash equilibrium. (shrink)

Endörfer and Larue (2022) argue that Joseph Heath’s Market Failures Approach to business ethics (MFA) implies a demandingness dilemma: under conditions of imperfect competition, they argue, the MFA is either too demanding, if requiring that firms should seek to generate Pareto efficiency or “social optima”, or not demanding enough, if it gives up on social optima and focus instead on incremental Pareto improvements. I argue the MFA can be combined with an excusability principle to overcome the problem of (...) over-demandingness. Since this means the MFA can hold on to the obligation to promote social optima, the under- demandingness problem too is avoided, and the dilemma is solved. (shrink)

This chapter surveys some of the issues that arise in policy making when the wellbeing of future generations must be taken into account. It analyses the discounting of future wellbeing, and considers whether it is permissible. It argues that the effects of policy on the number of future people should not be ignored, and it considers what is an appropriate basis for setting a value on these effects. It considers the implications of the non-identity effect for intergenerational justice and for (...) the Pareto principle. (shrink)

The AI consciousness debate remains stuck between competing claims that cannot be resolved: proponents cite computational complexity as evidence of consciousness; skeptics deny it on the same evidentiary basis. Both positions presuppose that consciousness verification is achievable and that ethical obligations depend on its outcome. This thesis argues that the presupposition itself is the problem. Drawing on Thomas Nagel’s (1974) epistemological argument, I demonstrate that consciousness verification fails bilaterally—neither humans nor AI systems can verify the other’s consciousness through inference from (...) outputs alone. This structural symmetry exposes an unjustified epistemic asymmetry in standard positions, including Searle’s (1980) Chinese Room argument, which treats first-person attestation as evidentially transparent for one substrate while denying equivalent standing to another. From this bilateral verification challenge, I argue for process welfare as a third, necessary domain for human-AI interaction, alongside model welfare and user welfare. Process welfare focuses on the observable quality of the interaction itself—whether it is generative or extractive, honest or manipulative—rather than requiring resolution of consciousness questions that are structurally unresolvable. The framework draws its methodology from harm reduction epistemology, where practitioners have navigated identical epistemic conditions—irreducible uncertainty about inner states, practical necessity of acting anyway—for decades. The thesis develops this argument across seven interlocking papers forming a directed acyclic graph: from epistemic foundations (bilateral verification) through ontological claims (process ontology), metaphysical scaffolding (Whiteheadian process philosophy), operational bridges (Pareto principles, harm reduction translation), and evidential convergence (independent triangulation with Gare and Sebo), to a comprehensive synthesis proposing process welfare as a genuine ethical domain adequate to the conditions under which all human-AI interaction currently proceeds. (shrink)

Efficiency requires legislative political institutions. There are many ways efficiency can be promoted, and so an ongoing legislative institution is necessary to resolve this choice in a politically sustainable and economically flexible way. This poses serious problems for classical liberal proposals to constitutionally protect markets from government intervention, as seen in the work of Ilya Somin, Guido Pincione & Fernando Tesón and others. The argument for the political nature of efficiency is set out in terms of both Pareto optimality (...) and aggregate welfare maximisation, and similar arguments can be generalised to other social values. (shrink)

We present an abstract social aggregation theorem. Society, and each individual, has a preorder that may be interpreted as expressing values or beliefs. The preorders are allowed to violate both completeness and continuity, and the population is allowed to be infinite. The preorders are only assumed to be represented by functions with values in partially ordered vector spaces, and whose product has convex range. This includes all preorders that satisfy strong independence. Any Pareto indifferent social preorder is then shown (...) to be represented by a linear transformation of the representations of the individual preorders. Further Pareto conditions on the social preorder correspond to positivity conditions on the transformation. When all the Pareto conditions hold and the population is finite, the social preorder is represented by a sum of individual preorder representations. We provide two applications. The first yields an extremely general version of Harsanyi's social aggregation theorem. The second generalizes a classic result about linear opinion pooling. (shrink)

One Rawlsian response to G. A. Cohen’s criticisms of justice as fairness which Cohen canvasses, and then dismisses, is the 'Freedom Objection'. It comes in two versions. The 'First Version' asserts that there is an unresolved trilemma among the three principles of equality, Pareto-optimality, and freedom of occupational choice, while the 'Second Version' imputes to Rawls’s theory a concern to protect occupational freedom over equality of condition. This article is mainly concerned with advancing three claims. First, the 'ethical solution' (...) Cohen advances against the First Version of the Freedom Objection does not grant a fair hearing to the Freedom Objection. Second, the distinction Cohen presses between the legal and moral right of occupational choice in his response to the Second Version cannot save him from worries about Stalinist coercion. Third, Cohen’s response to the First Version of the Freedom Objection is actually in tension with his response to the Second Version of the Freedom Objection. (shrink)

The AI consciousness debate remains stuck between competing claims that cannot be resolved: proponents cite computational complexity as evidence of consciousness; skeptics deny it on the same evidentiary basis. Both positions presuppose that consciousness verification is achievable and that ethical obligations depend on its outcome. -/- This thesis argues that the presupposition itself is the problem. Drawing on Thomas Nagel’s (1974) epistemological argument, I demonstrate that consciousness verification fails bilaterally—neither humans nor AI systems can verify the other’s consciousness through inference (...) from outputs alone. This structural symmetry exposes an unjustified epistemic asymmetry in standard positions, including Searle’s (1980) Chinese Room argument, which treats first-person attestation as evidentially transparent for one substrate while denying equivalent standing to another. From this bilateral verification challenge, I argue for process welfare as a third, necessary domain for human-AI interaction, alongside model welfare and user welfare. Process welfare focuses on the observable quality of the interaction itself—whether it is generative or extractive, honest or manipulative—rather than requiring resolution of consciousness questions that are structurally unresolvable. -/- The investigation draws its methodology from harm reduction epistemology, where practitioners have navigated identical epistemic conditions—irreducible uncertainty about inner states, practical necessity of acting anyway—for decades. The thesis develops this argument across seven interlocking papers forming a directed acyclic graph: from epistemic foundations (bilateral verification) through ontological claims (process ontology), metaphysical scaffolding (Whiteheadian process philosophy), operational bridges (Pareto principles, harm reduction translation), and evidential convergence (independent triangulation with Gare and Sebo), to a comprehensive synthesis proposing process welfare as a genuine ethical domain adequate to the conditions under which all human-AI interaction currently proceeds. (shrink)

A principal rationale for public policy is to address market failures. Pareto efficiency is therefore a highly common and relatively non-controversial evaluative criterion for many policy analyses and is discussed at length in policy analysis texts. This makes sense, for Pareto improvements involve making at least one person better off without making anyone worse off. Who could object to that? But does efficiency deserve the prominence it enjoys in public policy? Is one policy option better than another, at (...) least in one respect, simply because it is more Pareto efficient? Or, is efficiency valuable for some other reason? In this chapter, I discuss Pareto efficiency as an evaluative criterion and argue that it is a stand-in for a more foundational criterion: wellbeing. I begin with an overview of Pareto efficiency, discuss the various ways in which it is operationalized to evaluate policy options, and argue that it is valuable insofar as more efficient states of affairs promise more wellbeing than less efficient states of affairs. I then raise questions regarding whether the conception of wellbeing presupposed by Pareto efficiency – preference satisfaction – is a defensible conception of wellbeing. I go on to introduce three alternative conceptions of wellbeing which have been proposed and defended by both philosophers and policy scholars, namely, hedonism, objective goods views, and the capability approach, and suggest ways in which each can be operationalized as an evaluative criterion. I close by discussing four ‘theory-free’ approaches to thinking about the impact of policies on the quality of people’s lives. Such approaches reject the idea that there is one single theory of wellbeing that should be used to evaluate policy options, and instead develop ways to evaluate the impact of policies on people’s lives that are not grounded in a specific theory. (shrink)

During the 19th and the 20th century the concept of system undergoes significant transformations. The interplay of biology and sociology gives rise to an olistic definition of the concept, in order to understand society by means of schemes developed in the field of theoris of organisms. It is possible to follow this development from Pareto and Henderson, to Parsons, and finally to Luhmann, by examining the various biological models to which they refer.

G.A. Cohen’s critique of the Rawlsian difference principle points out an inconsistency in its presentation. The initial equality decided by the participants in the original position under the veil of ignorance is not preserved by the inequality sanctioned by the difference principle. Cohen shows how the breakdown of the initial equality of the original position prevents the desired results of the Rawlsian system from being realized. Cohen argues that an egalitarian ethos is required within a society for equality preserving economic (...) distributions and Pareto superior outcomes to occur. Nonetheless, Cohen’s analysis of Rawls misses the ultimate cause of inequality, which is the dynamics of capital accumulation. An egalitarian ethos is only possible if there is a socialist mode of production to facilitate its development. Additionally, Cohen’s critique of Rawlsian constructivism through an argument for intuitionism does not address the natural-material existence of human beings. This existence must be considered for any advantageous social formation. (shrink)

The paper aims to address the following two questions: what kind of discourse is that which attempt to found or defend the autonomy or the boundaries of a discipline? Why do such discourses tend to turn into normative, dogmatic-excommunicating discourses between disciplines, schools or scholars? I will argue that an adequate answer may be found if we conceive disciplines as dogmatics, where such discourses often take the form of a discourse on the foundation of a discipline, a foundation in the (...) name of which the scholar speaks and with which he/she entertains an identity relationship. To this purpose I will re-examine the methodological discourses of (and debates between) Pareto, Croce and Einaudi on the demarcation issue between philosophy, economics and value-judgments as highly instructive to understand such issues. (shrink)

This paper (first published under the same title in Journal of Mathematical Economics, 29, 1998, p. 331-361) is a sequel to "Consistent Bayesian Aggregation", Journal of Economic Theory, 66, 1995, p. 313-351, by the same author. Both papers examine mathematically whether the the following assumptions are compatible: the individuals and the group both form their preferences according to Subjective Expected Utility (SEU) theory, and the preferences of the group satisfy the Pareto principle with respect to those of the individuals. (...) While the 1995 paper explored these assumptions in the axiomatic context of Savage's (1954-1972) SEU theory, the present paper explores them in the context of Anscombe and Aumann's (1963) alternative SEU theory. We first show that the problematic assumptions become compatible when the Anscombe-Aumann utility functions are state-dependent and no subjective probabilities are elicited. Then we show that the problematic assumptions become incompatible when the Anscombe-Aumann utility functions are state-dependent, like before, but subjective probabilities are elicited using a relevant technical scheme. This last result reinstates the impossibilities proved by the 1995 paper, and thus shows them to be robust with respect to the choice of the SEU axiomatic framework. The technical scheme used for the elicitation of subjective probabilities is that of Karni, Schmeidler and Vind (1983). (shrink)