Greetings all,
This coming Monday, Dec 8, 1.00-2.30 in the philosophy common room,
Gerard Vong, Oxford, will talk to us about 'Lifeboats and Lotteries
- Against Always Benefiting the Greater Number'.
This is the last current projects seminar for the semester, so see
you all there!
Abstract:
"When all people that have a moral claim to a benefit have a
qualitatively equal claim to that benefit and that benefit can be
equally and usefully distributed amongst all of them at an acceptable
cost, it is uncontroversial that the benefit should be distributed
equally amongst all worthy claimants. It is, however, less clear what
the right and fair benefit distribution is when such benefits cannot
be distributed amongst all equally worthy claimants. Call this
latter problem the problem of benefit distribution in qualitatively
equal conflict cases (hereafter CCE). A solution to this latter
problem has extensive implications for public policy and private
moral behaviour and is the topic of this paper. For example, this
problem has implications for medical resource distribution - how
should we allocate medical resources such as kidneys from cadaveric
sources when demand far outstrips supply?
The problem can be further illustrated by the following thought
experiment often used in discussions of the Numbers problem. Imagine
two sinking lifeboats, one containing one person and the other
containing five people. Call each group you can benefit an outcome
group. You can only save the occupants of one of the two boats
before the two boats sink, causing any unsaved people to drown to
death. Further stipulate that it is easy for you to save the
occupants, you do not have any special relationships or obligations
to any occupants and that the occupants' future lives, if saved, are
all of equal value. Both consequentialist (e.g. standard act
utilitarian) and nonconsequentialist (e.g. Scanlon's tie-breaking
procedure) theories capture our intuitions to save the outcome group
of five claimants by recommending to save the greater number.
While moral theories such as these capture our intuitions in simple
cases, I will argue that these theories fail to account for our
intuitions (particularly regarding fairness) in a number of more
complex cases. In addition to this negative claim, the paper
advocates an original weighted lottery procedure that distributes
appropriately weighted chances to receive the good to each worthy
recipient in order to better account for our strongly held moral
intuitions in these and other cases. To this end, the paper is
structured as follows. Section I will outline a number of
qualitatively equal conflict cases in which we do not have the
intuition to always benefit the greater number. Section II will
analyse, evaluate and develop some prevalent lottery based procedures
that do not recommend saving the greater number, and on this basis I
will advocate an original weighted lottery procedure that distributes
appropriately weighted chances to receive the relevant benefit to
each worthy recipient as the fair way to distribute benefits in CCE.
Section III will defend my preferred weighted lottery procedure from
objections (e.g. Hirose, 2007 & Liao, Forthcoming) and show in which
circumstances such a lottery should be conducted as what is fair is
not co-extensive with what is right."
Dr. Kristie Miller
University of Sydney Research Fellow
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry and
The Centre for Time
The University of Sydney
Sydney Australia
Room 411, A 18
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ph: 02 93569663
http://homepage.mac.com/centre.for.time/KristieMiller/Kristie/Home%
20Page.html
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