IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/pophec/v23y2024i2p154-180.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

To be (disadvantaged) or not to be? An egalitarian guide for creating new people

Author

Listed:
  • Shlomi Segall

Abstract

Derek Parfit held that in evaluating the future, we should ignore the difference between necessary persons and merely possible persons. In this article, I look at one of the most prominent alternatives to Parfit's view, namely Michael Otsuka and Larry Temkin ‘shortfall complaints’ view. In that view, we aggregate future persons’ well-being and deduct intrapersonal shortfall complaints, giving extra weight to the complaints of necessary persons. I offer here a third view. I reject Parfit's no difference view in that I register a difference between necessary and possible persons. But I also reject the Shortfall View and replace its intra-personal complaints with an inter- personal complaints mechanism. I argue that the value of a population is its aggregate prioritarian value minus the egalitarian complaints that necessary persons hold. I show that the egalitarian view has all the explanatory power of the Shortfall view in easy cases, while significantly improving on it in three sorts of tough cases.

Suggested Citation

  • Shlomi Segall, 2024. "To be (disadvantaged) or not to be? An egalitarian guide for creating new people," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 23(2), pages 154-180, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:pophec:v:23:y:2024:i:2:p:154-180
    DOI: 10.1177/1470594X231189820
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1470594X231189820
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1470594X231189820?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Otsuka, Michael, 2012. "Prioritarianism and the Separateness of Persons," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(3), pages 365-380, September.
    2. Voorhoeve, Alex, 2021. "Equality for Prospective People: A Novel Statement and Defence," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 33(3), pages 304-320, September.
    3. Voorhoeve, Alex & Fleurbaey, Marc, 2012. "Egalitarianism and the Separateness of Persons," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(3), pages 381-398, September.
    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. Shlomi Segall, 2015. "In defense of priority (and equality)," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 14(4), pages 343-364, November.
    2. Anders Herlitz & David Horan, 2016. "Prioritizing the “worse off” under attainability constraints: An indeterminacy problem for distributive fairness," Working Papers 201608, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    3. Michael Otsuka, 2018. "How it makes a moral difference that one is worse off than one could have been," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 17(2), pages 192-215, May.
    4. Matthew D Adler & Nils Holtug, 2019. "Prioritarianism: A response to critics," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 18(2), pages 101-144, May.
    5. Alex Voorhoeve, 2014. "Matthew D. Adler: Well-being and fair distribution: beyond cost-benefit analysis," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 42(1), pages 245-254, January.

    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:sae:pophec:v:23:y:2024:i:2:p:154-180. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.