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A consequentialist account of Narveson’s dictum

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Abstract

In population ethics, Narveson’s dictum states: morality favours making people happy, but is neutral about making happy people. The thought is intuitively appealing; for example, it prohibits creating new people at the expense of those who already exist. However, there are well-known obstacles to accommodating Narveson’s dictum within a standard framework of overall betterness: any attempt to do so violates very plausible formal features of betterness (notably transitivity). Therefore, the prevailing view is that the dictum is off-limits to consequentialists, who are thereby committed to the unsavoury normative consequences of denying it. We argue against the prevailing view, by showing that Narveson’s dictum can be accommodated within “multidimensional” consequentialism. The key move is to deny the normative preeminence of overall betterness, instead taking moral decision-making to rest directly on “respects” of betterness. The multidimensional approach permits a consequentialist account of Narveson’s dictum in which betterness is well-behaved. It also yields a new way to think of the connection between goodness and rightness, thus revealing new terrain in the space of possible moral theories.

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Notes

  1. For example Broome (1994, 2004), McMahan (2009), Rabinowicz (2009) and Roberts (2003, 2015, 2017).

  2. Narveson himself is clearly one such adherent. For him, the dictum is a partial description of his preferred version of utilitarianism, which he certainly intends to be a consequentialist theory in which axiology (“value”, for Narveson) plays a central role.

  3. For Broome, the people whose creation is favoured are those above the so-called “critical level” of lifetime wellbeing.

  4. See Broome (2005, esp. 402–405). Discussions of the practical importance of neutrality, and cases further motivating it, abound in the population ethics literature. See for example Broome (2004, 167–168, Ch. 10), McMahan (2009) and Roberts (2003, 2–3). We won’t retread that ground here.

  5. We are thus aiming for “strong” neutrality, in the sense of Rabinowicz (2009, 398–399) and Broome (2009, 413–415). More on this in Sect. 3.

  6. Here we follow (Broome 2004, 25). Those who think that nonexistent persons have wellbeing levels can think of “\(*\)” (defined below) as a numerical value.

  7. Some have suggested that goodness might be relative to a set of outcomes, but we will not explore that possibility here. See Temkin (1987, 2012) and Cusbert (2017).

  8. Formally, we can define a quantitative axiology on\(\mathscr {A}\) as a set \(\mathscr {R}\) of morally relevant respects such that for each \(r\in \mathscr {R}\) there is: (i) a set of outcomes \(\mathscr {A}_r\subseteq \mathscr {A}\) called the outcomes that register onr; and (ii) a two-placed, real-valued difference function\(\delta _r:\mathscr {A}_r\times \mathscr {A}_r\rightarrow \mathbb {R}\) such that for all \(A,B,C\in \mathscr {A}_r\): (a) \(\delta _r(A,A)=0\); and (b) \(\delta _r(A,C)=\delta _r(A,B)+\delta _r(B,C)\) wherever \(\delta _r(A,B)\ge 0\) and \(\delta _r(B,C)\ge 0\). We can read \(\delta _r(A,B)=x\) as saying that A is x units r-better than B, abbreviated as \((A\succ _r^x B)\). Note that this generalises the qualitative framework. We can define qualitative betterness in terms of quantitative betterness as follows: \(A\succeq _rB\) iff \(A\succeq _r^xB\) where \(x\ge 0\). Condition (iia) then entails reflexivity of \(\succeq _r\) and condition (iib) entails transitivity of \(\succeq _r\).

  9. More formally, we have outcomes \(A,B,C\in \mathscr {A}\) and a quantitative axiology \(\mathscr {R}=\{r_1,r_2\}\) such that \(\mathscr {A}_{r_1}=\{A,B, C\}\) with \((A\simeq _{r_1}B)\), \((A\prec _{r_1}^2C)\), and \((B\prec _{r_1}^2C)\); and \(\mathscr {A}_{r_2}=\{B, C\}\) with \((B\succ _{r_2}^4C)\).

  10. We don’t defend this axiology because of the “wretchedness” part of the Asymmetry (McMahan 2009) and the non-identity problem (Parfit 1984, §4).

  11. For simplicity we restrict our discussion to decisions under certainty. A general treatment would take a decision to be a prospect. See Kath (2016). We assume finite decisions to set aside well-known problems with infinite decisions that are orthogonal to our concerns. See Arntzenius et al. (2004).

  12. Recall that we are aiming to capture so-called “strong” neutrality. Here we differ from Rabinowicz (2009) and Roberts (2015).

  13. As for example in Rabinowicz (2009) and Broome (2004, Ch. 18, 2005). We condense the key findings of that debate here.

  14. Note that [O] is the conjunction of Broome’s Principle of Personal Good (Broome 2004, 120) with the disjunction of his Principle of Equal Existence (Broome 2004, 146) and his Principle of Incommensurate Existence (Broome 2004, 167), generalised to multi-person additions and strengthened to rule out “greediness” (Broome 2004, 169–170, 203–206).

  15. In fact, [O2] and [O3] alone are inconsistent. For example, if we add \(J''K=(3,1)\) to the present outcomes, [O2] and [O3] imply a cycle of overall betterness: \(J'\succ JK''\), \(JK''\succ K'\), \(K'\succ J''K\), \(J''K\succ J'\). Broome (2004, 169–170) provides a different argument against this kind of axiology: it conflicts with independently compelling, core utilitarian claims in fixed population cases. For example, if we add \(JK''''=(1,5)\) to the present outcomes, [O] conflicts with \(JK''''\succ J'K\), because \(J'\succ JK''''\), but \(J'\; \nsucc\; J'K\).

  16. Rabinowicz (2009) advocates a weakened form of the dictum at the axiological level: his axiology is neutral about benign addition and malign addition, favouring only mere benevolence.

  17. Proof: Suppose that (\(\dagger\)) is false. Then there is a decision \(\{A,B\}\) in which A is impermissible and \(A\;\nprec _r\;B\) for all \(r\in \mathscr {R}\). Hence A is impeccable in \(\{A,B\}\) but impermissible in \(\{A,B\}\), contrary to [B1].

  18. In a similar fashion, [R] avoids the two other problems for [O] described in footnote 15. For example, according to [R] we have \((\exists r)(J'\succ _{r} JK'')\), \((\exists r)(JK''\succ _{r} K')\), \((\exists r)(K'\succ _{r} J''K)\), and \((\exists r)(J''K\succ _{r} J')\), but no requirement that the same r is at play in any two instances.

  19. Formally: Define the r-worseness of A than B, denoted \(w_r(A,B)\), as follows:

    $$\begin{aligned} w_r(A,B) = {\left\{ \begin{array}{ll} \delta _r(B,A) &\quad \text{ if } A,B\in \mathscr {A}_r \text{ and } \delta _r(B,A)>0 \\ 0 &\quad \text{ otherwise. } \end{array}\right. } \end{aligned}$$

    For each \(A\in \mathbf{D}\), define the shortfall of A in D as \(\displaystyle {\sum\nolimits_{r\in \mathscr {R}}\max\nolimits_{B\in \mathbf{D}}w_r(A,B)}.\) For a variant shortfall minimising principle see Kath (2016).

  20. This is similar to the theories advocated by McDermott (1982) and Roberts (2002, 2004). However, those theories disfavour creating unhappy people, whereas [PS] is neutral about that.

  21. See Kath (2016) for one proposal.

  22. Proof: Suppose [B] and \(\mathscr {R}=\{r\}\). Let D be a finite decision and \(A\in \mathbf{D}\). First we prove the right-to-left direction of [C*]. If \(A\;\nprec _r\; B\) for all \(B\in \mathbf{D}\), then since \(\mathscr {R}=\{r\}\), A is impeccable in D. Thus by [B1], A is permissible in D. Next we prove the left-to-right direction of [C*] by proving the contrapositive. Suppose that \(A\;\prec _r\; B\) for some \(B\in \mathbf{D}\). Then, since D is finite, there exists \(C\in \mathbf{D}\) such that C is impeccable in D and \(A\;\prec _r\;C\). Therefore by [B2], A is impermissible in D.

  23. Formally: \(\displaystyle (A\succeq B) \text{ iff: } \mathscr {R}_A=\mathscr {R}_B \text{ and } \sum\nolimits_{r\in \mathscr {R}_A}\delta (A,B)\ge 0\). This assumes that all respects matter equally. This can be generalised using a weighted sum.

  24. There may also be some overall incomparability within cells, where the relative weighting of respects of betterness is indeterminate. This is a familiar source of overall incomparability; see for example Sartre (1948). Our proposal is that registration gaps are another source. This provides a response to Broome’s arbitrariness objection (2004, 168–169).

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Simon Beard, John Broome, Matthew Clark, Daniel Cohen, Hilary Greaves, Alan Hájek, Michael McDermott, Wlodek Rabinowicz, Teruji Thomas, and audiences at ANU and Oxford for useful discussion.

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  1. Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

    John Cusbert

  2. University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Robyn Kath

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Correspondence to John Cusbert.

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Cusbert, J., Kath, R. A consequentialist account of Narveson’s dictum. Philos Stud 176, 1693–1709 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1085-8

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