Getting Personal — The Intuition of Neutrality Re-interpreted

According to the Intuition of Neutrality, there is a range of wellbeing levels such that adding people with lives at these levels doesn’t make the world either better or worse. As lives in the neutral range can be good for those who live them, this intuition is in conflict with one of the main tenets of welfarism; it creates a disparity between what is good for a person and what is impersonally good. Adding a person with a good life needn’t make the world better. In “Broome and the Intuition of Neutrality” (2009) I suggested, but did not elaborate, a re-interpretation of the neutral range that would remove the problematic disparity. On this re-interpretation, a life at a level within the neutral range is not merely impersonally neutral; it is also neutral in its personal value: neither better nor worse for its owner than non-existence. Nevertheless, among such personally neutral lives, some might still be personally better or worse than others, provided that they are incommensurable in their personal value with non-existence. In this paper, I explore some of the implications of this ‘personalization’ of the Intuition of neutrality. In particular, I discuss its worrisome implications for neutral-range utilitarianism (NRU). While NRU was originally proposed as a way to avoid the Repugnant Conclusion, it turns out this conclusion is re-instated on the new interpretation and, contrary to what was suggested in my 2009-paper, it remains repugnant. A related point is that it no longer holds that all personally good lives must be better for a person than personally neutral lives. Nor that all personally bad lives must be worse than personally neutral lives. While this might seem strange, it should be accepted. As for the worrisome implications of NRU, these implications do not undermine the personalized Neutrality Intuition itself. The latter might well be retained even if NRU is given up.

ON PARITY AND THE INTUITION OF NEUTRALITY

On parity views of mere addition if someone (or a group of people) is added to the world at a range of well-being levels – or ‘neutral range’ – leaving existing people unaffected, addition is on a par with the initial situation. Two distinct parity views – ‘rough equality’ and fitting-attitudes views – defend the ‘intuition of neutrality’. The first can be interpreted or adjusted so that it can rebut John Broome's objection that the neutral range is wide. The two views respond in distinct ways to two of Broome's other objections. Both views can, nonetheless, be plausibly defended against these objections.

On the survival of humanity

What moral reasons, if any, do we have to ensure the long-term survival of humanity? This article contrastively explores two answers to this question: according to the first, we should ensure the survival of humanity because we have reason to maximize the number of happy lives that are ever lived, all else equal. According to the second, seeking to sustain humanity into the future is the appropriate response to the final value of humanity itself. Along the way, the article discusses various issues in population axiology, particularly the so-called Intuition of Neutrality and John Broome’s ‘greediness objection’ to this intuition.