Impartial evaluation under ambiguity

R Bradley�- Ethics, 2022 - journals.uchicago.edu
Ethics, 2022journals.uchicago.edu
How should an impartial social observer judge distributions of well-being across different
individuals when there is uncertainty regarding the state of the world? I explore this question
by imposing very weak conditions of rationality and benevolent sympathy on impartial
betterness judgments under uncertainty. Although weak enough to be consistent with all the
main theories of rationality, these conditions prove to be sufficient to rule out any
heterogeneity in what is good for individuals, to require a neutral attitude to uncertainty on�…
How should an impartial social observer judge distributions of well-being across different individuals when there is uncertainty regarding the state of the world? I explore this question by imposing very weak conditions of rationality and benevolent sympathy on impartial betterness judgments under uncertainty. Although weak enough to be consistent with all the main theories of rationality, these conditions prove to be sufficient to rule out any heterogeneity in what is good for individuals, to require a neutral attitude to uncertainty on the part of the social observer, and to require that both individual and social betterness be strongly separable.
The University of Chicago Press