BROOME AND THE INTUITION OF NEUTRALITY

Abstract

In “Weighing Lives” (2004) John Broome criticizes a view common to many population axiologists. This is the view that population increases with extra people leading decent lives are axiologically neutral: they make the world neither better nor worse, ceteris paribus. Broome argues that this intuition, however, attractive, cannot be sustained, for several independent reasons. I respond to his criticisms and suggest that the neutrality intuition, if correctly interpreted, can after all be defended.