Abstract
In Intransitivity and the Person-Affecting Principle,' (IPAP) Alastair Norcross attacks several key claims of my Intransitivity and the Mere Addition Paradox (IMAP).2 This article suggests that Norcross's argumentsdespite their appeal-leave IMAP's claims mostly intact. Before assessing Norcross's arguments, let me characterize two key notions distinguished in IMAP: an essentially comparative view of moral ideals and an intrinsic aspect view. On an essentially comparative view (EC), different factors might be relevant for comparing different alternatives regarding a given ideal. On such a view, how bad a situation is regarding a given ideal is not an intrinsic feature of that situation. There is no fact of the matter as to how bad a situation really is, considered just by itself. How bad it is depends on the alternative compared to it. Moreover, importantly, there may be no fact of the matter as to how two situations compare considered from a purely abstract perspective. How situations compare depends on the precise relation between them, and this may depend on who their members are or how they have come about. Thus, pairs of alternatives that look the same considered purely abstractly, may in fact represent different pairs of alternatives; correspondingly, the relevant factors for comparing those alternatives regarding a given ideal may vary, and so too may our comparative judgments about them (IMAP, 149-5 1). On an intrinsic aspect view (IA), how good or bad a situation is regarding a given ideal will be an intrinsic feature of that situation-that is, it will not depend on the alternative that situation is compared with, but solely on internal factors. On this view, the same factors will be relevant for comparing any situations regarding a given ideal, and how a situation has come about, or who its members are, will be irrelevant to the abstract impersonal judgment about how it fares regarding any given ideal. Correspondingly, if different pairs of alternatives are indistinguishable considered from a purely abstract
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