Why It Matters That Some Are Worse Off Than Others: An Argument against the Priority View

Abstract

We are grateful to Arthur Applbaum, Alexander Barker, Ken Binmore, Johan Brannmark, Boudewijn de Bruin, Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, G. A. Cohen, Nir Eyal, Brian Feltham, Marc Fleurbaey, Alon Harel, Nils Holtug, Annabelle Lever, Kasper lippert-Rasmussen, Ve*ronique Munoz-Darde*, Erik Nord, Derek Parfit, Ingmar Persson, Wlodek Rabinowicz, Toni Ronnow-Rasmussen, Carlos Soto, Katie Steele, Peter Vallentyne, Ralph Wedgwood, Andrew Williams, Michael J. Zimmerman, and the Editors of Philosophy & Public Affairs for their comments. This article was presented to audiences at All Souls College, Erasmus University, the Free University of Amsterdam, Harvard University, LSE, Lund University, the University de Montreal, Rutgers University, UCL, and the Universities of Bristol, Edinburgh, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Manchester, Pittsburgh, Warwick, and York. We are grateful to those present for their comments. Alex Voorhoeve's work was aided by a British Academy Small Research Grant for the project Rational Choice and Moral DecisionMaking, and Michael Otsuka's was supported by an AHRC Research Grant on the Ethics of Risk. 1. Unless we indicate otherwise, it should be assumed that the health states we refer to in this article will last from early adulthood until the end of the lives of individuals with equally long life spans, that people are equally well off in all respects other than those to which their differences in mobility give rise, that everyone who is in the same health state is at the same (interpersonally comparable) level of utility, and that it is through no choice or fault of any individual that she suffers from or is vulnerable to any impairment.