Can We Compare the Utilities of Different Selves?

This chapter asks whether we can compare the values of different selves of the same individual in such a way that we can measure those values on the same scale using utilities. It surveys a number of different proposals adapted from the literature on interpersonal utility comparisons, and concludes that none of the existing proposals will work. It presents an alternative and argues that it does work. This answers an objection raised by R. A. Briggs (2015),. ‘Transformative Experience and Interpersonal Utility Comparisons’ in Res Philosophica, 92(2).

LEARNING BARGAINING CONVENTIONS

I examine from a conventionalist perspective the Nash bargaining problem that philosophers use as a tool for analyzing fair division. From this perspective, the solutions to bargaining problems are conventions that can emerge from inductive learning and focal point effects. I contrast the conventionalist approach to analyzing the bargaining problem with the better-known rational choice approach, which I criticize for having overly demanding epistemic presuppositions and for producing disappointing results. I apply a simple model of inductive learning to specific bargaining problems to show that agents can learn from repeated experience to follow a variety of bargaining conventions in a given problem. I conclude that such agents can come to regard two such conventions as focal for the bargaining problem, one that assigns claimants equal shares of a good and another egalitarian solution of equal payoff gains, and that the egalitarian solution tends to prevail when these two solutions differ. I conclude further that the above analysis lends support for admitting interpersonal utility comparisons into the analysis of fair division problems, and also suggests a focal point explanation of the wide acceptance of the Aristotelian proportionality principle of distributive justice.

Income Equalization Does Not Confer Net Social Benefits

Income Equalization Does Not Confer Social Benefits In the modern era, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth about income and wealth disparities. The premise upon which these complaints are based is that egalitarianism is an unambiguous good, and that any and all steps would be taken to reduce gaps between the wealthy and the poor. The present paper is an attempt to right this imbalance; it makes the case that income and wealth differences should be neutral with regard to public policy: they should not be artificially increased or reduced. This view is defended on both economic and ethical grounds. On the economic side, the impossibility of interpersonal utility comparisons, the existence of loss aversion, questions about productivity responses to redistribution, and the undeniable reality of bureaucratic costs all call into question the wisdom of income redistribution. On the ethical side, a rights-based approach calls into question the egalitarian basis for income redistribution policies. In the end, income equality or inequality falls outside the realm of valid policy concerns.

A SIMPLE AXIOMATIZATION OF THE EGALITARIAN SOLUTION

In this paper, we present a simple axiomatization of the n-person egalitarian solution. The single condition sufficient for characterization is a new axiom, called symmetric decomposability that combines the axioms of step-by-step negotiations, symmetry, and weak Pareto optimality used in an early characterization by Kalai [(1977) Proportional solutions to bargaining situations: Interpersonal utility comparisons, Econometrica45, 1623–1630].