Read more
Zusatztext An engrossing book which is a model of clarity, elegance, and rigour. Written, as good philosophy should be, as a contribution to a joint enterprise, it sets out a bold position in a way that invites further discussion and provides a platform for the development of diverging views. It should serve as the reference-point for future theorizing about population ethics in particular, and the aggregation of well-being more generally. Klappentext We are often faced with choices that involve the weighing of people's lives against each other, or the weighing of lives against other good things. These are choices both for individuals and for societies. We have to choose between the convenience to ourselves of road and air travel, and the lives of the future people who will be killed by the global warming we cause. We make choices that affect how many lives there will be in the future: as individuals we choose how many children to have, and societies choose tax policies that influence people's choices about having children. How should we weigh lives? John Broome develops a theoretical basis for answering this practical question. Using some of the precise methods of economic theory (accessible without mathematical expertise), Broome's conclusions will be highly significant for political theorists and economists as well as for philosophers, and anyone concerned with the value of life. Zusammenfassung How should we weigh lives? This book develops a theoretical basis for answering this practical question. It examines many of the issues of contemporary moral theory: the nature of consequentialism and teleology; the transitivity, continuity, and vagueness of betterness; the quantitative conception of wellbeing; and others. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1: Weighing lives 2: Some technical matters 3: Right and good 4: Features of Goodness 5: Quantities of lifetime wellbeing 6: Quantities of temporal wellbeing 7: Separability of times 8: Separability of lives 9: Same-number aggregation 10: The neutral level for existence 11: Nonstandard betterness 12: Indeterminate betterness 13: Separability of people 14: The standardized total principle 15: Same-lifetime aggregation 16: A life worth living 17: The value of a life 18: The theory of weighing lives Bibliography Index ...
