Tomasz Żuradzki: Who are the worst off? Well-being and time

Přednáška proběhne v anglickém jazyce.

ABSTRACT: A seminal presentation of prioritarianism states that “Benefiting people matters more the worse off these people are” (Parfit 1997). However, there is no agreement on who counts as ‘the worst off’. The dimension on which I concentrate in this paper is the dynamic aspect, that is, different ways one can conceptualize someone (or a group) as the worst off over time. While some assume that expected benefits matter more the worse off the recipient is in the world such-as-it-is (input prioritarianism, see Segall 2016), others argue that what matters is the distribution that is relatively the best (in comparison with other possible distributions resulting from other possible interventions) for those who are worse off in that distribution while ignoring the situation of the worst off in the world such-as-it-is (output prioritarianism, see Eyal, Herlitz 2023). Moreover, some argue that a decision-maker should categorize the worst off by referring only (or primarily) to their entire lifetime, others that only (or primarily) to some part of their lifespan. The first view (Adler 2019), which is dominant among philosophically oriented scholars (as well as some versions of the second view), needs to include uncertainty about future prospects to be practically relevant. However, this requires a decision on which version is correct: ex ante (the sum of a concave transformation of individuals’ expected lifetime well-being) or ex post (the expected sum of a concave transformation of individuals’ lifetime well-being). In this paper, I put forward new arguments against the life-time versions of prioritarianism. The standard criticism of this view highlights that such an approach takes too much importance to inequalities in the distant past and it does not see any disvalue in inequalities that occur between different people at particular times (McKerlie, 1997). Additionally, I highlight difficulties in measuring lifetime well-being and the uselessness of lifetime view to guide individual decisions or public policies.