John Broome

Datos Biográficos

ID138718
NOMBREJohn Broome
NOMBRESJohn
APELLIDOBroome
FIRMABROOME J
AFILIACIONESUniversity of Oxford
ORCID0000-0002-9421-889X
VERIFICADOSí
TOTAL DE OBRAS68
TOTAL DE CITAS255
TOTAL COMO AUTOR67
TOTAL COMO EDITOR1
PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN1978
AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN2026
ÍNDICE H8

  • The Continuum Fallacy in Moral Philosophy

    Open AccessJohn BroomeARTICLETheoria2026

    ‘Spectrum arguments’ or ‘continuum arguments’ in moral philosophy are sometimes invalid because they commit a particular fallacy I call the ‘Continuum Fallacy’. An important example is an argument in population ethics described by Derek Parfit, which purports to derive a conclusion that he and others find repugnant on the basis of a weak and plausible premise. Parfit treats this as a paradox, and takes up the challenge of resolving it, looking fo…

  • The Value of Life in the Social Cost of Carbon

    Open AccessJohn BroomeARTICLEJournal of Benefit-Cost Analysis2024Referencias: 7

    In its 2023 revision of the social cost of carbon, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency values people’s lives on the basis of their willingness to pay for them, without applying any distributional weights. It justifies this proposal on grounds of the Kaldor–Hicks criterion, which avoids interpersonal comparisons of wellbeing. But this criterion was discredited 70 years ago. Interpersonal comparisons of wellbeing cannot truly be avoided, and t…

  • Why Not a Carbon Tax

    Open AccessJohn BroomeARTICLERevista de ciencia política2024

    If the world is to overcome the threat of climate change, a price must be set on carbon. A carbon tax is a means of creating a carbon price, and it is an ideal tax in that, unlike most taxes, it promotes economic efficiency. Yet many countries have no carbon tax. The reason is that there are strong political interests opposed to taxing carbon. I shall argue that these interests need to be appeased by fully compensating anyone who would otherwise …

  • Climate Change and Population Ethics

    John BroomeCHAPTEROxford Handbook of Population…2022

    Climate change will certainly alter the world’s future people. Moreover, the alteration may be very large. There is even a slight possibility that it will cause the extinction of humanity, so that after some future date there will be no more people ever. A correct assessment of the harm done by climate change or of the benefit of policies aimed at controlling climate change must take account of the resulting change of population. Yet in the pract…

  • Loosening the Betterness Ordering of Lives

    John BroomeCHAPTEROxford Handbook of Population…2022

    The betterness ordering of lives is obviously not tight: it is not true of every pair of lives that one is determinately better than the other or else they are determinately equally good. The goodness of a life is a nebulous property. But this obvious fact is rarely recognized in population axiology. This chapter recognizes it. It provides a way of formalizing a loose betterness ordering of goodness for lives and fits it into utilitarian theory t…

  • Normativity, Rationality and Reasoning

    John BroomeBOOKNormativity, Rationality, and…2021

    This book is a selection of my recent papers on normativity, rationality and reasoning. It covers a variety of topics that fall under these three subjects: the meanings of ‘ought’, ‘reason’ and ‘reasons’; the fundamental structure of normativity and the metaphysical priority of ought over reasons; the ownership—or agent-relativity—of oughts and reasons; the distinction between rationality and normativity; the notion of rational motivation; what c…

  • The first normative ‘reason’

    John BroomeCHAPTERNormativity, Rationality, and…2021

    The first recorded use in English of the word ‘reason’ to refer to a normative reason occurs in a manuscript of the Ancrene Riwle from about 1225. It was used to refer to an explanation of why one ought to do something.

  • Normativity, Rationality, and Reasoning

    John BroomeBOOKNormativity, Rationality, and…2021

  • Incommensurateness Is Vagueness

    John BroomeCHAPTERValue Incommensurability2021

    We often encounter pairs of objects where neither seems better than the other, and yet they do not seem to be equally good. I say they are “incommensurate.” The aim of this chapter is to argue that incommensurateness is no more than the vagueness of comparative relations such as betterness. Other relations besides betterness exhibit incommensurateness. For example, we may encounter two colors where neither seems redder than the other, and yet the…

  • Greta Thunberg

    Open AccessJohn BroomeARTICLESociety2021

  • What Should We Agree on about the Repugnant Conclusion

    Open AccessStéphane Zuber, Nikhil Venkatesh et al.ARTICLEUtilitas2021Citada por: 5Referencias: 4

    The Repugnant Conclusion is an implication of some approaches to population ethics. It states, in Derek Parfit's original formulation, For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better, even though its members have lives that are barely worth living. (Parfit 1984: 388)

  • Responses to Commentaries on ‘Rationality Versus Normativity

    Open AccessJohn BroomeARTICLEAustralasian Philosophical Review2020Referencias: 2

    I am very grateful to the ten authors who have written commentaries on my paper. I am overwhelmed by the number of interesting and useful arguments they have made. I cannot come near to responding

  • Rationality versus Normativity

    Open AccessJohn BroomeARTICLEAustralasian Philosophical Review2020Citada por: 6Referencias: 7

    Philosophers often do not make as sharp a distinction as they should between rationality and normativity. Partly this is because the word ‘reason’ can be used to refer to either, and this leads to a confusion over meanings. This paper starts by clarifying the meanings of ‘normativity’ and ‘rationality’. It argues that it is a conceptual truth that rationality supervenes on the mind. Then it considers substantive arguments that purport to show the…

  • Lessons from Economics

    John BroomeCHAPTEROxford Handbook of Ethics and…2019

    Economics offers several lessons that moral philosophers can beneficially learn. They are useful for topics in moral philosophy that are inherently quantitative. This chapter gives some examples. Some of these quantitative topics also fall within the subject matter of economics, and economists have made useful, substantive discoveries about them. Ignoring these discoveries hampers the progress of philosophy. This chapter illustrates this sort of …

  • The Badness of Dying Early

    John BroomeCHAPTERSaving People from the Harm of…2019

    A common intuition suggests that it is less bad for an infant to die than for a young adult to die. This is puzzling because the infant has more life ahead of her than a young adult, so it seems she loses more when she dies. Jeff McMahan supports the common intuition and defends it by means of what he calls the “Time-Relative Interest Account” of the badness of death. I shall describe two possible interpretations of the Time-Relative Interest Acc…

  • Reason Fundamentalism and What Is Wrong With It

    John Broome, Daniel StarBOOKOxford Handbook of Reasons and…2018

    Is there a fundamental feature of normativity, to which other features can be reduced? One defensible view is that the fundamental feature is the relation that holds between a person and F-ing when the person has reason to F. (“F” stands for any verb phrase, such as “run for the bus” or “hope for relief” or “believe Kampala is in Ghana.”) Another defensible view is that the fundamental feature is the relation that holds between a person and F-ing…

  • Weighing Goods

    John BroomeBOOKWeighing Goods2017Citada por: 50

  • Economics and Ethics

    Open AccessJohn BroomeCHAPTERInternational Encyclopedia of the…2015

  • General and Personal Good

    John Broome, Iwao Hirose et al.BOOKOxford Handbook of Value Theory2015

  • Equality Versus Priority

    Open AccessJohn BroomeARTICLEEconomics and Philosophy2015

    Both egalitarianism and prioritarianism give value to equality. Prioritarianism has an additively separable value function whereas egalitarianism does not. I show that in some cases prioritarianism and egalitarianism necessarily have different implications: I describe two alternatives G and H such that egalitarianism necessarily implies G is better than H whereas prioritarianism necessarily implies G and H are equally good. I also raise a doubt a…

  • Précis of Rationality Through Reasoning

    Open AccessJohn BroomeARTICLEPhilosophy and Phenomenological…2015

  • Responses to Setiya, Hussain, and Horty

    Open AccessJohn BroomeARTICLEPhilosophy and Phenomenological…2015Referencias: 2

  • Normativity in Reasoning

    Open AccessJohn BroomeARTICLEPacific philosophical quarterly2014Citada por: 9Referencias: 2

    Reasoning is a process through which premise‐attitudes give rise to a conclusion‐attitude. When you reason actively you operate on the propositions that are the contents of your premise‐attitudes, following a rule, to derive a new proposition that is the content of your conclusion‐attitude. It may seem that, when you follow a rule, you must, at least implicitly, have the normative belief that you ought to comply with the rule, which guides you to…

  • Rationality Through Reasoning

    Open AccessErnest Sosa, John BroomeBOOKRationality Through Reasoning2013

  • A Small Chance of Disaster

    Open AccessJohn BroomeARTICLEEuropean Review2013Citada por: 1

    Expected utility theory tells us how we should make decisions under uncertainty: we should choose the option that leads to the greatest expectation of utility. This may, however, not be the option that is likely to produce the best result – that may be the wrong choice if it also creates a small chance of a great disaster. A small chance of disaster may be the most important consideration in decision making. Climate change creates a small chance …