A Dominance Argument Against Incompleteness

Datos Bibliográficos

ID10695400
AutoresChristian Tarsney (0000-0002-6324-7145, University of Toronto), Harvey Lederman (0000-0001-9438-097X, The University of Texas at Austin), Dean Spears (0000-0001-7905-9192, The University of Texas at Austin)
Año2025
Volumen134
Número4
Páginas455-490
Fecha de publicación2025-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Philosophical Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0031-8108 • E-ISSN: 1558-1470
EditorialDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00318108-11964820
OpenAlexW4414692400
IdiomaFR
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas30

This article presents a new argument against many forms of moral and prudential value incompleteness. The argument relies on two central principles: (i) a weak “negative dominance” principle, to the effect that lottery 1 is better than lottery 2 only if some possible outcome of lottery 1 is better than some possible outcome of lottery 2, and (ii) a weak form of ex ante Pareto, to the effect that, if lottery 1 gives an unambiguously better (stochastically dominant) prospect to some individuals than lottery 2, and equally good prospects to everyone else, then lottery 1 is better than lottery 2. Given modest auxiliary assumptions, these two principles rule out incompleteness in the prudential ranking of individual lives, and many forms of incompleteness in the moral rankings of outcomes and lotteries

Argument (complex analysis) · Dominance (genetics) · Ex-ante · Lottery · Outcome (game theory) · Ranking (information retrieval) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Philosophy and History of Science · Philosophy and Theoretical Science