Johan E Gustafsson
Biographic Data
| ID | 1142354 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Johan E Gustafsson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Johan E |
| FAMILY NAME | Gustafsson |
| SIGNATURE | GUSTAFSSON J E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Institute for Futures Studies |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9618-577X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Ex Post Average Utilitarianism Can Be Worse for All Affected, Even If No Contingently Existing Person Is Affected
According to ex post average utilitarianism, prospect x is at least as good as prospect y if and only if the expected average well-being is at least as great in x as in y. Relative to the ex ante approach of taking the average of people’s expectations, this ex post approach has the advantage of not needing well-defined expectations of well-being for contingent people—people who exist in some but not all states of nature. Nevertheless, we show tha…
A Gödelian Ontological Proof with More Plausible Axiological Principles
A drawback of the standard modal ontological proof is its assumption that it's possible that there is something godlike. Kurt Gödel's ontological proof seeks to establish this possibility with the help of some axiological principles. But the axiological principles he relies on are implausible. And the same goes for other Gödelian ontological proofs in the literature. In this paper, I put forward a Gödelian ontological proof that only relies on pl…
The Foresight Response to Money Pumps Refuted in Words of One Syllable
I show, in words of one block of sound, that, while those whose likes form a loop could stop some wealth pumps if they now did what they would like most based on what they thought they would do next, there are wealth pumps they could not stop in that way
Ex Ante Pareto and the Opaque-Identity Puzzle
Anna Mahtani describes a puzzle meant to show that the Ex Ante Pareto Principle is incomplete as it stands and, since it cannot be completed in a satisfactory manner, decades of debate in welfare economics and ethics are undermined. In this paper, we provide a better solution to the puzzle which saves the Ex Ante Pareto Principle from this challenge. We also explain how the plausibility of our solution is reinforced by its similarity to a standar…
Future generations and the evidential veil of ignorance
Ideal Contractualism views principles of justice as corresponding to what rational, mutually disinterested persons would collectively choose behind a veil of ignorance. It is well-known that Ideal Contractualism faces profound challenges in accounting for justice between generations. We present a unified solution to these problems that involves rejecting the assumption that the parties conceive of their choices as causally efficacious and assumes…
A behavioural money-pump argument for completeness
Completeness says that, for every pair of prospects, at least one of the prospects is at least as preferred as the other. I present a new money-pump argument that Completeness is a requirement of rationality. In comparison with earlier money-pump arguments for Completeness, this argument relies on a unidimensional form of stochastic dominance and the behavioural assumption that agents pick in a probabilistic manner when no option is optimal. More…
The Disjunctive Repugnant Conclusion
Critical-Level Utilitarianism entails one of the Repugnant Conclusion and the Sadistic Conclusion, depending on the critical level. Indeterminate Critical-Level Utilitarianism is a version of Critical-Level Utilitarianism where it is indeterminate which well-being level is the critical level. Undistinguished Critical-Range Utilitarianism is a variant of Critical-Level Utilitarianism where additions of lives in a range of well-being between the go…
Do Lefty and Righty Matter More Than Lefty Alone
Derek Parfit argues that fission is prudentially better for you than ordinary death. But is having more fission products with good lives prudentially better for you than having just one? In this paper, we argue that it is. We argue that, if your brain is split and the halves are transplanted into two recipients (who both have good lives), then it is prudentially better for you if both transplants succeed than if only one of them does (other thing…
Binary act consequentialism
According to Act Consequentialism, an act is right if and only if its outcome is not worse than the outcome of any alternative to that act. This view, however, leads to deontic paradoxes if the alternatives to an act are all other acts that can be done in the situation. A typical response is to only apply this rightness criterion to maximally specific acts and to take the alternatives to a maximally specific act to be the other maximally specific…
The Need for Merely Possible People
W. V. Quine wished to restrict the interests that matter to those of actual people. Actual-Population Utilitarianism is a version of utilitarianism whereby, following Quine, only the interests of actual people matter. It is well known that ethical theories of this kind, which depend on what is actual, typically lead to normative variance. In this paper, I put forward a new objection to Actual-Population Utilitarianism. I present a case in which A…
The possibility of undistinguishedness
It is natural to assume that every value bearer must be good, bad, or neutral. This paper argues that this assumption is false if value incomparability is possible. More precisely, if value incommensurability is possible, then there is a fourth category of absolute value, in addition to the good, the bad, and the neutral
Dennett’s prime‐mammal objection to the consequence argument
The Consequence Argument is the classic argument for the incompatibility of determinism and our ability to do otherwise. Daniel C. Dennett objects that the Consequence Argument suffers from the same error as a clearly unconvincing argument that there are no mammals. In this paper, I argue that these arguments do not suffer from the same error. The argument that there are no mammals is unconvincing as it takes the form of a sorites, whereas the Co…
Our Intuitive Grasp of the Repugnant Conclusion
According to Total Utilitarianism, a first outcome is at least as good as a second outcome if and only if the sum total of well-being in the first is at least as great as the sum total of well-being in the second. Total Utilitarianism implies the Repugnant Conclusion, which says that, for every population consisting of ten billion people with very high well-being, there is a population consisting of a very large number of people whose existence w…
Second Thoughts About My Favourite Theory
A straightforward way to handle moral uncertainty is simply to follow the moral theory in which you have most credence. This approach is known as My Favourite Theory. In this paper, I argue that, in some cases, My Favourite Theory prescribes choices that are, sequentially, worse in expected moral value than the opposite choices according to each moral theory you have any credence in. In addition, this problem generalizes to other approaches that …
Bentham's Mugging
A dialogue, in three parts, on utilitarian vulnerability to exploitation
Utilitarianism without Moral Aggregation
Is an outcome where many people are saved and one person dies better than an outcome where the one is saved and the many die? According to the standard utilitarian justification, the former is better because it has a greater sum total of well-being. This justification involves a controversial form of moral aggregation, because it is based on a comparison between aggregates of different people’s well-being. Still, an alternative justification—the …
Is Psychology What Matters in Survival
According to the Psychological-Continuity Account of What Matters, you are justified in having special concern for the well-being of a person at a future time if and only if that person will be psychologically continuous with you as you are now. On some versions of the account, the psychological continuity is required to be temporally ordered, whereas, on other versions, it is allowed to be temporally unordered. In this paper, I argue that the ac…
Ex-Ante Prioritarianism Violates Sequential Ex-Ante Pareto
Prioritarianism is a variant of utilitarianism. It differs from utilitarianism in that benefiting individuals matters more the worse off these individuals are. On this view, there are two standard ways of handling risky prospects: Ex-Post Prioritarianism adjusts for prioritizing the worse off in final outcomes and then values prospects by the expectation of the sum total of those adjusted values, whereas Ex-Ante Prioritarianism adjusts for priori…
What Should We Agree on about the Repugnant Conclusion
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)
Population axiology and the possibility of a fourth category of absolute value
Critical-Range Utilitarianism is a variant of Total Utilitarianism which can avoid both the Repugnant Conclusion and the Sadistic Conclusion in population ethics. Yet Standard Critical-Range Utilitarianism entails the Weak Sadistic Conclusion, that is, it entails that each population consisting of lives at a bad well-being level is not worse than some population consisting of lives at a good well-being level. In this paper, I defend a version of …
The Levelling-Down Objection and the additive measure of the badness of inequality
The Levelling-Down Objection is a standard objection to monistic egalitarian theories where equality is the only thing that has intrinsic value. Most egalitarians, however, are value pluralists; they hold that, in addition to equality being intrinsically valuable, the egalitarian currency in which we are equal or unequal is also intrinsically valuable. In this paper, I argue that the Levelling-Down Objection still minimizes the weight that the in…
A Simpler, More Compelling Money Pump with Foresight
One might think that money pumps directed at agents with cyclic preferences can be avoided by foresight. This view was challenged two decades ago by the discovery of a money pump with foresight, which works against agents who use backward induction. But backward induction implausibly assumes that the agent would act rationally and retain her trust in her future rationality even at choice nodes that could only be reached if she were to act irratio…
Permissibility Is the Only Feasible Deontic Primitive
Moral obligation and permissibility are usually thought to be interdefinable. Following the pattern of the duality definitions of necessity and possibility, we have that something's being permissible could be defined as its not being obligatory to not do it . And that something's being obligatory could be defined as its not being permissible to not do it . In this paper, I argue that neither direction of this alleged interdefinability works. Roug…
The Sequential Dominance Argument for the Independence Axiom of Expected Utility Theory
Independence is the condition that, if X is preferred to Y , then a lottery between X and Z is preferred to a lottery between Y and Z given the same probability of Z . Is it rationally required that one’s preferences conform to Independence? The main objection to this requirement is that it would rule out the alleged rationality of Allais and Ellsberg Preferences. In this paper, I put forward a sequential dominance argument with fairly weak assum…
The Difference Principle Would Not Be Chosen behind the Veil of Ignorance
John Rawls argues that the Difference Principle (also known as the Maximin Equity Criterion) would be chosen by parties trying to advance their individual interests behind the Veil of Ignorance. Behind this veil, the parties do not know who they are and they are unable to assign or estimate probabilities to their turning out to be any particular person in society. Much discussion of Rawls’s argument concerns whether he can plausibly rule out the …
Indeterminacy and the Small-Improvement Argument
In this article, I argue that the small-improvement fails since some of the comparisons involved in the argument might be indeterminate. I defend this view from two objections by Ruth Chang, namely the argument from phenomenology and the argument from perplexity. There are some other objections to the small-improvement argument that also hinge on claims about indeterminacy. John Broome argues that alleged cases of value incomparability are merely…
What Should We Agree on about the Repugnant Conclusion
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)
Does the Collapsing Principle Rule Out Borderline Cases
If ‘ F ’ is a predicate, then ‘ F er than’ or ‘more F than’ is a corresponding comparative relational predicate. Concerning such comparative relations, John Broome's Collapsing Principle states that, for any x and y , if it is false that y is F er than x and not false that x is F er than y , then it is true that x is F er than y . Luke Elson has recently put forward two counter-examples to this principle, allegedly showing that it yields contradi…
Bentham’s binary form of maximizing utilitarianism
Jeremy Bentham is often interpreted as defending a satisficing, rather than maximizing, version of utilitarianism, where an act is right as long as it produces more pleasure than pain. This lack of maximization is surprising given Bentham’s maximizing slogan ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’. Against the satisficing interpretation, I argue that Bentham consistently defends a maximizing version of utilitarianism, where an act’s conse…
Money Pumps, Incompleteness, and Indeterminacy
In an alleged counter‐example to the completeness of rational preferences, a career as a clarinettist is compared with a career in law. It seems reasonable to neither want to judge that the law career is at least as preferred as the clarinet career nor want to judge that the clarinet career is at least as preferred as the law career. The two standard interpretations of examples of this kind are, first, that the examples show that preferences are …
Value-Preference Symmetry and Fitting-Attitude Accounts of Value Relations
Journal Article Value‐Preference Symmetry and Fitting‐Attitude Accounts of Value Relations Get access Johan E. Gustafsson Johan E. Gustafsson Le Collége d′études mondiales Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 63, Issue 252, July 2013, Pages 476–491, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9213.12025 Published: 18 June 2013
Conflicting Reasons in the Small-Improvement Argument: Conflicting Reasons in the Small-Improvement Argument
The small‐improvement argument is usually considered the most powerful argument against comparability, viz the view that for any two alternatives an agent is rationally required either to prefer one of the alternatives to the other or to be indifferent between them. We argue that while there might be reasons to believe each of the premises in the small‐improvement argument, there is a conflict between these reasons. As a result, the reasons do no…
Conflicting Reasons in the Small-Improvement Argument: Conflicting Reasons in the Small-Improvement Argument
The small‐improvement argument is usually considered the most powerful argument against comparability, viz the view that for any two alternatives an agent is rationally required either to prefer one of the alternatives to the other or to be indifferent between them. We argue that while there might be reasons to believe each of the premises in the small‐improvement argument, there is a conflict between these reasons. As a result, the reasons do no…
A computer simulation of the argument from disagreement
In this paper we shed new light on the Argument from Disagreement by putting it to test in a computer simulation. According to this argument widespread and persistent disagreement on ethical issues indicates that our moral opinions are not influenced by any moral facts, either because no such facts exist or because they are epistemically inaccessible or inefficacious for some other reason. Our simulation shows that if our moral opinions were infl…
Indeterminacy and the Small-Improvement Argument
In this article, I argue that the small-improvement fails since some of the comparisons involved in the argument might be indeterminate. I defend this view from two objections by Ruth Chang, namely the argument from phenomenology and the argument from perplexity. There are some other objections to the small-improvement argument that also hinge on claims about indeterminacy. John Broome argues that alleged cases of value incomparability are merely…
Value-Preference Symmetry and Fitting-Attitude Accounts of Value Relations
Journal Article Value‐Preference Symmetry and Fitting‐Attitude Accounts of Value Relations Get access Johan E. Gustafsson Johan E. Gustafsson Le Collége d′études mondiales Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 63, Issue 252, July 2013, Pages 476–491, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9213.12025 Published: 18 June 2013
Money Pumps, Incompleteness, and Indeterminacy
In an alleged counter‐example to the completeness of rational preferences, a career as a clarinettist is compared with a career in law. It seems reasonable to neither want to judge that the law career is at least as preferred as the clarinet career nor want to judge that the clarinet career is at least as preferred as the law career. The two standard interpretations of examples of this kind are, first, that the examples show that preferences are …
Bentham’s binary form of maximizing utilitarianism
Jeremy Bentham is often interpreted as defending a satisficing, rather than maximizing, version of utilitarianism, where an act is right as long as it produces more pleasure than pain. This lack of maximization is surprising given Bentham’s maximizing slogan ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’. Against the satisficing interpretation, I argue that Bentham consistently defends a maximizing version of utilitarianism, where an act’s conse…
The Difference Principle Would Not Be Chosen behind the Veil of Ignorance
John Rawls argues that the Difference Principle (also known as the Maximin Equity Criterion) would be chosen by parties trying to advance their individual interests behind the Veil of Ignorance. Behind this veil, the parties do not know who they are and they are unable to assign or estimate probabilities to their turning out to be any particular person in society. Much discussion of Rawls’s argument concerns whether he can plausibly rule out the …
Does the Collapsing Principle Rule Out Borderline Cases
If ‘ F ’ is a predicate, then ‘ F er than’ or ‘more F than’ is a corresponding comparative relational predicate. Concerning such comparative relations, John Broome's Collapsing Principle states that, for any x and y , if it is false that y is F er than x and not false that x is F er than y , then it is true that x is F er than y . Luke Elson has recently put forward two counter-examples to this principle, allegedly showing that it yields contradi…
Population axiology and the possibility of a fourth category of absolute value
Critical-Range Utilitarianism is a variant of Total Utilitarianism which can avoid both the Repugnant Conclusion and the Sadistic Conclusion in population ethics. Yet Standard Critical-Range Utilitarianism entails the Weak Sadistic Conclusion, that is, it entails that each population consisting of lives at a bad well-being level is not worse than some population consisting of lives at a good well-being level. In this paper, I defend a version of …
The Levelling-Down Objection and the additive measure of the badness of inequality
The Levelling-Down Objection is a standard objection to monistic egalitarian theories where equality is the only thing that has intrinsic value. Most egalitarians, however, are value pluralists; they hold that, in addition to equality being intrinsically valuable, the egalitarian currency in which we are equal or unequal is also intrinsically valuable. In this paper, I argue that the Levelling-Down Objection still minimizes the weight that the in…
A Simpler, More Compelling Money Pump with Foresight
One might think that money pumps directed at agents with cyclic preferences can be avoided by foresight. This view was challenged two decades ago by the discovery of a money pump with foresight, which works against agents who use backward induction. But backward induction implausibly assumes that the agent would act rationally and retain her trust in her future rationality even at choice nodes that could only be reached if she were to act irratio…
Permissibility Is the Only Feasible Deontic Primitive
Moral obligation and permissibility are usually thought to be interdefinable. Following the pattern of the duality definitions of necessity and possibility, we have that something's being permissible could be defined as its not being obligatory to not do it . And that something's being obligatory could be defined as its not being permissible to not do it . In this paper, I argue that neither direction of this alleged interdefinability works. Roug…
The Sequential Dominance Argument for the Independence Axiom of Expected Utility Theory
Independence is the condition that, if X is preferred to Y , then a lottery between X and Z is preferred to a lottery between Y and Z given the same probability of Z . Is it rationally required that one’s preferences conform to Independence? The main objection to this requirement is that it would rule out the alleged rationality of Allais and Ellsberg Preferences. In this paper, I put forward a sequential dominance argument with fairly weak assum…
Utilitarianism without Moral Aggregation
Is an outcome where many people are saved and one person dies better than an outcome where the one is saved and the many die? According to the standard utilitarian justification, the former is better because it has a greater sum total of well-being. This justification involves a controversial form of moral aggregation, because it is based on a comparison between aggregates of different people’s well-being. Still, an alternative justification—the …
Is Psychology What Matters in Survival
According to the Psychological-Continuity Account of What Matters, you are justified in having special concern for the well-being of a person at a future time if and only if that person will be psychologically continuous with you as you are now. On some versions of the account, the psychological continuity is required to be temporally ordered, whereas, on other versions, it is allowed to be temporally unordered. In this paper, I argue that the ac…
Ex-Ante Prioritarianism Violates Sequential Ex-Ante Pareto
Prioritarianism is a variant of utilitarianism. It differs from utilitarianism in that benefiting individuals matters more the worse off these individuals are. On this view, there are two standard ways of handling risky prospects: Ex-Post Prioritarianism adjusts for prioritizing the worse off in final outcomes and then values prospects by the expectation of the sum total of those adjusted values, whereas Ex-Ante Prioritarianism adjusts for priori…
What Should We Agree on about the Repugnant Conclusion
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)
Our Intuitive Grasp of the Repugnant Conclusion
According to Total Utilitarianism, a first outcome is at least as good as a second outcome if and only if the sum total of well-being in the first is at least as great as the sum total of well-being in the second. Total Utilitarianism implies the Repugnant Conclusion, which says that, for every population consisting of ten billion people with very high well-being, there is a population consisting of a very large number of people whose existence w…
Second Thoughts About My Favourite Theory
A straightforward way to handle moral uncertainty is simply to follow the moral theory in which you have most credence. This approach is known as My Favourite Theory. In this paper, I argue that, in some cases, My Favourite Theory prescribes choices that are, sequentially, worse in expected moral value than the opposite choices according to each moral theory you have any credence in. In addition, this problem generalizes to other approaches that …
Bentham's Mugging
A dialogue, in three parts, on utilitarian vulnerability to exploitation
The possibility of undistinguishedness
It is natural to assume that every value bearer must be good, bad, or neutral. This paper argues that this assumption is false if value incomparability is possible. More precisely, if value incommensurability is possible, then there is a fourth category of absolute value, in addition to the good, the bad, and the neutral
Dennett’s prime‐mammal objection to the consequence argument
The Consequence Argument is the classic argument for the incompatibility of determinism and our ability to do otherwise. Daniel C. Dennett objects that the Consequence Argument suffers from the same error as a clearly unconvincing argument that there are no mammals. In this paper, I argue that these arguments do not suffer from the same error. The argument that there are no mammals is unconvincing as it takes the form of a sorites, whereas the Co…
Do Lefty and Righty Matter More Than Lefty Alone
Derek Parfit argues that fission is prudentially better for you than ordinary death. But is having more fission products with good lives prudentially better for you than having just one? In this paper, we argue that it is. We argue that, if your brain is split and the halves are transplanted into two recipients (who both have good lives), then it is prudentially better for you if both transplants succeed than if only one of them does (other thing…
Binary act consequentialism
According to Act Consequentialism, an act is right if and only if its outcome is not worse than the outcome of any alternative to that act. This view, however, leads to deontic paradoxes if the alternatives to an act are all other acts that can be done in the situation. A typical response is to only apply this rightness criterion to maximally specific acts and to take the alternatives to a maximally specific act to be the other maximally specific…
The Need for Merely Possible People
W. V. Quine wished to restrict the interests that matter to those of actual people. Actual-Population Utilitarianism is a version of utilitarianism whereby, following Quine, only the interests of actual people matter. It is well known that ethical theories of this kind, which depend on what is actual, typically lead to normative variance. In this paper, I put forward a new objection to Actual-Population Utilitarianism. I present a case in which A…
Philosophy (24 works) · Epistemology (22 works) · Economics (16 works) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (14 works) · Mathematics (12 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (11 works) · Mathematical economics (9 works) · Free Will and Agency (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Psychology (8 works)