Risk, death, and well-being : the ethical foundations of fatality risk regulation / Matthew D. Adler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Adler, Matthew D., author.

Series:

Oxford scholarship online.

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Consequentialism (Ethics).

Well-being--Moral and ethical aspects.

Well-being.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (431 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2025]

Summary:

A wide range of governmental policies characteristic of the modern state seek to reduce individuals' fatality risks, risks that arise from air and water pollution, pathogens, food ingredients and contaminants, motor vehicles, infrastructure, radiation, workplace accidents, alcohol and recreational drugs, firearms, consumer products, tobacco, natural disasters, and other sources. 'Risk, Death, and Well-Being' provides a rigorous treatment of the ethics of fatality risk regulation. It does so through the lens of welfare-consequentialism, specifically, lifetime welfarism, with a particular focus on utilitarianism and prioritarianism.

Contents:

Cover

Half Title

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Contents

Acknowledgments

Symbols and Abbreviations

Introduction

1 Ethical Foundations Welfarism

1.1 The Population

1.1.1 Humans, Not Animals

1.1.2 Human Persons: Psychological Characteristics

1.1.3 Human Persons: Intertemporal Psychological Continuity

1.1.4 Human Persons: Metaphysics

1.1.5 The Focal Case

1.2 Well-Being

1.2.1 Accounts of Well-Being

1.2.2 The Structure of Lifetime Well-Being

1.3 The World-Ranking

1.3.1 Lifetime Welfarism

1.3.2 The Main Versions of Lifetime Welfarism

1.4 The SWF Framework

Chapter 1: Appendix

1.A.1 Quasiorderings

1.A.2 Worlds, Individuals, Histories, and the Lifetime Well-Being Comparison Structure

1.A.3 Lifetime Welfarism: Defining Axioms

1.A.4 The Main Versions of Lifetime Welfarism

1.A.4.1 A Measurable Lifetime Well-Being Comparison Structure and Complete World-Ranking

1.A.4.2 The Lifetime Well-Being Comparison Structure Is Not Measurable or the World-Ranking Is Not Complete

1.A.5 The Pigou-Dalton and Separability Axioms

1.A.6 The SWF Framework

2 Lifetime Welfarism A Defense

2.1 Time-Slice Welfarism

2.2 Against Momentary Welfarism

2.2.1 The Temporal Scope of Welfare Constituents

2.2.2 The Temporal Scope of Fair Distribution

2.2.3 OHPs and Lifetime Welfarism

2.3 Against Stage Welfarism

2.4 Criticisms of Lifetime Welfarism

2.4.1 Attenuation of Psychological Connections over a Lifetime

2.4.2 Intuitive Support for Time-Slice Prioritarianism

2.5 The Early Years of an OHP: Are They Part of Their Lifetime Well-Being?

3 Death and Lifetime Welfarism

3.1 Birth and Death

3.2 The Ethical Significance of Death (at the Level of Worlds)

3.3 The Badness/Harmfulness of Death.

3.3.1 A Deprivationist Account of Why Death Is Bad: Ben Bradley's Account

3.3.2 Comparing My Account to Bradley's

3.3.3 The Symmetry Argument

3.3.4 Jeff McMahan's Time-Relative Interest Account

3.4 Death and Lifetime Well-Being

3.4.1 Lexical Priority to Longevity?

3.4.2 Is Life-Extension Always Beneficial?

3.4.3 Is the Risk of Death Itself a Welfare Setback?

3.4.4 Posthumous Events

4 Measuring Lifetime Well-Being

4.1 Attribute Bundles

4.1.1 Background

4.1.2 Constructing Attribute Bundles for the SWF Framework

4.2 Constructing a Measure of Lifetime Well-Being: A General Methodology

4.2.1 KLST Theory and the Measurement of Well-Being Differences

4.2.2 vNM Theory and the Measurement of Well-Being Lotteries

4.2.3 The Bernoulli Axiom: Linking the KLST and vNM Measures

4.2.4 Constructing the w(·) Measure: A Summary

4.3 Preference-Based Well-Being Measurement

4.4 Temporal Additivity

4.4.1 Temporal Additivity: The General Case

4.4.2 Temporal Additivity with a Preference-Based Well-Being Measure

4.4.3 A Discount Factor?

4.5 Moving from an Interval Scale to a Ratio Scale of Lifetime Well-Being

5 Evaluating Risk-Regulation Policies: Simple Utilitarianism and Ex Post Prioritarianism

5.1 Simple Utilitarianism and Ex Post Prioritarianism: Preliminaries

5.1.1 Tractability Axioms: Decomposability and Policy Separability

5.1.2 Individuals and Cohorts

5.2 Simple Utilitarianism and Ex Post Prioritarianism Applied to Risk-Regulation Policies

5.2.1 Conceptualizing Risk-Regulation Policies

5.2.2 The Social Value of Risk Reduction (SVRR)

5.3 An Empirical Illustration

5.3.1 The Simulation Model: Building Blocks

5.3.2 SVRRs in the Simulation Model

5.3.3 Illustrative Policies

5.3.4 Preference Heterogeneity

5.4 SVRR: Some General Results.

5.4.1 The Effect of Age on the SVRR

5.4.2 The Effect of Quality of Life and Background Risk

5.4.3 Equal Value of Risk Reduction?

5.5 Stochastic Attribute Profiles

5.5.1 Interdependent Fates

5.5.2 The Benefit of Life Extension

Chapter 5: Appendix

5.A.1 Tractability Axioms

5.A.1.1 Statement of the Axioms

5.A.1.2 The Relation between Separability and Policy Separability

5.A.2 Risk Policies and the SVRR: Theory

5.A.2.1 Equivalent Formulas for Simple Utilitarianism and Ex Post Prioritarianism

5.A.2.2 Conceptualizing Risk Policies

5.A.2.3 The SVRR

5.A.2.4 Some General Results

5.A.2.5 Defining SVRR for Unaffected Individuals?

6 Evaluating Risk-Regulation Policies: Cost-Benefit Analysis

6.1 CBA and Risk Regulation

6.1.1 Textbook CBA

6.1.2 Population-Average CBA and VSLY-Based CBA

6.1.3 Distributionally Weighted CBA

6.2 Textbook CBA versus Simple Utilitarianism and Ex Post Prioritarianism

6.2.1 SVRR versus VSL: A Theoretical Analysis

6.2.2 SVRR versus VSL: An Empirical Illustration

6.2.3 Illustrative Policies

6.3 Population-Average CBA and VSLY-Based CBA

6.3.1 The Value of Risk Reduction

6.3.2 Illustrative Policies

6.4 Justification

6.4.1 Textbook CBA

6.4.2 Population-Average CBA and VSLY-Based CBA

7 Simple Utilitarianism and Ex Post Prioritarianism: A Defense, and Alternatives

7.1 Simple Utilitarianism: A Defense

7.2 Prioritarianism under Uncertainty

7.3 Evaluating Risk-Regulation Policies: Ex Ante Prioritarianism and Expected EDE Prioritarianism

7.3.1 Ex Ante Prioritarianism

7.3.2 Expected EDE Prioritarianism

7.4 Egalitarianism, Sufficientism, and Leximin under Uncertainty

7.4.1 Egalitarianism

7.4.2 Sufficientism

7.4.3 Leximin

Chapter 7: Appendix

7.A.1 Uncertainty Axioms

7.A.2 Uncertainty Modules for Rank-Weighted SWFs.

7.A.3 Uncertainty Modules for Sufficientist SWFs

7.A.4 Uncertainty Modules for the Leximin SWF

8 Beyond the Focal Case: Variable Population, Infant Deaths, and Psychological Impairments and Breaks

8.1 Variable Population

8.2 Infant Deaths

8.3 Psychological Impairments and Breaks

8.3.1 Psychological Impairments: Alzheimer's Disease

8.3.2 Psychological Breaks: The Amnesiac

Chapter 8: Appendix

8.A.1 World-Rankings in the Variable-Population Case

8.A.2 The SWF Framework in the Variable-Population Case

8.A.3 The SWF Framework with a Non-Zero Age of Integration

8.A.4 The Multiplier Model for Gradualism

References

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on May 19, 2025).

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-19-750598-8

0-19-750596-1

OCLC:

1520089171