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Priority and Time

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Dennis McKerlie
Dennis McKerlie*
Affiliation:
The University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, CanadaT2N 1N4
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Extract

Some of us believe in giving priority to people who are badly off in designing social policies and in acting ourselves to help others. As Thomas Nagel puts it, the badly off should be first in the queue when benefits are distributed. This idea is one way of explaining moral views that are called ‘egalitarian.’ Egalitarian moral views can depend either on the idea of valuing equality itself or on the idea of giving priority to the interests of the badly off (some egalitarians might accept both ideas). This paper is concerned with the second kind of egalitarianism.

The purest form of the idea explains the priority in this way: a benefit for someone badly off can be more important morally, or can have more value, than a benefit of the same size for someone better off. This is to suppose that the priority in question cannot be explained by thinking in utilitarian terms and accepting the principle of diminishing marginal utility.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , September 1997 , pp. 287 - 309
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1997

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References

1 This paper has benefited from the advice and criticisms of Risa Kawchuk, Thomas Hurka, Larry Temkin, and an anonymous referee of this journal.

2 Nagel, Thomas Equality and Partiality (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1991), 68Google Scholar

3 The importance of the difference between the two kinds of egalitarianism is explained in McKerlie, Dennis ‘Egalitarianism,’ Dialogue 23 (1984) 223–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Parfit, Derek 'Equality or Priority?’ (Lindley Lecture. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press 1995)Google Scholar; and Temkin, Larry Inequality (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1993), 245–48Google Scholar. Parfit and Temkin think that the name ‘egalitarian’ should be reserved for the view that does care about equality for its own sake. Because of the fundamental difference between the two ideas, there is a reason for marking the distinction by different names. However, ‘egalitarian’ has been standardly applied to views that involve a strong element of priority for the badly off (for example, to views defended by Rawls and Nagel), and this practice seems too common and too convenient to be easily revised.

4 McKerlie, Dennis ‘Equality Between Age-Groups,’ Philosophy & Public Affairs 21 (1992) 275–95, esp. 293-4Google ScholarPubMed.

5 Kamm, Francis Morality, Mortality vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press 1993)Google Scholar. Chapters 12 and 13 discuss two similar priority views, one that distributes resources on the basis of what Kamm calls ‘need’ (roughly corresponding to the lifetime view) and another that distributes resources on the basis of what she names ‘urgency' (roughly corresponding to the time-specific view). The name ‘urgency’ suggests that a concern for what is happening here and now is part of the basis of the time-specific kind of priority, and this is how Kamm understands the view. I think the suggestion is misleading. Given the alternatives of saving resources to relieve one person's future pain, or using the resources to relieve another person's lesser suffering in the present, this view would dictate making the first choice. But it is the person who is actually suffering now that might seem to be picked out by the idea of urgency.

6 The two versions of the priority view roughly correspond to the two different ways of caring about equality discussed in my ‘Equality and Time,’ Ethics 99 (1989) 475-91 and in Temkin, inequality ch. 8. We might care about equality between the complete lives of different people, or care about equality between temporal parts of their lives. In that paper I distinguish three different ways in which we might care about equality between the temporal parts of lives. We might be concerned with equality between the simultaneous temporal stages of different lives, or between the corresponding stages of different lives (that is, between the old age of one person and the old age of someone else, whether or not these temporal stages of the two lives are simultaneous), or between all of the temporal parts of different lives. The account that I have given of the time-specific priority view explains why there is no need to distinguish different versions of the time-specific priority view comparable to the three ways of caring about equality. For any two temporal parts of lives, priority will simply be determined by the respective quality of the lives of the people in question during those temporal periods. So there is no need for a separate principle concerned with determining priority between the simultaneous temporal stages in different lives.

7 There is a more complicated way of bringing the two priority views together, apart from simply accepting both of them. We could revise the lifetime priority view so that it would include the judgments made by the time-specific view about the value of benefits received at particular times. For example, the lifetime view might be revised to make its priority judgments depend on the value contained in a complete life rather than depending directly on the quality of the complete life. Assume that the quality of a complete life is equivalent to the total amount of welfare that it contains. Further assume that we agree with the time-specific priority view that a benefit received by someone badly off would add more value to that person's life than the same benefit received at a time when the person was better off, even though the total amount of welfare in the life would be the same in either case. Consequently, there can be a difference between the total amount of welfare in a complete life and the total amount of value derived from welfare in that complete life, where this difference is explained by the judgments made by the time-specific priority view about the values of benefits received at particular times. The revised lifetime priority view would be concerned with the total value derived from welfare in a complete life rather than with the total amount of welfare in the life. Egalitarian priority would then be a matter of thinking that it is more important to increase the value contained in a life with a low total of value than to increase by the same amount the value contained in a life with a much higher total of value. It might seem unacceptable to say that a smaller gain in terms of value itself, if it is received by someone whose life contains a small total amount of value, can be more important morally than a larger gain in terms of value, even if we would make the same claim with ‘happiness' or ‘welfare’ substituted for ‘value.’ But if we agree with the lifetime priority view about the moral significance of the unity of a life, it is a claim that we should be willing to make.

8 Derek Parfit's account of personal identity is one example of such a view, and Parfit has worked out the implications of his view for the questions I discuss. See Parfit, Derek Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1984)Google Scholar, ch. 15 and Parfit, Derek ‘Comments,’ Ethics 96 (1986) 832–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 837-43 and 869-72.

9 Parfit also describes a different, and opposing, effect of adopting the complex or reductionist view (Reasons and Persons, 334-47). If we reject the view that personal identity is a further fact apart from the psychological relations we will think that there is less to identity. Consequently, we will also think that there is less to the unity of a life, both at a time and through time. And this may lead us to attach less moral importance to the unity of lives, or, as a limiting case, to attach no moral importance at all to it. The result would be that our commitment to both kinds of egalitarian priority would be weakened. We would be more inclined to evaluate benefits and harms simply in virtue of their size, in the way that utilitarianism does, without assigning a weight to them depending on other facts about the lives of the people who would receive the benefits and harms. However, in order to conclude that this opposing effect would lead to a significant change in our beliefs about egalitarian priority we must make certain assumptions. The first assumption is that our initial beliefs center the moral importance of the unity of lives on personal identity itself, and not on any other relations or connections between psychological states. I will question this assumption. The second assumption is that our initial view must be that personal identity can only have moral importance if it is a further fact, distinct from other psychological connections. I think that we do ordinarily believe that personal identity is morally important. But it is less clear that this belief involves and depends on a particular view about the nature of personal identity, on the view that it is a further fact distinct from other psychological relations.

10 Nagel, Thomas ‘Equality,’ in Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1979) 106–27,Google Scholar esp. 117-18. The egalitarian view that Nagel explains on 122-7 does not base priority on needs.

11 I think that the priority of needs view should be based on claims about value like those that I have used to explain the time-specific priority view and the lifetime priority view. In the case of suffering, the central claim will be that it is especially valuable to reduce suffering when a person is suffering intensely. This claim explains why it can be more important to help the person who is suffering most, even if we could relieve more pain by helping another person who is suffering less. It also explains the restriction on the object of the priority. If a person is suffering intensely, even a relatively small reduction in her suffering might count as having great value. But that would not be true of giving her a different kind of benefit that did not diminish her suffering. In a different example we might have to choose between giving pain reliever to the person who is suffering most and giving it to someone else who is feeling less pain but whose present life is worse overall. The time-specific priority view seems to recommend helping the second person, but the priority of needs view can say that helping the first person would bring about more value. This explanation of why we should help the first person is very different from the claim that certain kinds of resources should only be distributed on certain kinds of ground - in this case, that pain-relieving medicine should only be distributed on grounds connected with the relief of pain.

12 Brink, David ‘The Separateness of Persons, Distributive Norms, and Moral Theory,’ in Frey, R.G. and Morris, C.W. eds., Value, Welfare, and Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993) 252–89,CrossRefGoogle Scholar esp. 272, suggests that Nagel's example can be explained without appealing to any kind of egalitarian priority . The handicapped child's gain might not be larger measured in terms of happiness or desire satisfaction. But if we accept an objective theory of welfare, or of what makes a person's life better, then we can say that the handicapped child's benefit would be greater than the benefit for the healthy child. However, I am doubtful that there is a plausible objective theory of welfare that would support Brink's conclusion. It will sometimes be clear that the change for the better in the handicapped child's life, even if it is understood in terms of enabling the child to perform some activities that count as objectively valuable, is less of an improvement than the corresponding change in the healthy child's life. For example, if the handicapped child has a learning disability the actual intellectual progress that this child makes might be less (assuming that the acquisition of knowledge is part of an objective theory of welfare) than if the same amount of educational resources were devoted to the healthy child. So the decision to help the handicapped child depends on viewing that gain in context of the child's life as a whole, and that is why it should be explained by some kind of priority. Of course it will be true to say that the gain for the handicapped child is more important morally than the gain for the healthy child, but this judgment is a consequence of the priority and not an alternative way of explaining our conclusion about the example.

13 Amartya Sen's view that we should reduce the physical disadvantage of someone with a handicap even if that person is happier overall than other people might also be explained by the priority of needs view. See Sen, Amartya ‘Equality of What?’ in Equal Freedom, Darwall, Stephen ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1995) 307–330Google Scholar, esp. 327-9. This explanation competes with Sen's explanation, that egalitarians should be concerned with an overall equality in capabilities between different people rather than an overall equality in welfare or resources. I owe this example to Thomas Hurka.

14 David Brink argues against the claim that the special importance we give to satisfying needs should be understood in terms of priority having as its ground the overall condition of a person's life at a time (The Separateness of Persons, Distributive Norms, and Moral Theory,’ 272-3- Brink calls the first kind of priority ‘urgency of needs,’ and the second ‘urgency of person or position’). He suggests that this would lead to the unacceptable conclusion that we should give a trivial benefit to the worse-off person rather than satisfy an urgent need of someone who is only slightly better off. But the view would only have this extreme consequence if the priority it involved were absolute and insensitive to the actual levels of welfare or quality of life of the individuals in question. I do not think the priority should be understood in this way. If the slightly better-off person would receive a much greater benefit then it might be better to help him, despite the priority given to the benefit for the worse-off person.

15 The priority view that responds to suffering, or more generally to needs, would tell us to give priority to helping the worst off among the elderly. However, there is still a danger that it would neglect the very old. The elderly continue to have simple needs for health, freedom from pain, comfort, and survival. But apart from this very basic level, they might have few claims to make. They would no longer count as having needs concerned with careers or raising families, although those once were important aspects of their lives. The priority of needs view gives providing these benefits to younger people a general priority over satisfying the interests specific to the elderly, as long as those interests do not also count as needs.