TY - JOUR
T1 - Taking risks behind the veil of ignorance
AU - Buchak, Lara
N1 - Funding Information:
This article was greatly improved by discussions with Kenny Easwaran, Alan Hájek, Niko Kolodny, and Seth Lazar, as well as with the audiences at the Australian National University, the Arizona Ranch Metaphysics Conference, the Princeton University Center for Human Values, Stanford University, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
PY - 2017/4
Y1 - 2017/4
N2 - A natural view in distributive ethics is that everyone’s interests matter, but the interests of the relatively worse off matter more than the interests of the relatively better off. I provide a new argument for this view. The argument takes as its starting point the proposal, due to Harsanyi and Rawls, that facts about distributive ethics are discerned from individual preferences in the “original position.” I draw on recent work in decision theory, along with an intuitive principle about risk taking, to derive the view.
AB - A natural view in distributive ethics is that everyone’s interests matter, but the interests of the relatively worse off matter more than the interests of the relatively better off. I provide a new argument for this view. The argument takes as its starting point the proposal, due to Harsanyi and Rawls, that facts about distributive ethics are discerned from individual preferences in the “original position.” I draw on recent work in decision theory, along with an intuitive principle about risk taking, to derive the view.
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U2 - 10.1086/690070
DO - 10.1086/690070
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85015734147
SN - 0014-1704
VL - 127
SP - 610
EP - 644
JO - Ethics
JF - Ethics
IS - 3
ER -