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Moral Theory for Separate Persons London School of Economics and Political Science One-by-One: Moral Theory for Separate Persons Bastian Steuwer A thesis submitted to the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method of the London School of Economics and Political Science for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, London, 14th May 2020. 1 Declaration I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the MPhil/PhD degree of the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work other than where I have clearly indicated that it is the work of others. I confirm that a version of Chapter 1 is published as “Why It Does Not Matter What Matters: Personal Identity, Relation R, and Moral Theory” in The Philosophical Quarterly 70 (2020): 178-98; a version of Chapter 3 is forthcoming as “Contractualism, Complaints, and Risk” in Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy; and a version of Chapter 5 is forthcoming as “Aggregation, Balancing, and Respect for the Claims of Individuals” in Utilitas. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. I declare that this thesis consists of 84,347 words. Bastian Steuwer 2 Abstract You and I lead different lives. While we share a society and a world, our existence is separate from one another. You and I matter individually, by ourselves. My dissertation is about this simple thought. I argue that this simple insight, the separateness of persons, tells us something fundamental about morality. My dissertation seeks to answer how the separateness of persons matters. I develop a precise view of the demands of the separateness of persons. The separateness of persons imposes both a requirement on the justification of first-order moral principles as well as a requirement on the content of first-order moral principles. In specifying these demands, I argue that respecting the separateness of persons requires taking into consideration each person’s point of view separately. This requires taking into account the moral relations in which individuals stand to one another. I make use of this relational understanding of the separateness of persons to advance various debates in moral and political philosophy. I argue for a framework to assess to which extent the veil of ignorance can be reconciled with the separateness of persons. I also argue for a new view on the ethics of risk which is a form of contractualism that discounts risks only by their objective risk. Furthermore, I argue for a new solution to the problem of aggregation that is skeptical of aggregation and can set plausible limits to aggregation. Lastly, I provide a new relational agent-based justification for deontological constraints. In addition to answering how the separateness of persons matters, I defend the separateness of persons against challenges. Most importantly, I argue that the importance of the separateness of persons is not undermined even if we believe that our personal identity, i.e. whether we persist as the same person, is unimportant. 3 Acknowledgments My greatest thanks belong to my supervisors Michael Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve for their invaluable support. I am thankful not only for countless discussions and feedback, but also for their encouragement throughout my PhD. Mike and Alex always had an open ear whenever I needed advice or support, philosophical or otherwise. Their feedback was always thorough, critical, and supportive. The process of discussing my ideas over and over with them has made me a better philosopher; not only better than I was at the beginning of my PhD but also better than I could have become had a studied at any other place. I learned a great amount from working with them. I can only hope that through my dissertation which all too often engages critically with their ideas and arguments I was able to partly return this favor. The Philosophy Department as a whole has been a great place during these four years. I have felt at home in the Department and will greatly miss it. My thanks to the administrative support team that has been very helpful and supportive throughout the time, and especially to Andrea Pawley for her tireless help with the (ultimately successful) job market. Faculty members of the Department have been extraordinarily generous with their time for a student whom they did not supervise. Richard Bradley, Christian List, and Anna Mahtani have been outstanding in helping me better understand areas of philosophy outside my own specialty. Susanne Burri, Peter Dennis, and Jonathan Parry took time to read my work and give feedback. Jonathan Birch has been very supportive with all job market related affairs. I also have been blessed with a terrific crowd of PhD students whose solidarity and friendship made my time in the PhD more enjoyable and special. An extra thanks belongs to those in my cohort: Chloé de Canson, David Coombs, Paul Daniell, Christina Easton, Ko-Hung Kuan, and Joe Roussos; and to those outside my cohort who took the time to read my work and whose comments greatly improved the final dissertation: Nicolas Côté, Todd Karhu, Chris Marshall, and Tom Rowe. Over the course of my PhD, I presented parts of my dissertation at various venues. I am thankful to the audience at Fribourg, Sheffield, UCL, Barcelona, KCL, Oxford, 4 Düsseldorf, Stockholm, Salzburg, and the LSE Choice Group (twice), including my commentators at Stockholm, Nicolas Olsson-Yaouzis, and Oxford, Roger Crisp. Thanks also to those people outside of LSE who took time to read parts of my dissertation and gave comments on it: Tomi Francis, Johann Frick, Joe Horton, Thulasi K. Raj, Korbinian Rüger, Joachim Wündisch, as well as anonymous journal referees for (too many) journals. For their constant love and support I thank my German and Indian families as well as my friends scattered across the world in Seattle, Ann Arbor, Tacámbaro, Barcelona, London, Paris, Geneva, The Hague, Brussels, Berlin, Jeddah, Delhi, Bombay, Kochi, Madurai, Shanghai and places I have forgotten. Without their support and love I could not have achieved this project. My last acknowledgment is to the person whom I owe the most. When I started my PhD, I had to say goodbye to you, Thulasi, not knowing when I would see you again. My greatest project over the last four years was not to complete my PhD, it was to overcome all of our obstacles and build a life together. I can now say with great pride that we succeeded against all odds and adversity. I cannot express my gratitude for all your love and support, and I cannot express my joy in looking forward to what comes next. This dissertation is dedicated to you. 5 Table of Contents Introduction 10 I. Different Trade-Offs 11 II. First-Person Standpoint: Anti-Aggregation 13 III. Second-Person Standpoint: The Separateness and Relatedness of Persons 18 IV. Two Versions of the Separateness of Persons Objection 24 V. The Justificatory Requirement 27 VI. The Substantive Requirement 29 VII. The Separateness of Persons, Attitudes, and Rightness 33 VIII. The Dissertation 36 Chapter 1. Why It Does Not Matter What Matters: Relation R, Personal Identity, and Moral Theory 41 I. Introduction 41 II. First Argument: Less United Individuals 43 III. Second Argument: Less Separate Persons 54 IV. Third Argument: Less Importance to Persons 60 V. Conclusion 67 Chapter 2. Separate Persons Behind the Veil 69 I. Introduction 69 II. Justification for Separate Persons 70 A. The Impartial Spectator 70 B. John Harsanyi 71 C. John Rawls 78 D. From Rawls to Dworkin: The Nature of the Veil 81 E. From Harsanyi and Rawls to Dworkin: The Justificatory Role of the Veil 82 F. From Rawls to Dworkin: Collective Assets 89 G. Summary 93 6 III. Principles for Separate Persons 94 A. Harsanyi’s Average Utilitarianism 94 B. Rawls’s Two Principles of Justice 96 C. Dworkin’s Equality of Resources 97 IV. Conclusion 101 Chapter 3. Contractualism, Complaints, and Risk 103 I. Contractualism and Risk 103 II. Otsuka’s Sequence 105 III. A Problem for Ex Post Contractualism 114 IV. What We Owe … to Whom? 119 A. Justifiability to Each Separate Person 120 B. The Luckless and the Doomed 126 V. Objections 133 A. Determinism 133 B. Ex Ante Pareto 138 C. Identified Victim Bias 140 VI. Conclusion 144 Chapter 4. Skepticism about Aggregation and Uncertain Rescues 146 I. Ex Post Claims 148 II. First Option: Relevance Tied to a State of the World 150 III. Second Option: Relevant Inside and Across States of the World 153 IV. Ex Post Limited Aggregation Without Ex Post Claims 157 Chapter 5. Aggregation, Balancing, and Respect for the Claims of Individuals 159 I. Introduction 159 II. Relevance and Limited Aggregation 161 III. Justifying Hybrid Balance Relevant Claims 164 IV. Illustrations of Hybrid Balance Relevant Claims 175 7 V. Hybrid Balance Relevant Claims and Objections to Limited Aggregation 179 A. Problems with Global Relevance 180 B. Problems with Local Relevance 183 C. Principle of Agglomeration 186 VI. Conclusion 189 Balancing Three (or More) Groups 191 Hybrid Balance Relevant Claims versus Sequential Matching 193 The Order of Balancing 195 Chapter 6. Constraints, You, and Your Victims 198 I. Introduction 198 II. A Relational Agent-Based Justification for Side Constraints 201 III. The Puzzle of Minimizing One’s Own Violations 207 A. One’s Own Violations and the Guilty Agent 207 B. Responding to the Guilty Agent 209 C. First Step: Choice between Doing and Allowing 210 D.
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