2024/06/03 by Erik Zhang · 1 voice · 5 citations
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Critical Realism in Sociology #Economics #Epistemology #Individualism #Interpersonal communication #Philosophical Ethics and Theory #Philosophy #Political Philosophy and Ethics #Psychology #Social psychology
paper · open access · doi:10.1086/729703
published in Ethics 134(4), 479-511 (University of Chicago Press)
openalex publication_date 2024/06/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This article offers a solution to the numbers problem within an individualist moral framework. Its central aims are as follows: to rescue individualist moral theories, such as moral contractualism, from their long-standing problem with interpersonal aggregation; to demonstrate how, proceeding from an individualist mode of justification, we can nevertheless make the numbers count without directly counting the numbers; to provide an individualist rationale for accepting a partially aggregative criterion of adjudication for resolving interpersonal trade-offs; and finally, to develop an extensionally adequate version of partial aggregation that finds application in more structurally complex cases.