Contractualism and aggregation

Ethics 108 (2):296-311 (1998)
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Abstract

I argue that T.M. Scanlon's contractualist account of morality has difficulty accommodating our intuitions about the moral relevance of the number of people affected by an action. I first consider the "Complaint Model" of reasonable rejection, which restricts the grounds for an individual's rejection of a principle to its effects upon herself. I argue that it can accommodate our intuitions about numbers only if we assume that, whenever we do not know who will be affected, each individual may appeal only to the _expected effects on her. This assumption, I suggest, leads to counterintuitive results in cases where, although we do not know who will be affected, we do know that _someone will be. I then consider two proposals to supplement the complaint model with a direct appeal to aggregation. I argue that both are open to serious objections

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Sophia Reibetanz Moreau
University of Toronto, St. George Campus

Citations of this work

Aggregation, Complaints, and Risk.Joe Horton - 2017 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 45 (1):54-81.
Aggregation, Risk, and Reductio.Joe Horton - 2020 - Ethics 130 (4):514-529.
Other People.Kieran Setiya - 2023 - In Sarah Buss & Nandi Theunissen (eds.), Rethinking the Value of Humanity. New York, US: OUP Usa.

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