VAULTING INTUITION: TEMKIN'S CRITIQUE OF TRANSITIVITY

Alex Voorhoeve

Economics and Philosophy, 2013, vol. 29, issue 3, 409-423

Abstract: How to rank distributions of benefits and harms? In this book, Larry Temkin addresses this question in detail. Its core claims are two. First, the goodness of a distribution is sometimes ‘essentially comparative’ – it sometimes depends on which alternative distribution(s) it is compared to. Second, there are many cases in which our intuitions are at odds with the transitivity of ‘all things considered better than’ and these cases give us reason to doubt that this relation is transitive. (Transitivity holds that if some alternative a3 is better than a2, and a2 is better than a1, then a3 is better than a1.)

Date: 2013
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