Better than nothing: on defining the valence of a life

Campbell Brown

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The valence of a life – that is, whether it is good, bad or neutral – is an important consideration in population ethics. This paper examines various definitions of valence. The main focus is ‘temporal’ definitions, which define valence in terms of the ‘shape’ of a life’s value over time. The paper argues that temporal definitions are viable only with a restricted domain, and therefore are incompatible with certain substantive theories of well-being. It also briefly considers some popular non-temporal definitions, and raises some problems for these.

Keywords: well-being; life; population ethics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-11-07
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Economics and Philosophy, 7, November, 2023. ISSN: 0266-2671

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/120063/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:120063

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().