Colloquium: Harvey Lederman (University of Texas, Austin)

TITLE: Pareto for the People (with Jeremy Goodman (JHU)

ABSTRACT: We provide a new argument that betterness is incomplete: there are possible situations neither of which is at least as good as the other. Unlike more familiar arguments for this conclusion, our assumptions are consistent with completeness for individual wellbeing levels, and do not require cases involving a variable population. A key idea is to isolate and motivate a particular sense in which betterness is impartial.