The structure of critical sets
Walter Bossert (University of Montreal), Susumu Cato (University of Tokyo) and Kohei Kamaga (Sophia University)
GPI Working Paper No. 4-2025
The purpose of this paper is to address some ambiguities and misunderstandings that appear in previous studies of population ethics. In particular, we examine the structure of intervals that are employed in assessing the value of adding people to an existing population. Our focus is on critical-band utilitarianism and critical-range utilitarianism, which are commonly-used population theories that employ intervals, and we show that some previously assumed equivalences are not true in general. The possible discrepancies can be attributed to the observation that critical bands need not be equal to critical sets. The critical set for a moral quasi-ordering is composed of all utility numbers such that adding someone with a utility level in this set leads to a distribution that is not comparable to the original (non-augmented) distribution. The only case in which critical bands and critical sets coincide obtains when the critical band is an open interval. In this respect, there is a stark contrast between critical-band utilitarianism and critical-range utilitarianism: the critical set that corresponds to a critical-range quasi-ordering always coincides with the interval that is used to define the requisite quasi-ordering. As a consequence, an often presumed equivalence of critical-band utilitarianism and critical-range utilitarianism is not valid unless, again, the critical band and the critical range (and, consequently, the requisite critical sets) are given by the same open interval.
Other working papers
Simulation expectation – Teruji Thomas (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
I present a new argument for the claim that I’m much more likely to be a person living in a computer simulation than a person living in the ground-level of reality. I consider whether this argument can be blocked by an externalist view of what my evidence supports, and I urge caution against the easy assumption that actually finding lots of simulations would increase the odds that I myself am in one.
Economic growth under transformative AI – Philip Trammell (Global Priorities Institute, Oxford University) and Anton Korinek (University of Virginia)
Industrialized countries have long seen relatively stable growth in output per capita and a stable labor share. AI may be transformative, in the sense that it may break one or both of these stylized facts. This review outlines the ways this may happen by placing several strands of the literature on AI and growth within a common framework. We first evaluate models in which AI increases output production, for example via increases in capital’s substitutability for labor…
Desire-Fulfilment and Consciousness – Andreas Mogensen (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
I show that there are good reasons to think that some individuals without any capacity for consciousness should be counted as welfare subjects, assuming that desire-fulfilment is a welfare good and that any individuals who can accrue welfare goods are welfare subjects. While other philosophers have argued for similar conclusions, I show that they have done so by relying on a simplistic understanding of the desire-fulfilment theory. My argument is intended to be sensitive to the complexities and nuances of contemporary…