Broome and the intuition of neutrality

Abstract

This paper delves into the intuition of neutrality, which posits that adding a person to the world is often ethically neutral. The author engages with John Broome’s book, which grapples with the intuition of neutrality in the context of population ethics. The author explores Broome’s arguments against the incommensurateness interpretation of neutrality, particularly the ad-hocness, vagueness, and greediness objections. The author defends the incommensurateness interpretation by arguing that greediness is not an unacceptable feature of neutrality, that vagueness does not crowd out incommensurateness, and that incommensurateness can be explained by the permissibility of different preference orderings. The author also proposes an alternative interpretation of the intuition of neutrality based on the personal neutral range of wellbeing levels. – AI-generated abstract.