Some ethical theories tolerate or require aggregation -- a trade-off between benefits to a group of individuals and losses to another group of individuals. Since aggregation is an essential feature of utilitarianism, many critics of utilitarianism -- including John Rawls, Thomas Nagel, T. M. Scanlon, and others -- rule out aggregation from their proposed theories. However, critics encounter what has become known as the number problem-the problem that non-aggregative theories are insensitive to the number of people affected by actions even in the cases where the number of people is clearly relevant to what we ought to do. In this book, Iwao Hirose elucidates the theoretical nature of interpersonal and intra-personal aggregation and defends a form of aggregation, formal aggregation, as distinguished from substantive aggregation in utilitarianism. Substantive aggregation combines the morally relevant factors that are determined prior to, and independently of, aggregative process, and identifies the goal to be pursued. In contrast, formal aggregation represents the overall ethical judgment in terms of individuals' morally relevant factors and gives a structure to our ethical thinking. Hirose's view of formal aggregation is broader than substantive aggregation and avoids problems for utilitarianism. Furthermore, formal aggregation can satisfy the demands of critics of the conventional understanding of aggregation, thus being more attractive than substantive aggregation and the unqualified rejection of aggregation. Hirose's analysis thus elucidates the far-reaching scope of aggregation and offers a new insight to one of the fundamental elements in ethical theory.

About the Author
Iwao Hirose is Associate Professor at the Philosophy Department and the School of Environment, McGill University. He is the author of Egalitarianism (2014), co-author of The Ethics of Health Care Rationing (with Greg Bognar, 2014), and co-editor of Weighing and Reasoning (with Andrew Reisner; forthcoming from OUP) and The Oxford Handbook of Value Theory (with Jonas Olson; forthcoming from OUP).

Reviews
The aggregation critics-that is, among others, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Thomas Nagel, John M. Taurek, and T. M. Scanlon-have not offered a clear criterion for what counts as a morally problematic form of aggregation and what does not... In Moral Aggregation, Iwao Hirose makes an admirable attempt to provide a precise account of the kind of aggregation that these critics have found problematic in utilitarianism and similar theories. * Johan E. Gustafsson, Mind *
Recommended. Graduate students and above. * Choice *
The book will be of interest to those dealing with any of these topics, and especially to those who wish to further explore Broome-style treatments of unfairness and inequality. It is part of an ambitious three-book development of an aggregative version of telic egalitarianism and its application to health care issues * Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews Online *



Book Information
ISBN 9780199933686
Author Iwao Hirose
Format Hardback
Page Count 250
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 386g
Dimensions(mm) 145mm * 213mm * 28mm