The Ockham Society (Thursday - Week 3, MT25)

Abstract: When faced with a situation in which we must choose between either saving a smaller or a larger group of people, are we obligated to save the larger group? John Taurek (1977) famously argued that there is no such obligation. Though this surprising view has been subject to a number of replies, the literature has reached what Daniel Muñoz (2024) calls a “curious stalemate”, in which both sides argue that only their views treat people as equals. Muñoz shows that this stalemate arises because both sides of the debate use different notions of equality to make their arguments, and that it is not obvious how we would go about adjudicating which of the two sides truly treats people as equals. In my paper, I try to argue that a principle of non-unequal treatment can justify saving the many without appealing to controversial conceptions of equality, putting further pressure on Taurek’s view.