Stefánsson, H. Orri & Richard Bradley | 2026
Transformative Ethics. Preprint series vol. 1. Working paper 2026:14
We show that Statewise Dominance has problematic implications given two seemingly innocuous assumptions. The first of these assumptions is that rational people can change their attitudes to risk. The second assumption is that there are possible lives that would be just as good (or preferable), for those leading them, even though non-equivalent levels of wellbeing at two points in time were permuted. In the presence of these two assumptions, Statewise Dominance implies that there are risky situations where a person’s attitude to risk can have no impact on her preference between risky prospects. So, we face an inconsistency between a set of prima facie plausible assumptions about attitudes to risk and how preferences over life-stages relate to preferences over lives.
