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Is close enough good enough?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2019

Campbell Brown
Campbell Brown*
Affiliation:
London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK
*
Email: c.f.brown@lse.ac.uk
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Abstract

Should we allow grave harm to befall one individual so as to prevent minor harms befalling sufficiently many other individuals? This is a question of aggregation. Can many small harms ‘add up’, so that, collectively, they morally outweigh a greater harm? The ‘Close Enough View’ supports a moderate position: aggregation is permissible when, and only when, the conflicting harms are sufficiently similar, or ‘close enough’, to each other. This paper surveys a range of formally precise interpretations of this view, and reveals some of the problems they face. It also proposes a novel interpretation which avoids these problems.

Keywords

aggregationClose Enough View
Type
Article
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 29 - 59
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Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

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