We are welcoming submissions to a Special Issue of Philosophical Studies on Partial Aggregation.
Many believe that we ought to save countless people from full-body paralysis rather than save a single life, but that it would be wrong to prevent countless headaches rather than save a single person’s life. Those judgments are in tension. The first favours an aggregative moral ideal, according to which burdens can be added up in moral reasoning, so that they together outweigh a more severe burden. The second favours an anti-aggregative moral ideal, on which sufficiently large burdens retain priority over any number of smaller burdens. Theories of partial (or limited) aggregation aspire to reconcile these judgements in a principled way. Their broader interest lies in the prospect of settling long-standing debates in ethical theory, for example, between contractualists and consequentialists, regarding when and why the numbers should count.
The proliferation of recent work on these topics suggests a number of pressing open questions. What justifies partial aggregation? How should key notions like a claim to be saved, moral relevance, or individualist moral theory be understood? What decision procedure should we use when adjudicating between competing claims or interests? We welcome submissions which address the foundations, concepts and mechanisms at play in partial aggregation.
Possible Topics include (but are not limited to):
- Is partial aggregation consistent or does it collapse into either full aggregation or scepticism about aggregation?
- Should partial aggregation be understood in terms of moral relevance, lexicality, axiological principles of priority or equality, bounded aggregation, or in some other way?
- Can partial aggregation be reconciled with individualist moral theory? What makes a moral theory “individualist” in the relevant sense? What is the best formulation of the so-called “individualist restriction”? What distinctive advantages and challenges come with a contractualist approach to partial aggregation, or with a consequentialist one?
- What are moral claims, and how do they relate to interests and reasons? What does it take for claims to be relevant to each other or to one’s decision? How should claims be balanced, added up, cancelled, or otherwise combined?
- How should partial aggregation handle cases involving heterogeneous groups, multiple options, non-fixed populations, quasi-competition, risk, and diachronic choices? How should we assess the extensional adequacy and explanatory power of a theory of partial aggregation?
- Do moral and political philosophy call for distinct theories of partial aggregation, or will a unified account suffice? How does partial aggregation bear (for example) on public policy, on the distribution of scarce medical resources, and on the constraints we impose on AI agents?
Papers should be submitted via the journal’s online submission system before 31st July 2027 (please indicate that your submission is for consideration in relation to Partial Aggregation).
For more information, see the special issue page here: https://link.springer.com/collections/aigddfdadc
If you have any questions, contact Milan Mossé (milan_mosse@stanford.edu).
Lea Bourguignon (Cambridge), Jonas Harney (Fribourg), and Milan Mossé (Stanford), special issue editors.