Absolutism and its Limits

Abstract

Abstract Many philosophers think that given the choice between saving the life of an innocent person and averting any number of minor ailments or inconveniences, it would be better to save the life. How, then, should one compare the risk of an innocent person’s life to such minor ailments and inconveniences? If lives are infinitely more important than insignificant factors then any risk cannot be outweighed, and that is untenable. An alternative approach seems more promising: let the values of such insignificant factors be bounded, as then there will be well-behaved tradeoffs between insignificant things and the risk to an innocent life. We argue, however, that bounding the values of insignificant factors poses myriad problems.