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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#212121">Hi everyone,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:#212121">This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Brian Hedden (ANU).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:#212121">The title of<span class="apple-converted-space"> Brian’s</span> talk is “Parity and Pareto”. Here’s the abstract for<span class="apple-converted-space"> the </span>talk:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black">Pareto principles are at the core of ethics and decision theory. The Strong Pareto principle says that if one thing is better than another for someone and at least as good for everyone else, then the one is overall better than the
other. But a host of famous figures express it differently, with "not worse" in place of "at least as good." In the presence of parity (or incommensurability), this results in a strictly stronger Pareto principle, which I call Super-Strong Pareto. Super-Strong
Pareto, however, yields cyclic betterness and is therefore false. I point out a number of influential arguments - concerning population ethics, collective action problems, and decision-making in the face of parity and uncertainty - that crucially rely on Super-Strong
Pareto and are therefore unsound. I then turn to the most influential argument against the possibility of parity - Broome's collapsing argument - and argue that it likewise relies on Super-Strong Pareto reasoning and is therefore question-begging. Finally,
I turn to the much-neglected question of how to justify Strong Pareto. The answer I arrive at, which emphasizes tie-breaking, yields a striking insight, namely that Super-Strong Pareto amounts to the denial of insensitivity to mild sweetening. That is what
makes it problematic in the presence of parity.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:#212121">The talk will take place on<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="jtukpc">Wednesday the 18<sup>th</sup></span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="jtukpc">of October at 3:30 p.m.</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>in
the Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle<span class="apple-converted-space">.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:#212121">The talk will be followed by drinks and informal discussion at a nearby venue. All welcome!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:#212121">Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="mailto:ryan.cox@sydney.edu.au" title="mailto:ryan.cox@sydney.edu.au"><span style="color:#0078D7">ryan.cox@sydney.edu.au</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:#212121"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black">Ryan Cox<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="color:#212121"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black">Associate Lecturer in Philosophy</span><span style="color:#212121"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black">Discipline of Philosophy</span><span style="color:#212121"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black">School of Humanities</span><span style="color:#212121"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black">University of Sydney</span><span style="color:#212121"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black"><a href="mailto:ryan.cox@sydney.edu.au" title="mailto:ryan.cox@sydney.edu.au"><span style="color:#0078D7">ryan.cox@sydney.edu.au</span></a></span><span style="color:#212121"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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