On Limited Aggregation

Abstract

Consider the following pair of cases: Case 1. You can save one person from death, or some larger number of people, N 1, from paralysis. Case 2.You can save one person from death, or some larger number of people, N 2, from a mild headache. On one view, let’s call it Pure Aggregation, in both cases we have to see how large N is before deciding what to do. If N 1 gets large enough, we should save the people from paralysis. And if N 2 gets large enough, we should prevent the mild headaches. According to another view, Anti-Aggregation, in both cases we should save the one person from death: we should simply satisfy the strongest claim, no matter how large the number of people possessing competing weaker claims gets.