Moral theory, justice, tradeoffs, and ethical decision-making.
Once welfare is granted a central role in moral evaluation, ethics supplies the harder questions: how should competing interests be weighed against each other, what happens when maximizing welfare conflicts with individual rights, and whether some tradeoffs are the kind that welfare calculations should not be allowed to settle at all.
Simple aggregation, prioritarianism, egalitarianism, and rights-based constraints — four different answers to how welfare gains and losses should be weighed against each other.
Read research note →