Video recordings of lectures

• Week 1

• Week 2

• Week 3

• Week 4

• Week 5

• Week 6 (unfortunately, the last 25 minutes of recording are lost due to technical errors caused by interruptions)

• Week 7

• Week 8

• Week 9

Lecture notes (very messy)

• Week 1

• Week 2

• Week 3  (Here is a recent paper by Nebel (2021) commenting on Adler's book, and on "invariance" properties in SWOs more broadly. Nebel's conclusion: the SWO framework makes sense if (and only if) we specify the units in which individual well-being is measured.) 

• Week 4  (Here is the Mongin (1995) paper.  Here is the paper that introduced "spurious unanimity".  Here is another related paper.)

• Week 5  (Here is the GSS (2004) paper.  Here is another related paper (see section 6).)

• Week 6  (Here is Harvey (2009).  Here is Köbberling (2006).  Here is a recent paper on this topic by Rashka (2025).   Appendix B of Nebel (2023)  contains another characterization of utilitarianism using difference orders.  Here are two other papers on difference (pre)orders and their (multi)utility representations.  Here are two other papers on utility representations using linearly ordered abelian groups.) 

• Week 7  (Section 2 and Appendix A of Nebel (2023) contain the abstract Welfarism Theorem.  For another good discussion of the (classical)  Welfarism Theorem, see section 5.10  of Weymark (2016).)

• Week 8

• Week 9

Further Literature 

On social welfare

• Section 4 of Marc Fleurbaey, “Normative Economics and Economic Justice”, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 

• Section 4 of Christian List, “Social Choice Theory”, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 

• John A. Weymark, in “Social welfare functions”,  pp.126-159 of  The Oxford Handbook of Well-Being and Public Policy .
  (Here is a much smaller PDF file but with poor typesetting.)

On population ethics

• Charles Blackorby, Walter Bossert, and David Donaldson, Population Issues in Social Choice Theory, Welfare Economics, and Ethics, Cambridge University Press, 2005.

• Hilary Greaves,  “Population axiology.” Philosophy Compass 12, no. 11 (2017): e12442.

• Walter Bossert, “Anonymous welfarism, critical-level principles, and the repugnant and sadistic conclusions”, pp.63-85 of The Oxford Handbook of Population Ethics 

• Charles Blackorby, Walter Bossert, and David Donaldson, “Population Ethics”, Chapter 20 (pp.483-500) of The Handbook of Rational and Social Choice

• Gustaf Arrhenius, Jesper Ryberg, and Torbjörn Tännsjö, “The Repugnant Conclusion”, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .

• John Broome, "The well-being of future generations",  pp.901-928 of The Oxford Handbook of Well-Being and Public Policy.

Further literature 

• Richard Chappell, Darius Meissner and William MacAskill (2024), An Introduction to Utilitarianism: From Theory to Practice, Hackett Publishing. [FREE ONLINE]

• Kohei Kamaga (2020). Social Welfare Evaluation and Intergenerational Equity, Springer: Singapore. [FREE ONLINE]

• Claude d'Aspremont and Louis Gevers. “Social welfare functionals and interpersonal comparability.”   Chapter 10 (pp. 459-541)  of Kenneth J. Arrow, Amartya Sen, and Kotaro Suzumura, eds. Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare. Volume 1. Elsevier, 2002.

• Charles Blackorby,  Walter Bossert, and David Donaldson. “Utilitarianism and the theory of justice.” Chapter 11 (pp. 543-596)  of Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, Volume 1 (op. cit.) 

• John E. Roemer, Theories of distributive justice. Harvard University Press, 1996.

• Kenneth J. Arrow, Amartya Sen, and Kotaro Suzumura, eds. Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare. Volume 2. Elsevier, 2010.

• Salvador Barbera, Peter Hammond, and Christian Seidl, eds. Handbook of Utility Theory: Volume 1: Principles.  Springer, 1998.

• Salvador Barbera, Peter Hammond, and Christian Seidl, eds. Handbook of Utility Theory: Volume 2: Extensions. Springer, 2004.

• Other articles in The Oxford Handbook of Well-Being and Public Policy (op. cit.), The Oxford Handbook of Population Ethics (op. cit.), The Handbook of Rational and Social Choice (op. cit.), and the  Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, Volume 1 (op. cit.)