Impartiality, Anonymity, and Caring Who

In the last 30 years, a range of powerful arguments have pushed ethics in a utilitarian direction by invoking the principle of Outcome Anonymity, which holds that two outcomes are equally good if they involve the same distribution of welfare, differing only in who is at which level. This principle is often presented as a minimal requirement of impartiality. I argue that it is not. Outcome Anonymity forbids more than partiality: it forbids caring who is who in a welfare distribution. After illustrating this point with four examples, I present a theorem that suggests that it is not Outcome Anonymity but a weaker principle, which May and Sen call simply “Anonymity,” that is the essence of impartial concern.