Online Papers - Brian Weatherson

Defending Interest-Relative Invariantism 156
in the case described, the argument for IRI can work. (By consequentialism being correct
in a case, I mean that it can be preferable to choose ϕ over ψ in some case because
ϕ has the higher expected utility. It’s plausible that there are such cases because it’s
plausible that there are choices we face where the options differ in no normatively
salient respect except expected utiilty.) Remember, the IRI theorist is trying to prove
an existential: there is a pair of cases that differ with respect to knowledge in virtue of
differing with respect to interests. And that just needs consequentialism to be locally
true. The only way medical cases like Brown’s could be counterexamples to IRI is
if we assumed that consequentialism was globally true, but it probably isn’t, so IRI
survives the examples.