If individual lives and sets of lives are not metaphysically equivalent, the analogy used to reject distributive principles across persons does not hold.

The success of arguments for this conclusion actually depends on the specific version of reductionism being advanced. After all, there are several possible ethically significant metaphysical units compatible with reductionism, and it turns out that the larger the unit, the less successful the argument will be. As the authors on this topic do, we will focus just on the three possible psychological units: persons, selves, and atoms. If one believes that the only relevant units are atoms (momentar