Feldman's Desert-Adjusted Utilitarianism and Population Ethics

Utilitas ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gustaf Arrhenius
Keyword(s):  
Repugnant Conclusion ◽  
Population Ethics ◽  
Fred Feldman ◽  
Population Axiology

Fred Feldman has proposed a desert-adjusted version of utilitarianism, ‘justicism’, as a plausible population axiology. Among other things, he claims that justicism avoids Derek Parfit's ‘repugnant conclusion’. This paper explains the theory and tries to straighten out some of its ambiguities. Moreover, it is shown that it is not clear whether justicism avoids the repugnant conclusion and that it is has other counter-intuitive implications. It is concluded that justicism is not convincing as a population axiology.

scholarly journals Population axiology and the possibility of a fourth category of absolute value

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-110
Author(s):  
Johan E. Gustafsson
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Repugnant Conclusion ◽  
Population Ethics ◽  
Absolute Value ◽  
Critical Range ◽  
Population Axiology

AbstractCritical-Range Utilitarianism is a variant of Total Utilitarianism which can avoid both the Repugnant Conclusion and the Sadistic Conclusion in population ethics. Yet Standard Critical-Range Utilitarianism entails the Weak Sadistic Conclusion, that is, it entails that each population consisting of lives at a bad well-being level is not worse than some population consisting of lives at a good well-being level. In this paper, I defend a version of Critical-Range Utilitarianism which does not entail the Weak Sadistic Conclusion. This is made possible by what I call ‘undistinguishedness’, a fourth category of absolute value in addition to goodness, badness, and neutrality.

scholarly journals Nondeterminacy and Population Ethics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders Herlitz
Keyword(s):  
General View ◽  
Repugnant Conclusion ◽  
Population Ethics ◽  
Partial Orderings ◽  
Population Axiology ◽  
Plausible Theory ◽  
Mere Addition ◽  
Mere Addition Paradox ◽  
The Continuum ◽  
Formal Constraints

This paper synthesizes a general view out of Derek Parfit’s last views on how to avoid the Repugnant Conclusion and presents the general features of a plausible theory of population ethics based on Parfit’s suggestions. The paper argues that a plausible population axiology provides only partial orderings and implies that some outcomes are nondeterminate in their ranking. The paper shows, first, how the combination of what Parfit calls “imprecise equality” and the “Wide Dual Person-Affecting Principle” allows one to avoid both the Continuum Argument and the Improved Mere Addition Paradox. Second, the paper shows how this is enough to in principle also refute Gustaf Arrhenius’s impossibility theorems. Third, the paper suggests that a plausible population axiology must allow for nondeterminacy, that whatever the substance of the axiology is, it can only provide partial orderings of outcomes, and that if we revise Arrhenius’s adequacy conditions these can condition what a satisfactory population axiology looks like. Finally, the paper illustrates how one can apply normative theories that allow for nondeterminacy and also infer formal constraints on the theories in light of the consequences of their application.

Does Climate Change Policy Depend Importantly on Population Ethics?

2021 ◽  
pp. 111-136
Author(s):  
Gustaf Arrhenius ◽  
Mark Budolfson ◽  
Dean Spears
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Policy Evaluation ◽  
Climate Change Policy ◽  
Policy Response ◽  
Population Ethics ◽  
Impossibility Results ◽  
Climate Policies ◽  
Change Policy ◽  
Population Axiology

Choosing a policy response to climate change seems to demand a population axiology. A formal literature involving impossibility theorems has demonstrated that all possible approaches to population axiology have one or more seemingly counterintuitive implications. This leads to the worry that because axiological theory is radically unresolved, this theoretical ignorance implies serious practical ignorance about what climate policies to pursue. This chapter offers two deflationary responses to this worry. First, it may be that given the actual facts of climate change, all axiologies agree on a particular policy response. In this case, there would be a clear dominance conclusion, and the puzzles of axiology would be practically irrelevant (albeit still theoretically challenging). Second, despite the impossibility results, the authors prove the possibility of axiologies that satisfy bounded versions of all of the desiderata from the population axiology literature, which may be all that is needed for policy evaluation.

scholarly journals Millian Superiorities and the Repugnant Conclusion

Utilitas ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
KARSTEN KLINT JENSEN
Keyword(s):  
Repugnant Conclusion ◽  
Population Ethics

James Griffin has considered a form of superiority in value that is weaker than lexical priority as a possible remedy to the Repugnant Conclusion. In this article, I demonstrate that, in a context where value is additive, this weaker form collapses into the stronger form of superiority. And in a context where value is non-additive, weak superiority does not amount to a radical value difference at all. These results are applied on one of Larry Temkin's cases against transitivity. I demonstrate that Temkin appeals to two conflicting notions of aggregation. I then spell out the consequences of these results for different interpretations of Griffin's suggestion regarding population ethics. None of them comes out very successful, but perhaps they nevertheless retain some interest.

A dilemma for lexical and Archimedean views in population axiology

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Elliott Thornley
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Repugnant Conclusion ◽  
Population Axiology ◽  
Better Than

Abstract Lexical views in population axiology can avoid the Repugnant Conclusion without violating Transitivity or Separability. However, they imply a dilemma: either some good life is better than any number of slightly worse lives, or else the ‘at least as good as’ relation on populations is radically incomplete. In this paper, I argue that Archimedean views face an analogous dilemma. I thus conclude that the lexical dilemma gives us little reason to prefer Archimedean views. Even if we give up on lexicality, problems of the same kind remain.

scholarly journals What Should We Agree on about the Repugnant Conclusion?

Utilitas ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stéphane Zuber ◽  
Nikhil Venkatesh ◽  
Torbjörn Tännsjö ◽  
Christian Tarsney ◽  
H. Orri Stefánsson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Worth Living ◽  
Original Formulation ◽  
Repugnant Conclusion ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Population Ethics ◽  
Very High

The Repugnant Conclusion is an implication of some approaches to population ethics. It states, in Derek Parfit's original formulation, For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better, even though its members have lives that are barely worth living. (Parfit 1984: 388)

Egalitarianism and the Putative Paradoxes of Population Ethics

Utilitas ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
TORBJÖRN TÄNNSJÖ
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Repugnant Conclusion ◽  
Population Ethics

The repugnant conclusion is acceptable from the point of view of total utilitarianism. Total utilitarians do not seem to be bothered with it. They feel that it is in no way repugnant. To me, a hard-nosed total utilitarian, this settles the case. However, if, sometimes, I doubt that total utilitarianism has the final say in ethics, and tend to think that there may be something to some objection to it or another, it is the objection to it brought forward from egalitarian thought that first comes to mind. But if my argument in this article is correct, then it is clear that the repugnant conclusion should be equally acceptable to egalitarians of various different bents as it is to total utilitarians.

scholarly journals Does Climate Change Policy Depend Importantly on Population Ethics? Deflationary Responses to the Challenges of Population Ethics for Public Policy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gustaf Arrhenius ◽  
Mark Budolfson ◽  
Dean Spears
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Policy Evaluation ◽  
Climate Change Policy ◽  
Policy Response ◽  
Population Ethics ◽  
Impossibility Results ◽  
Climate Policies ◽  
Change Policy ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Population Axiology

Choosing a policy response to climate change seems to demand a population axiology. A formal literature involving impossibility theorems has demonstrated that all possible approaches to population axiology have one or more seemingly counterintuitive implications. This leads to the worry that because axiology is so theoretically unresolved as to permit a wide range of reasonable disagreement, our ignorance implies serious practical ignorance about what climate policies to pursue. We offer two deflationary responses to this worry. First, it may be that given the actual facts of climate change, all axiologies agree on a particular policy response. In this case, there would be a clear dominance conclusion, and the puzzles of axiology would be practically irrelevant (albeit still theoretically challenging). Second, despite the impossibility results, we prove the possibility of axiologies that satisfy bounded versions of all of the desiderata from the population axiology literature, which may be all that is needed for policy evaluation.

scholarly journals Calibrating Variable-Value Population Ethics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dean Spears ◽  
H. Orri Stefánsson
Keyword(s):  
Recent Literature ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Small Population ◽  
World Population ◽  
Repugnant Conclusion ◽  
Population Ethics ◽  
Calibration Methods ◽  
Population Sizes ◽  
Mere Addition

Variable-Value axiologies propose solutions to the challenges of population ethics. These views avoid Parfit’s Repugnant Conclusion, while satisfying some weak instances of the Mere Addition principle (for example, at small population sizes). We apply calibration methods to Variable-Value views while assuming: first, some very weak instances of Mere Addition, and, second, some plausible empirical assumptions about the size and welfare of the intertemporal world population. We find that Variable-Value views imply conclusions that should seem repugnant to anyone who opposes Total Utilitarianism due to the Repugnant Conclusion. So, any wish to avoid repugnant conclusions is not a good reason to choose a Variable-Value view. More broadly, these calibrations teach us something about the effort to avoid the Repugnant Conclusion. Our results join a recent literature arguing that prior efforts to avoid the Repugnant Conclusion hinge on inessential features of the formalization of repugnance. Some of this effort may therefore be misplaced.

Population Ethics

2019 ◽  
pp. 71-81
Author(s):  
Torbjörn Tännsjö
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Opposite Effect ◽  
Worth Living ◽  
Repugnant Conclusion ◽  
Population Ethics ◽  
Better Than

The three most promising theories of distributive justice are discussed in the context of population ethics. They all allow for what has been called the repugnant conclusion (i.e. the conclusion that some world, the Z-world, with an enormous population of persons living a life just worth living, is preferable to a world with ten billion extremely happy persons (the A-world). Utilitarianism implies the repugnant conclusion. It urges us to move from the A-world to the Z-world. It is different with the maximin/leximin theory and egalitarianism. They are person-affecting moralities. They refer to actual persons. These theories do not urge us to move to from the A-world to the Z-world but they allow for such a move. Does this spell problem for the theories? It does not, it is argued. The repugnant conclusion is after all acceptable. It is shown how the intuition that the Z world is worse than the A world tends to go away when submitted to cognitive psycho-therapy. It is typically not replaced by an intuition to the opposite effect, but there exists a sound argument to the effect that the Z-world is indeed better than the A-world.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document