Population Ethics, the Mere Addition Paradox, and the Structure of Consequentialism

2020 ◽  
pp. 473-497
Author(s):  
Melinda A. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Population Problem ◽  
Population Ethics ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Mere Addition ◽  
Mere Addition Paradox

In this paper, I describe three structural issues population ethics raises for any form of consequentialism that embraces what we can call the basic maximizing idea, the idea that it makes things better, in a morally relevant sense, to make things better for people. What we say about those structural issues will in turn determine what we say about some of the most challenging problems of population ethics. I explore a handful of our options here, discarding some and leaving others on the table. My primary focus is on how those options propose to resolve the mere addition paradox, a population problem that is important in its own right and whose resolution is defining for what we will want to say about many other population problems.

Multidimensional Consequentialism and Population Ethics

2018 ◽  
pp. 51-70
Author(s):  
Martin Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Impossibility Theorem ◽  
Worth Living ◽  
Average Quality ◽  
Population Ethics ◽  
Main Claim ◽  
Moral Aspect ◽  
Mere Addition ◽  
Mere Addition Paradox

The main claim of this chapter is that multidimensional consequentialists have reason to reject some of the key premises of Parfit’s Mere Addition Paradox as well as Arrhenius’s sixth impossibility theorem. The latter is the most general and far-reaching impossibility theorem in the literature on population ethics. The chapter shows that multidimensional consequentialists can reasonably maintain that the mere addition of people who have lives worth living is not always entirely right. To add what Parfit calls “extra people” is right with respect to one moral aspect (the size of the population) but wrong with respect to another (the average quality of life).

Mere Addition and Two Trilemmas of Population Ethics

1998 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Carlson
Keyword(s):  
Mirror Image ◽  
Population Ethics ◽  
Population Theory ◽  
Mere Addition ◽  
Mere Addition Paradox

A principal aim of the branch of ethics called ‘population theory’ or ‘population ethics’ is to find a plausible welfarist axiology, capable of comparing total outcomes with respect to value. This has proved an exceedingly difficult task. In this paper I shall state and discuss two ‘trilemmas’, or choices between three unappealing alternatives, which the population ethicist must face. The first trilemma is not new. It originates with Derek Parfit's well-known ‘Mere Addition Paradox’, and was first explicitly stated by Yew-Kwang Ng. I shall argue that one horn of this trilemma is less unattractive than Parfit and others have claimed. The second trilemma, which is a kind of mirror image of the first, appears hitherto to have gone unnoticed. Apart from attempting to resolve the two trilemmas, I shall suggest certain features which I believe a plausible welfarist axiology should possess. The details of this projected axiology will, however, be left open.

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.

Welfare and Outcome

2002 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-115
Author(s):  
Robert Shaver
Keyword(s):  
Main Concern ◽  
Difference Principle ◽  
Intuitive Appeal ◽  
Lockean Proviso ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Mere Addition ◽  
Mere Addition Paradox ◽  
Better Than

In Inequality, Larry Temkin attacks ‘The Slogan’: ‘One Situation cannot be [morally] worse (or better) than another in any respect if there is no one for whom it is worse (or better) in any respect.’ Temkin notes that the Slogan has great intuitive appeal. It underlies, for example, the conviction that it is irrational to prefer a Pareto-inferior outcome; the transition from egalitarianism to the difference principle; Robert Nozick's Wilt Chamberlain example; defense of appropriation under the Lockean proviso; and Derek Parfit's Mere Addition Paradox. As an egalitarian, Temkin's main concern with the Slogan is the support it gives to the ‘leveling down objection’ to egalitarianism: the egalitarian finds it to be in some respect an improvement that the better-off are leveled down to the position of the worse-off, without any gain to the worse-off. The Slogan condemns this: leveling down cannot be better in any respect, since there is no one for whom it is better in any respect.

Mere addition and the best of all possible worlds

1999 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEPHEN GROVER
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Worth Living ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Repugnant Conclusion ◽  
Best Possible World ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Mere Addition ◽  
Mere Addition Paradox ◽  
Better Than

The quantitative argument against the notion of a best possible world claims that, no matter how many worthwhile lives a world contains, another world contains more and is, other things being equal, better. Parfit's ‘Mere Addition Paradox’ suggests that defenders of this argument must accept his ‘Repugnant Conclusion’: that outcomes containing billions upon billions of lives barely worth living are better than outcomes containing fewer lives of higher quality. Several responses to the Paradox are discussed and rejected as either inadequate or unavailable in a theistic context. The quantitative argument fails if some world is such that addition to it is not possible, i.e., if it is intensively infinite, as Liebniz claimed. If the notion of such a world is incoherent, then no world is quantitatively best and the quantitative argument succeeds, but only at the cost of embracing the Repugnant Conclusion.

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