Does the Additional Worth-Having Existence Make Things Better?

Let’s call the principle that says that the mere addition of the worth-having existence (other things equal) makes things morally better Pareto plus. If we accept Pareto plus, then it seems we should also say that some additions that make at least some person at least a little worse off also may – depending on the numbers – make things morally better. I find that latter claim potentially dangerous. As a main focus of an argument why we ought to do something about climate change, I think it moves people not to do anything much about climate change. People won’t accept that they or their progeny – or the many, many future people beyond their own progeny – should bear a cost, perhaps a significant cost, just to bring ever more future people into existence. But we can’t just reject Pareto plus out of hand. For a number of arguments seem to compel us to accept Pareto plus. My goal in this paper is to identify some of the most interesting of those arguments and to show how, in each case, the argument on closer analysis fails.

Calibrating Variable-Value Population Ethics

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.

Nondeterminacy and Population Ethics

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.

Marginally compact phase and ordered ground states in a model polymer with side spheres

We present the results of a quantitative study of the phase behavior of a model polymer chain with side spheres using two independent computer simulation techniques. We find that the mere addition of side spheres results in key modifications of standard polymer behavior. One obtains a novel marginally compact phase at low temperatures, the structures in this phase are reduced in dimensionality and are ordered, they include strands assembled into sheets and a variety of helices, and at least one of the transitions on lowering the temperature to access these ordered states is found to be first order. Our model serves to partially bridge conventional polymer phases with biomolecular phases.

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

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

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).

ON PARITY AND THE INTUITION OF NEUTRALITY

On parity views of mere addition if someone (or a group of people) is added to the world at a range of well-being levels – or ‘neutral range’ – leaving existing people unaffected, addition is on a par with the initial situation. Two distinct parity views – ‘rough equality’ and fitting-attitudes views – defend the ‘intuition of neutrality’. The first can be interpreted or adjusted so that it can rebut John Broome's objection that the neutral range is wide. The two views respond in distinct ways to two of Broome's other objections. Both views can, nonetheless, be plausibly defended against these objections.