Objections to the “Repugnant Conclusion”
Using seemingly sound steps of logic, David Parfit has come to the “Repugnant Conclusion” that a world of very many people with very good lives is worse than a world of vastly more people with lives that are barely worth living. I shall outline his argument and conclusion, and then explain how we may evade such a counter-intuitive notion by reconsidering the way we measure and compare people’s wellbeing. I argue that all people inherently deserve a certain amount of welfare that exceeds that in a life that is just barely worth living, and that cannot be compensated for by an increase in number of people.
Parfit asks us to compare different populations and to assess the goodness of each of these scenarios. In each population each individual deserves an equal amount of welfare. Represented below are these populations, where width of block represents number of individuals and height represents amount of wellbeing—the taller the blocks, the more the wellbeing.
In Population A there are few people, but they each have a relatively high amount of wellbeing. Population A+ is the same scenario with an addition of people who each have a smaller amount of wellbeing, but their lives are still worth living. Despite inequality, Parfit argues that the addition of worthwhile lives can never make an outcome worse, so the goodness of the outcome in Population A+ is at least equally as good as the outcome in Population A.
Population B has the same number of individuals as Population A+ does and these two populations have the same average wellbeing, but the distribution of welfare is equal in Population B. Perhaps, those more well off in population A+ transferred some of their welfare to the less well off ...
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...g children may be able to pursue other things that could elevate their happiness. There are plenty of other benefits, and birth control has already been provided in many countries (developing and developed) where it was previously inaccessible and women were mainly extremely willing and happy to use it; freedom and agency improves people’s lives. Population Z is not too far-fetched and similar versions of it already exist in certain parts of the world, as well as famine- and disease-stricken, war-torn areas that are far worse.
Works Cited
Arrhenius, Gustaf, Ryberg, Jesper and Tännsjö, Torbjörn, "The Repugnant Conclusion", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
Parfit, Derek (2004). “Overpopulation and the Quality of Life.” In J. Ryberg & T. Tännsjö (eds.), The Repugnant Conclusion. Kluwer Academic Publishers. 7-22.
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Outline and assess the view that some social groups suffer more inequality in terms of life chances than others
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