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The Reverse Repugnant Conclusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Tim Mulgan
Tim Mulgan
Affiliation:
University of Auckland
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Abstract

Total utilitarianism implies Parfit's repugnant conclusion. For any world (A) containing ten billion very happy people, there is a better world (Z) where a vast number of people have lives barely worth living. One common response is to claim that life in Parfit's Z is better than he suggests, and thus that his conclusion is not repugnant. This paper shows that this strategy cannot succeeed. Total utilitarianism also implies a reverse repugnant conclusion. For any world (A-minus) where ten billion people have lives of excruciating agony, there is a worse world (Z-minus) where a vast number of people have lives almost worth living. This reverse repugnant conclusion is at least as repugnant as Parfit's original. If we avoid the latter by raising the zero level, then the former becomes more repugnant. We cannot save total utilitarianism by tinkering with the zero level.

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Articles
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Utilitas , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , November 2002 , pp. 360 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2002

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References

1 Parfit, D., Reasons and Persons, Oxford, 1984, p. 388Google Scholar.

2 Parfit, p. 390.

3 Fehige, C., ‘A Pareto Principle for Possible People’, Preferences ed. Fehige, C. and Wessels, U., Berlin, 1998, pp. 509–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Ryberg, J., ‘Is the Repugnant Conclusion repugnant?’, Philosophical Papers, xxv (1996)Google Scholar. See also T. Tännsjö, ‘Why We Ought to Accept the Repugnant Conclusion’, this volume.

5 Dasgupta, P., ‘Savings and Fertility: Ethical Issues’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, xxiii (1994), 116Google Scholar. Ng, Y.-K., ‘What Should We Do about Future Generations?’, Economics and Philosophy, v (1989)Google Scholar, presents a similar view.

6 See Blackorby, C., Bossert, W., and Donaldson, D., ‘Intertemporal Population Ethics’, Econometrica lxv (1995)Google Scholar; Blackorby, C., Bossert, W., and Donaldson, D., ‘Critical-Level Utilitarianism and the Population-Ethics Dilemma’, Economics and Philosophy xiii (1997)Google Scholar ; and Feldman, F., ‘Justice, Desert and the Repugnant Conclusion’, Utilitas, vii (1995)Google Scholar.

7 See ibid.

8 Alternatively, proponents of a critical level might argue that, because they appeal to a positive critical level to defeat the repugnant conclusion, they can respond to the reverse repugnant conclusion by setting the zero level considerably lower than other total utilitarians, such as Fehige, Ryberg, Dasgupta, or Ng. In practice, however, the adoption of a very low zero level is largely indistinguishable from the adoption of a negative critical level. In particular, both strategies face the problem of an implausibly broad zone of indifference.

9 This paper was written while I was a visiting fellow in the Social and Political Theory Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. For helpful comments on an earlier draft, I am grateful to John Broome, Brad Hooker, Philip Pettit, and an audience at the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.