## 1. Arriving at the Repugnant Conclusion



Parfit is not the first philosopher to have noticed that influential
moral views may have implications of the sort outlined in the
Repugnant Conclusion. Henry Sidgwick was close to acknowledging the
implication when he pointed out that "... the point up to
which, on utilitarian principles, population ought to be encouraged to
increase, is not that at which the average happiness is the greatest
possible--as appears to be often assumed by political economists
of the school of Malthus--but that at which the happiness reaches
its maximum" (Sidgwick 1907 p. 418; for other early sources, see
Broad 1930 pp. 249-250; McTaggart 1927 pp. 452-53;
Narveson 1967). However, it is Parfit who has brought the conclusion
to recent philosophical attention both by stressing the importance of
the conclusion and by showing how difficult it is to avoid it (Parfit
1984).



Parfit was led to the Repugnant Conclusion by his considerations
concerning how we ought to act in cases where our decisions have an
impact on who will exist in the future. Consider the following two
scenarios (see Parfit 1984 chapter 16):


1. A pregnant mother suffers from an illness which, unless she
undergoes a simple treatment, will cause her child to suffer a
permanent handicap. If she receives the treatment and is cured her
child will be perfectly normal.
2. A woman suffers from an illness which means that, if she gets
pregnant now, her child will suffer from a permanent handicap. If she
postpones her pregnancy a few months until she has recovered, her
child will be perfectly normal.



What ought the women to do in the two cases? In case (1) the obvious
answer is that the mother ought to undergo the treatment since her
child will thereby get a better life. However, when we turn to case
(2), it is problematic to appeal to the improved life of some child as
the reason for taking action (i.e., postponing the pregnancy). If the
woman postpones her pregnancy, then the child that is brought into
existence will not be identical to the child she would have had, had
she decided to become pregnant while she was ill (it will not be the
same ovum and sperm that meet). Hence, the alternative for the child
brought into existence during the mother's illness is
non-existence, and to claim that it would have been better for this
child if the mother had postponed pregnancy is tantamount to claiming
that the child's non-existence would have been better for the
child. Assuming that the child would have a life worth living, this
seems wrong if not nonsensical. Indeed, in case (2), there are two
hypothetical children and whether or not the mother postpones the
pregnancy, neither child will have a "better life" as a
result of the mother's action. For both hypothetical children,
the alternative is nonexistence. If the mother postpones her pregnancy
while ill, the first child wouldn't exist, and if she
doesn't postpone, the second child wouldn't exist. (For a
discussion, see Narveson 1967, Parfit 1984, appendix G; Adler 2012;
Bykvist 2007c, 2015; Arrhenius & Rabinowicz 2015, McMahan 1981,
2009, 2013; Rabinowicz 2009; Holtug 2010; Fleurbaey & Voorhoeve
2015). 



How, if at all, should a change in the identity of the involved
parties in the compared outcomes affect our moral evaluation? Parfit
refers to this as "the Non-Identity Problem" (see the
entry on
 the nonidentity problem).
 Following what would probably strike most people as the most
plausible answer Parfit favors what he calls the "No-Difference
View" (1984 p. 367), which implies that a change in identity
should not affect the answer: the woman in case (2) ought to postpone
her pregnancy, just as the woman in case (1) ought to undergo the
treatment. A straightforward way of capturing the No-Difference View
is total utilitarianism according to which the best outcome is the one
in which there would be the greatest quantity of whatever makes life
worth living (Parfit 1984 p. 387). However, this view implies that any
loss in the quality of lives in a population can be compensated for by
a sufficient gain in the quantity of a population; that is, it leads
to the Repugnant Conclusion. Consider the following diagram:



![Figure 1](fig1.png)

Figure 1




The blocks above represent two populations, *A* and *Z*. The
width of each block shows the number of people in the corresponding
population, the height shows their quality of life or lifetime
welfare. All the lives in the above diagram have lives worth living.
People's quality of life is much lower in *Z* than in
*A* but, since there are many more people in *Z*, there is a
greater quantity of welfare in *Z* as compared to *A*.
Consequently, although the people in *A* lead very good lives and
the people in *Z* have lives only barely worth living, *Z*
is nevertheless better than *A* according to total
utilitarianism. Thus, the attempt to provide a plausible solution to
the Non-Identity Problem has led to a seemingly unacceptable
conclusion.



Leaving the Non-Identity Problem aside, there are other arguments
establishing that the Repugnant Conclusion is not easily avoided.
Parfit has developed an argument to this effect. Consider the three
population scenarios indicated in Fig. 2.



![Figure 2](fig2.png)

Figure 2




In population *A*, everybody enjoys a very high quality of life.
In population *A*+ there is one group of people as large as the
group in *A* and with the same high quality of life. But
*A*+ also contains a number of people with a somewhat lower
quality of life. In Parfit's terminology *A*+ is generated
from *A* by "mere addition". Comparing *A* and
*A*+ it is reasonable to hold that *A*+ is better than
*A* or, at least, not worse. The idea is that an addition of
lives worth living cannot make a population worse. Consider the next
population *B* with the same number of people as *A*+, all
leading lives worth living and at an average welfare level slightly
above the average in *A*+, but lower than the average in
*A*. It is hard to deny that *B* is better than *A*+
since it is better in regard to both average welfare (and thus also
total welfare) and equality. However, if *A*+ is at least not
worse than *A*, and if *B* is better than *A*+, then
*B* is also better than *A* given full comparability among
populations (i.e., setting aside possible incomparabilities among
populations). By parity of reasoning (scenario *B*+ and *C*,
*C*+ etc.), we end up with a population *Z* in which all
lives have a very low positive welfare. Thus, the final conclusion is
that *Z* is better than *A*, which is the Repugnant
Conclusion. By what apparently constitute sound steps of reasoning we
have arrived at an absurd conclusion. This is paradoxical. Thus, is
'mere' addition innocuous, as is here assumed? Well, if it
is thought to be suspicious, there is a way of avoiding it by starting
with a population like the one in *A* and adding new people
living at a slightly lower level than the people in *A* in a
manner that *increases* the well-being of existing people. You
then proceed down the moral alphabet by levelling out the well-being
between the best and worst off in a manner that gives more to those
who are worst off than you take from those who are best off; in each
step new people are added, in order to make this change of the
situation possible (Parfit 1984; Tannsjo 2002). Moreover,
there are other abstract arguments leading in the same direction, some
of them presented by Parfit himself (see section 2.5 and 2.7). It
seems then that the Repugnant Conclusion is very hard to get
around.



The main challenge which Parfit presented in his celebrated work
*Reasons and Persons* is to develop a theory of
beneficence--theory X he calls it--which is able to solve
the Non-Identity problem, which does not lead to the Repugnant
Conclusion and which thus manages to block the Mere Addition Paradox,
without facing other unacceptable conclusions. However, Parfit's
own conclusion was that he had not succeeded in developing such a
theory.



It might be tempting for people who have little sympathy with
utilitarian thought to try to set the problems raised by the Repugnant
Conclusion to the side, thinking that it constitutes a problem only
for utilitarians. However, most people tend to believe that we have
*some* obligation to make the world a better place, at least if
we can do so without violating any deontological constraints, and at a
not too high cost to ourselves. Clearly all who think along these
lines, even without being utilitarians, are faced with the problem of
the Repugnant Conclusion. We can assume that other values and
considerations are not decisive for the choice between populations
*A* and *Z* in Figure 1 (e.g., promises, rights). The
Repugnant Conclusion is a problem for all moral theories which hold
that welfare at least matters when all other things are equal.


## 2. Eight Ways of Dealing with the Repugnant Conclusion



Several philosophers have taken up the challenge from Parfit and have
engaged in considerations as to what would constitute a satisfactory
population ethics. Some theorists have done so by accepting the
framework Parfit has set for the investigation; that is, they have
carried on the work of developing an ethical theory that succeeds in
meeting Parfit's minimal requirements for adequacy. Other
theorists have been less willing to accept the scenery as set by
Parfit and have more or less radically challenged his requirements for
a plausible theory. The Repugnant Conclusion has been placed at the
centre of this discussion. The suggestions in the literature on how to
deal with the Repugnant Conclusion can roughly be divided into eight
categories: (1) introducing new ways of aggregating welfare into a
measure of value; (2) questioning the way we can compare and measure
welfare; (3) counting welfare differently depending on temporal or
modal features; (4) revising the notion of a life worth living; (5)
rejecting transitivity; (6) appeal to other values; (7) accepting the
impossibility of a satisfactory population ethics; (8) accepting the
Repugnant Conclusion.


### 2.1 Introducing new ways of aggregating welfare into a measure of value


#### 2.1.1 The average principle



One proposal that easily comes to mind when faced with the Repugnant
Conclusion is to reject total utilitarianism in favor of a principle
prescribing that the *average* welfare per life in a population
is maximized. Average utilitarianism and total utilitarianism are
extensionally equivalent in the sense that they yield the same ranking
when the compared populations are of the same size. They may differ
significantly in different-number cases, however. This is easily seen
when the average approach is adopted in the comparison of the
populations in Figure 1 and Figure 2. That the average well-being is
all that matters implies that no loss in average well-being can be
compensated for by a gain in total well-being. Thus in Figure 1,
*A* is preferable to *Z*, i.e., the Repugnant Conclusion is
avoided. In Figure 2, *A* is preferable to *A*+, i.e., the
Mere Addition Paradox is blocked at the very first step.



Despite these advantages, average utilitarianism has not obtained much
acceptance in the philosophical literature. This is due to the fact
that the principle has implications generally regarded as highly
counterintuitive. For instance, the principle implies that for any
population consisting of very good lives there is a better population
consisting of just one person leading a life at a slightly higher
level of well-being (Parfit 1984 chapter 19). More dramatically, the
principle also implies that for a population consisting of just one
person leading a life at a very negative level of well-being, e.g., a
life of constant torture, there is another population which is better
even though it contains millions of lives at just a slightly less
negative level of well-being (Parfit 1984). That total well-being
should not matter when we are considering lives worth ending is hard
to accept. Moreover, average utilitarianism has implications very
similar to the Repugnant Conclusion (see Sikora 1975; Anglin
1977).


#### 2.1.2 Variable value principles



An attempt to produce a compromise between a total principle and an
average principle is provided by a variable value principle. The idea
behind this view is that the value of adding worthwhile lives to a
population varies with the number of already existing lives in such a
way that it has more value when the number of these lives is small
than when it is large (Hurka 1983, Ng 1989; Sider 1991). Taking this
view, Noah's obligation to procreate after the Deluge was much
stronger than our obligation today. Variable value principles are
sometimes called "compromise theories" since they can be
said to be a compromise between total and average utilitarianism (for
a version that is sensitive to more aspects regarding welfare, see
Temkin 1997, 2012). With small populations enjoying high welfare, a
variable value principle behaves like total utilitarianism and assigns
most of the value to the total sum of welfare. For large populations
with low welfare, the principle mimics average utilitarianism and
assigns most of the value to average welfare. This property is what
makes it possible to avoid the Repugnant Conclusion. If the value of
extra lives decreases asymptotically, then there may exist an upper
limit to the total value of a population (exactly as the sum of the
infinite series 1+1/2+1/4+ ... has the upper limit 2). As long as
population *A* in Fig. 1 has a total value above this limit this
population will be preferable no matter how populous the low quality
population *Z* is (Hurka 1983, Ng 1989; Sider 1991; Temkin 1997,
2012).



Depending on how precisely various different value principles are
worked out they have different implications, which critics have
regarded as devastating. For instance, on Ng's explication of
this view (Ng 1989) according to which the value of a population is
determined by the product of the average welfare and a concave
transformation of the number of lives, it follows that it can be
better to add people with negative welfare rather than positive
welfare to a population. More exactly, Ng's theory implies the
"Sadistic Conclusion" (Arrhenius 2000a): For any number of
lives with any negative welfare (e.g. tormented lives), there are
situations in which it would be better to add these lives rather than
some number of lives with positive welfare. Moreover, even if it might
be reasonable to hold that the value of extra lives with positive
welfare decreases asymptotically towards a limit, the analogous
assumption about lives with negative welfare isn't very
attractive. Hence, given the reasonable assumption that the negative
value of adding extra lives with negative welfare does not decrease
relatively to population size, a proportional expansion in the
population size can turn a good population into a bad one--a
version of the so-called "Absurd Conclusion" (Parfit
1984). A population of one million people enjoying very high positive
welfare and one person with negative welfare seems intuitively to be a
good population. However, since there is a limit to the positive value
of positive welfare but no limit to the negative value of negative
welfare, proportional expansions (two million lives with positive
welfare and two lives with negative welfare, three million lives with
positive welfare and three lives with negative welfare, and so forth)
will in the end yield a bad population.


#### 2.1.3 Critical level principles



Another way of modifying total utilitarianism is to introduce a
critical level (Kavka 1982, Parfit 1984; Locke 1984; Blackorby *et
al*. 1997, 2004, 2005; Broome 2004). As is the case with the
variable value view, a critical level view is based on a split between
prudential and moral value. However, in this case the split is even
more radical. The idea is that a person's life contributes
positively to the value of a population only if the quality of the
person's life is above a certain positive critical level. Below
this level the contributive value of a life is neutral (Kavka 1982),
negative (Blackorby *et al.* 1997, 2004, 2005; cf.
Feldman's theory below), or introduces incommensurability or
vagueness in the ordering of populations (Blackorby *et al.*
2005; Broome 2004; Rabinowicz 2009; cf. Parfit 2016), even though the
person leads a life worth living. In its simplest form, the critical
level view is a modified version of total utilitarianism. The
contributive value of a person's life is her welfare minus a
positive critical level. The value of a population is calculated by
summing these differences for all individuals in the population. The
critical level view thereby succeeds in avoiding the Repugnant
Conclusion. Assuming the critical level is higher than the individual
welfare levels in population *Z*, the Repugnant Conclusion is
blocked since the value of *Z* is negative, and thus worse than
*A*, according to the critical level view.



An obvious challenge to critical level thinking is to make clear what
constitutes the appropriate critical level. On the one hand, the level
has to be high enough to avoid versions of the Repugnant Conclusion;
on the other, the level has to be low enough not to rule out additions
of clearly good lives (for an attempted answer to this challenge see
Blackorby *et al.* 1997; Broome 2004). Critics have also been
sceptical to the idea that the addition of lives worth living (albeit
below the critical level) contribute negatively to the value of a
population. Finally, it has been shown that this view leads to the
Sadistic Conclusion (see above).


### 2.2 Questioning the way we can compare and measure welfare



The Repugnant Conclusion may seem to rely on a certain view about
welfare. It treats welfare on an additive scale, where low numbers, if
added to themselves often enough, must become larger than any initial
larger number. This is like the Archimedean property of the real
numbers: For any positive numbers *x* and *y*, there is
a natural number *n* such that *nx* is greater than
*y*. Any finite number of lives in population *A* can
therefore be outweighed by a sufficiently large number of lives in
*Z* because the gain in the quantity of lower values outweighs
the loss of certain higher values. However, some
theorists--including Parfit--have suggested that this
axiological assumption is mistaken. (Parfit 1986, 2016; Griffin 1986;
Rachels 2001; Crisp 1988, 1992; Glover 1977; Edwards 1979; Lemos 1993;
Skorupski 1999; Klint Jensen 1996; Portmore 1999; Riley 1993, 1999,
2008, 2009). The idea is that one type of good a can be superior
to another type of good b, in the sense that any amount of
a is better than any amount of b or that some amount of
a is better than any amount of b. Suppose that what happens
as we move down the alphabet from the high-quality population *A*
to the low-quality population *Z* is that the best things in life
are gradually lost. For instance, as Parfit has suggested, the first
step from *A* to *B* involves the loss of Mozart's
music; in the move from *B* to *C* Haydn's music is
lost; in the move to *D* Venice is destroyed; and so on down the
alphabet. All that is left in the final move to *Z* is
"muzak and potatoes". The claim is that the lives in the
beginning of the sequence involve goods that are superior to the goods
involved in the lives at the end of the sequence. The loss of the most
worthwhile things in life cannot be compensated for by any gain in the
quantity of muzak and potatoes. Consequently, whatever the number of
people in population *Z*, there will be less welfare, or less
valuable welfare, in this world as compared to population *A* and
thus the Repugnant Conclusion is blocked.



This suggested way of blocking the Repugnant Conclusion obviously
presupposes that the superiority view is justified in the first place
(for a recent effort, see Parfit 2016). However, even if this is the
case, critics have suggested that this view may still be consistent
with some versions of the Repugnant Conclusion (e.g., Ryberg 1996b).
Moreover, the superiority view has other implications that might be
hard to accept. Assume that there are days of different qualities and
that these can be arranged in a descending sequence of goodness or how
much they would contribute to the well-being of a life. It seems
plausible that there can be such a sequence where the difference in
quality of any two adjacent days in the sequence is marginal. For
example, consider two days of a life that only differ in respect to
one pin-prick in the left thumb. Assume now, as Parfit suggests, that
there are days of such quality that some number of these are better
than any number of days eating potatoes and listening to muzak. One
can then show (Arrhenius 2005; Klint Jensen 2008) that there must be
two types of days, call them a-days and b-days, such that
some number of a-days is better than any number of b-days
although the difference in quality between these days is only
marginal.


### 2.3 Counting welfare differently depending on temporal or modal features



Another approach to the problems in population ethics has been the
suggestion that the crux of the problem resides in an all too
"impersonal" morality and that the problems of population
ethics can be solved by a shift to a so-called
"person-affecting" morality (Narveson 1967, 1976, 1978;
Roberts 1998, 2002, 2004, 2007, 2011). This move has been especially
popular in the context of medical ethics where many of the problems of
population ethics are actualised. Examples are embryo or egg
selection, pre-implantation genetic testing, assisted reproduction
programs, abortion, to mention just a few. The idea behind this
approach is the contention--sometimes referred to as "the
person-affecting restriction" or simply "the
slogan"--that an outcome can only be better (or worse) than
another if it is better (or worse) for someone (Narveson 1967: Glover
1977; Temkin 1993a). If a quite strict interpretation of this
restriction is combined with the assumption that non-existence and
existence are incomparable in value for a person, we may derive a view
called *comparativism*: We should disregard the welfare of
uniquely realisable people, that is, people who only exist in one of
the compared outcomes (Heyd 1988; Bykvist 1998). A person-affecting
morality so understood deviates from impersonal morality in important
respects. If there is an overlap between the populations in *A*
and *Z*, then *A* is ranked as better than *Z* since
the people existing in both populations are worse off in *Z* as
compared to *A* and since we should disregard the welfare of
uniquely realisable people. However, if there are different people in
the involved populations, such as two future populations, then the two
populations are ranked as equally good or as incomparable in value,
which is not a very satisfactory solution to the Repugnant Conclusion.
Moreover, comparativism implies that any very huge loss in welfare for
uniquely realisable people is compensated by any very small gain for
non-uniquely realisable people. Less strict interpretations of the
person-affecting restriction and comparativism can to a certain extent
avoid these problems, but at the price of implying the Repugnant
Conclusion again (Arrhenius 2009a; Holtug 2004).



The comparativist interpretation of the distinction between
"impersonal" and "person-affecting" theories
is not the only one proposed in the literature. What the different
theories that have been proposed under the banner of a
person-affecting morality have in common, however, are that they are
welfarist theories that count people's welfare differently
depending on the temporal location or the modal features of their
lives. Apart from comparativists, we have *presentists* who
draw a distinction between presently existing people and non-existing
people (Narveson 1973; Heyd 1988); *necessitarians* who
distinguish between people who exist or will exist irrespective of how
we act and people whose existence is contingent on our choices (Singer
1993); and *actualists* who differentiate between people that
have existed, exist or who are going to exist in the actual world, on
the one hand, and people who haven't, don't, and
won't exist, on the other (Bigelow and Pargetter 1988; Warren
1978; Parson 2002; for a critical discussion of actualism, see Carlson
1995; Arrhenius 2000b; Bykvist 1998, 2007b; Hare 2007; Howard-Snyder
2008). These theories, apart from problems of their own, run into
problems analogous to the problems of comparativism discussed above.
For instance, presentism, in its strict guise according to which we
only take into account the welfare of presently existing people,
implies that any very small gain for present people outweighs any loss
for future people, irrespective of how big it is. Again, a less strict
interpretations of presentism (Dasgupta 1988, 1994) can to a certain
extent avoid this and related problems, but at the price of implying
the Repugnant Conclusion again.



Actually, it is unclear whether presentism, necessitarianism, or
actualism can escape any of the problems discussed above in connection
with "impersonal" theories, and in particular the
Repugnant Conclusion. For example, assume that *A* is a
population of present people (for example, the present people in
country *x*) enjoying very high welfare and that *B* is a
larger population of present people (for example, the present
population in country *y*) with very low welfare but with
higher total welfare than *A*. Which population is the better one
according to presentism? It all depends on which method the presentist
selects for determining better, worse and equally good in regard to
the welfare of present people. Since this case involves only present
people, all the problems discussed above will reappear in the search
of this method. Likewise for necessitarianism and actualism. Moreover,
the restriction might not help us avoid the Repugnant Conclusion but
rather imply it given some other attractive conditions (Arrhenius
2015).


### 2.4 Revising the notion of a life worth living



The above discussion of the Repugnant Conclusion presumes that there
are possible lives with a very high quality of life. However,
Christoph Fehige (1998) and David Benatar (2006) have suggested that
there are no lives enjoying positive welfare. Benatar claims that it
is always worse for a person to begin to exist than never to have
existed. According to Fehige, only frustrated preferences count, and
they count negatively, whereas satisfied preferences have no positive
value. These "Schopenhauerian" theories imply that there
are no possible lives with positive welfare. On the contrary, most
lives have negative welfare and the best possible lives only have
neutral welfare.



Would the truth of such a theory of welfare make the Repugnant
Conclusion acceptable? Yes in a way, since it would neutralise the
Repugnant Conclusion by making it an empty truth. If there are no
possible lives with a very high quality of life, then the Repugnant
Conclusion is vacuously true, since the antecedent--"[f]or
any possible population ... with a very high quality of
life"--is false of every possible population. Consequently,
total utilitarianism would only imply the Repugnant Conclusion in a
trivial and uninteresting sense.



However, the logic of Benatar's theory has been challenged
(Bradley 2010) and a theory of welfare that denies the possibility of
lives worth living is quite counter-intuitive (Ryberg 1996a).
Fehige's theory, for example, implies that a life of one year
with complete preference satisfaction has the same welfare as a
completely fulfilled life of a hundred years, and has higher welfare
than a life of a hundred years with all preferences but one satisfied.
Moreover, the last life is not worth living.


### 2.5 Rejecting transitivity



What makes the Repugnant Conclusion so perplexing is that strong
arguments can be given which apparently force one into accepting the
conclusion. In fact, several arguments to this effect--with
affinity to the mere addition reasoning outlined above--have been
presented (see e.g. Parfit 1986; Arrhenius 2000b; Kitcher 2000;
Tannsjo 2002; Rachels 2004). Roughly, the arguments share
the following structure: in comparison between three population
scenarios the second scenario is considered better than the first and
the third better than the second, leading to the conclusion that the
third scenario is better than the first. By iterated application of
this line of reasoning one ends up with the Repugnant Conclusion (that
*Z* is better than *A*). One of the more radical approaches
to such arguments has been to reject the transitivity of the relation
"better than" (or "equally as good as").
According to transitivity, if *p* is better than *q*,
and *q* is better than *r*, then *p* is better
than *r*. However, if transitivity of "better than"
is denied then the reasoning leading the Repugnant Conclusion is
blocked (Temkin 1987, 2012; Persson 2004; Rachels 2004).



One of the questions raised by this radical proposal is whether
arguments like the mere addition paradox themselves justify the
rejection of transitivity or whether further arguments are needed
since transitivity seems to be part of the meaning and logic of the
relation "better than" (Broome 2004). However, it has been
suggested that there are two "better than"-concepts, one
based on intrinsic value and one based on the stance that one ought to
take towards the evaluated objects (Arrhenius 2004; Rabinowicz 2012).
The former is transitive in virtue of its meaning whereas the latter
is non-transitive over different alternative sets, just like
"ought to be chosen". Moreover, Temkin (2012) argues that
it is the latter "better than"-concept which is the
important one for practical reasoning. This raises the question of the
more general implications of this proposal for morality and practical
reasoning and some worry that giving up the transitivity of
"better than" would demand a major revision of our notion
of practical reasoning (Temkin 1987, 2012). A transitive preference
ordering has usually been assumed as part of the definition of a
rational agent in economic and rational choice theory. For example, it
seems that an agent with a non-transitive preference ordering can be
exploited by a so-called 'money-pump' (see Section 5.1 of
the entry on the
 philosophy of economics).
 The main problem with non-transitive value orderings in moral theory,
however, is that such an ordering cannot form the basis of a
satisfactory answer to the question of what one ought to choose.
Coupled with the standard formulation of consequentialism (an action
is right if and only if its outcome is at least as good as the
outcomes of all the alternative actions, see the entry on
 consequentialism),
 for example, we get the counterintuitive result that no action is
right in the mere addition paradox. Moreover, it has been shown that
the mere addition argument and the like can be reconstructed on the
normative level, in terms of what one ought to choose, without an
appeal to transitivity (Arrhenius 2004). Instead of an non-transitive
ordering of populations, one gets a situation in which all of the
available actions are forbidden, i.e., a moral dilemma. Hence, it
doesn't look like we can exorcise the paradoxes of population
ethics by giving up some formal condition like the transitivity of
"better than".


### 2.6 Appeal to other values



Fred Feldman has proposed a desert-adjusted version of utilitarianism,
'justicism' which he claims avoids the Repugnant
Conclusion (Feldman 1997). In justicism, the value of an episode of
pleasure is determined not only by the hedonic level but also by the
recipient's desert level. Feldman's proposal is that there
is some level of happiness that people deserve merely in virtue of
being people. He assumes that this level corresponds to 100 units of
pleasure and that people with very low welfare enjoy only one unit of
pleasure. He suggests that the life of a person who deserves 100 units
of pleasure and receives exactly that amount of pleasure has an
intrinsic value of 200, whereas the life of a person deserving 100
units but who only receives one unit of pleasure has an intrinsic
value of [?]49. It follows that any population consisting of
people with very low welfare and desert level 100 has negative value,
whereas any population with very high welfare has positive value.
Consequently, it seems as if justicism avoids the Repugnant
Conclusion. Moreover, the intuition behind Feldman's explanation
of the unacceptability of the Repugnant Conclusion--that there is
some level of welfare that people deserve merely in virtue of being
people--is compelling and probably widely shared and could give
support to ideas such as the critical level view discussed above.



It has been pointed out, however, that Feldman's reasoning
involves a questionable interpretation of the *ceteris paribus*
clause in the repugnant conclusion (Arrhenius 2003). He implicitly
assumes that the *ceteris paribus* clause is satisfied whenever
the people in the compared populations have the same desert level. A
more plausible reading of the *ceteris paribus* clause is that
it is satisfied if and only if the compared populations are (roughly)
equally good in regard to all other axiologically relevant aspects
apart from welfare, including their "desert value". Hence,
to satisfy the *ceteris paribus* clause, the compared
populations should be equally good in regard to desert, that is,
equally good in regard to the contributive value of the fit between
what people deserve and what they get. Given this interpretation of
the *ceteris paribus* clause, justicism does imply the
repugnant conclusion. If *A* and *Z* are equally good in
regard to desert, then justicism ranks *Z* as better than
*A* since *Z* has greater total well-being.



One might also try to solve the Mere Addition Paradox by an appeal to
egalitarian considerations. Consider population *A* and *A*+
in figure 2 again. According to a well-known principle, Maximin, we
should rank populations according to the welfare of the worst off: The
lower the welfare of the worst off, the worse the population. Maximin
ranks *A*+ as worse than *A* and thus stops the Mere
Addition Paradox in its first step. However, Maximin has a number of
other counterintuitive implications in population ethics since it
imposes a kind of dictatorship of the worst off according to which the
slightest gain in welfare for one of the worst of person outweighs a
very large loss for any number of better off people.



Still, *A*+ is clearly more unequal than *A*, and it
isn't unreasonable to claim that *A*+ is in this respect
worse than *A*. For example, according to Temkin (1993a, p. 200),
"the ultimate intuition underlying egalitarianism is that it is
bad ... for some to be worse off than others through no fault of
their own". Clearly, this is the case in *A*+ since the
extra people have not done anything to deserve to be worse off than
the better off people. Moreover, as suggested by Temkin, one might
hold the view that the greater the number of worst off, the worse the
inequality. (Temkin 1993a, p. 200-2). Consequently, since the
number of worse off extra people in the Mere Addition Paradox has to
be enormous to reach the *Z* population (see figure 1) by
redistribution of welfare, the inequality involved would be
considerable. Hence, there seems to be a prima facie case that
egalitarian concerns can solve the Mere Addition Paradox. 



The crucial question, however, is whether inequality makes *A*+
worse than *A* all things considered. Since *A*+ is clearly
better than *A* in respect to total welfare, the pluralist
egalitarian has to limit the importance of total welfare relative to
the importance of inequality to reach this judgement. There are some
promising ways the pluralist egalitarian could do this albeit it is as
yet unclear whether these proposals will stand up to further scrutiny.
More problematic for the egalitarian approach, however, is that the
Repugnant Conclusion can be derived from conditions to which an
egalitarian has no decisive objections (Tannsjo 2008;
Arrhenius 2009b). 


### 2.7 Accepting the impossibility of a satisfactory population ethics



Even though Parfit, despite his thorough investigations in *Reason
and Person*, did not succeed in finding the sought-after ethical
Theory X that would avoid the Repugnant Conclusion and other equally
unattractive conclusions, this did not seem to destroy his hopes that
such a theory could be found (Parfit 1984 p. 451). However, other
theorists have regarded the search for this theory as having more
gloomy prospects. This pessimism has been given a more formal content.
It has been held that it can be proven that there is no population
ethics that satisfies a set of apparently plausible adequacy
conditions on such a theory. In fact, several such proofs have been
suggested (Arrhenius 2000b, 2011). What such a theorem would show
about ethics is not quite clear. Arrhenius has suggested that an
impossibility theorem leaves us with three options: (1) to abandon
some of the conditions on which the theorem is based; (2) to become
moral sceptics; or (3) to try to explain away the significance of the
proofs--alternatives which do not invite an easy choice (cf.
Temkin 2012).


### 2.8 Accepting the Repugnant Conclusion



When confronted with the Repugnant Conclusion, many share the view
that the conclusion is highly counterintuitive. However, it has been
suggested that it is premature to conclude from this that the
conclusion is morally unacceptable. Two sorts of reasons can be given
in favor of the view that the conclusion should be accepted. According
to the first, while it is correct that the conclusion is
counterintuitive, there are nevertheless certain theoretical
considerations outweighing this intuition to such an extent that we
should accept it. The claim that no plausible theory can avoid the
Repugnant Conclusion or that the rejection of the conclusion would
force one into rejecting claims which it is hard to get
around--e.g. such as the premises of the Mere Addition
Paradox--may constitute such considerations (Tannsjo
2002; Holtug 2004; Huemer 2008). According to the second, the source
of the unacceptability of the conclusion is the fact that we are
deluded by our intuition (Sikora 1978, 2004; Mackie 1985;
Tannsjo 1992, 1998, 2002; Hare 1993; Ryberg 1996a, 2004).
Once we fully understand what the conclusion amounts to, we will cease
to find it counterintuitive. For instance, it might be suggested that
the repugnance, at least partly, is due to our limited apprehension of
large numbers (Tannsjo 2002; Broome 2004). We cannot imagine
what it would be like for there to exist billions upon billions of
people, and hence our intuition is not based on a sound picture of the
moral significance of population *Z* (for a critical discussion
of these kind of arguments, see Temkin 2012 and Pummer 2013).
Moreover, several theorists have suggested that our intuition is
misguided by a misapprehension of what it is like to lead a life in
*Z*, i.e., a life that is barely worth living. The idea is that
once we realize that such a life is not terrible but perhaps a life
not much different from a normal privileged one, the conclusion loses
its sting (Mackie 1985; Tannsjo 1992; Ryberg 1996a). Thus,
on both views, though population ethics may constitute a complicated
area of ethical research, it is at least devoid of what is
traditionally regarded as one of the cardinal challenges.



However, this conclusion might not be much of a comfort since there
are other impossibility results that do not rely on avoidance of the
Repugnant Conclusions as one of its adequacy condition but on
avoidance of the intuitively even more unacceptable Very Repugnant
Conclusion: For any perfectly equal population with very high positive
welfare, and for any number of lives with any very negative welfare,
there is a population consisting of the lives with negative welfare
and lives with very low positive welfare which is better than the high
welfare population, other things being equal (Arrhenius 2011). This
conclusion seems much harder to accept than the Repugnant Conclusions.
Here we are comparing one population where everybody enjoys very high
quality of life with another population where people either have very
low positive welfare or very negative welfare (any level of horrible
suffering). Even if we were to accept the Repugnant Conclusion, we are
not forced to accept the Very Repugnant Conclusion. We might, for
example, accept the former but not the latter because we give greater
moral weight to suffering than to happiness. Hence, to exorcise the
paradoxes of population ethics, it is not sufficient to show that our
intuition about the Repugnant Conclusion is wrong or epistemically
unreliable. We also have to show that this is true of the Very
Repugnant Conclusion, which might strike many as quite a tall
order.