On the Repugnance of the Repugnant Conclusion

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 excrutiating agony, there is a worse world (Z-minus)

Most philosophers discuss the Repugnant Conclusion as an objection to total utilitarianism. But this focus on total utilitarianism seems to be one-sided. It conceals the important fact that other competing moral theories are also subject to the Repugnant Conclusion. The primary aim of this paper is to demonstrate that versions of egalitarianism are subject to the Repugnant Conclusion and other repugnant conclusions.

Danish Yearbook of Philosophy

Most philosophers discuss the Repugnant Conclusion as an objection to total utilitarianism. But this focus is one-sided. It conceals the important fact that other competing moral theories are also subject to the Repugnant Conclusion. The primary aim of this paper is to demonstrate that versions of egalitarianism are subject to the Repugnant Conclusion and other repugnant conclusions.

Philosophical studies, 2007

Sometimes people desire that their lives go badly, take pleasure in their lives going badly, or believe that their lives are going badly. As a result, some popular theories of welfare are paradoxical. I show that no attempt to defend those theories from the paradox fully succeeds.

Journal of Political Philosophy, 2022

In this article, I propose a novel characterization of sufficientarianism. I argue that sufficientarianism combines three claims: a priority claim that we have non-instrumental reasons to prioritize benefits in certain ranges over benefits in other ranges; a continuum claim that at least two of those ranges are on one continuum; and a deficiency claim that the lower a range on a continuum, the more priority benefits in that range have. This characterization of sufficientarianism sheds new light on two long-standing philosophical debates, namely about the distinctiveness of sufficientarianism as a distributive principle and about the common objections to sufficientarianism.

Derek Parfit has famously pointed out that ‘total’ utilitarian views, such as classical hedonistic utilitarianism, lead to the conclusion that, to each population of quite happy persons there corresponds a more extensive population with people living lives just worth living, which is (on the whole) better. In particular, for any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better, even though its members have lives that are barely worth living. This world is better if the sum total of well being is great enough, and it is great enough if only many enough sentient beings inhabit it. This conclusion has been considered by Parfit and others to be ‘repugnant’.

Themes from the Philosophy of John Broome, 2015

If a potential person would have a good life if he were to come into existence, can we coherently regard his coming into existence as better for him than his never coming into existence? And can we regard the situation in which he never comes into existence as worse for him? In this paper, we argue that both questions should be answered affirmatively. We also explain where prominent arguments to differing conclusions go wrong.

In a series of papers and books, David Benatar has argued that our lives, even if they seem to us to be good, are, in fact, bad. 1 Moreover, they are so bad that for all people, at all times, it would have been better for their own sake for them never to have come into existence at all. To prove his point, Benatar employs various arguments, in some of which he endorses much stricter standards for goodness or for the meaning of life than those that most people use. In this paper, I critique two groups of arguments in which Benatar defends his endorsement of stricter standards than those that are usually employed. In the first, Benatar asks us to evaluate our lives from the theoretical point of view of beings whose lives are better than ours. In the second, Benatar asks us to endorse standards according to which lives that do not affect the whole cosmos are insufficiently meaningful. I will examine each set of arguments in turn.

International Development and Human Aid, 2017

This chapter discusses the minimally good human life account of needs. On the minimally good human life account, people need whatever enables them to live minimally good human lives. Most perfectionists are concerned with what it is for a human life to be good as opposed to minimally good. The chapter suggests that whether or not one lives a minimally good human life is not a completely subjective matter. Rather, a minimally good human life is characteristically choice-worthy and a life in which one can make some significant choices. In making such choices one must be free to shape one's own life. Indeed, because humans are distinctively autonomous creatures, autonomy is characteristic of a minimally good human life.