I think you’re right to point out that we should be clear about exactly what’s repugnant about the repugnant conclusion. However, Ralph Bader’s answer (not sure I have a citation, I think it’s in his book manuscript) is that what’s objectionable about moving from world A (take as the current world) to world Z is that creating all those extra lives isn’t good for the new people, but it is bad for the current population, whose lives are made worse off. I share this intuition. So I think you can cast the repugnant conclusion as being about population ethics.
FWIW, I share your intuition that, in a fixed population, one should just maximise the average.
However, Ralph Bader’s answer (not sure I have a citation, I think it’s in his book manuscript) is that what’s objectionable about moving from world A (take as the current world) to world Z is that creating all those extra lives isn’t good for the new people, but it is bad for the current population, whose lives are made worse off.
I strongly agree with this comment. This is and has always been the rationale of basically everyone I ever talked to who endorses the asymmetry. It seems problematic how badly some totalists fail at the Ideological Turing test here. (And some people have continued to spread the questionable and overconfident account of what others find repugnant about the repugnant conclusion even after they had gotten pushback from individuals who found it repugnant for a different reason. At the very least, at that point intellectual honesty demands pointing out that people may find the repugnant conclusion repugnant for several/different reasons.)
I changed my mind a bit after reading the paper summary by Arden. Interestingly enough, it seems like one of Meacham’s motivations was precisely to avoid saying that we’re indifferent between newlycreating a small paradise vs. the large barely-worth-living population in the repugnant conclusion. Instead, he wants to say that creating the small paradise is better.
So, for Meacham specifically, avoiding the aggregation aspect of the repugnant conclusion seems a core motivation. However, I maintain that for many other people, the worst aspect of the repugnant conclusion is taking away from presently existing people for the dubious benefit of bringing more people into existence.
If we’re talking about creating new people, I think indifference between creating a small paradise vs. the large population in the repugnant conclusion seems like an intuitive stance to me.
Here, Meacham could say: But for some of the people in the larger population, there are counterparts who could have been created as extremely happy. You had the option to make them really happy, but you didn’t. Why did you do that?
In reply, I might say: Well, creating them as extremely happy people in the small paradise was never “positively morally good,” anyway. So why all the fuss? Yes, there’s a kind of “soft harm” that was being committed here. But arguably, creating more people is a “soft benefit.” At least according to some people’s way of counting. These things cancel out because ultimately, the main point of person-affecting principles is that we don’t really care about creating new people, as long as we avoid obviously bad things like creating people who suffer, or creating people who are worse off than they need to be.
I think you’re right to point out that we should be clear about exactly what’s repugnant about the repugnant conclusion. However, Ralph Bader’s answer (not sure I have a citation, I think it’s in his book manuscript) is that what’s objectionable about moving from world A (take as the current world) to world Z is that creating all those extra lives isn’t good for the new people, but it is bad for the current population, whose lives are made worse off. I share this intuition. So I think you can cast the repugnant conclusion as being about population ethics.
FWIW, I share your intuition that, in a fixed population, one should just maximise the average.
I strongly agree with this comment. This is and has always been the rationale of basically everyone I ever talked to who endorses the asymmetry. It seems problematic how badly some totalists fail at the Ideological Turing test here. (And some people have continued to spread the questionable and overconfident account of what others find repugnant about the repugnant conclusion even after they had gotten pushback from individuals who found it repugnant for a different reason. At the very least, at that point intellectual honesty demands pointing out that people may find the repugnant conclusion repugnant for several/different reasons.)
I changed my mind a bit after reading the paper summary by Arden. Interestingly enough, it seems like one of Meacham’s motivations was precisely to avoid saying that we’re indifferent between newly creating a small paradise vs. the large barely-worth-living population in the repugnant conclusion. Instead, he wants to say that creating the small paradise is better.
So, for Meacham specifically, avoiding the aggregation aspect of the repugnant conclusion seems a core motivation. However, I maintain that for many other people, the worst aspect of the repugnant conclusion is taking away from presently existing people for the dubious benefit of bringing more people into existence.
If we’re talking about creating new people, I think indifference between creating a small paradise vs. the large population in the repugnant conclusion seems like an intuitive stance to me.
Here, Meacham could say: But for some of the people in the larger population, there are counterparts who could have been created as extremely happy. You had the option to make them really happy, but you didn’t. Why did you do that?
In reply, I might say: Well, creating them as extremely happy people in the small paradise was never “positively morally good,” anyway. So why all the fuss? Yes, there’s a kind of “soft harm” that was being committed here. But arguably, creating more people is a “soft benefit.” At least according to some people’s way of counting. These things cancel out because ultimately, the main point of person-affecting principles is that we don’t really care about creating new people, as long as we avoid obviously bad things like creating people who suffer, or creating people who are worse off than they need to be.