I’ll try to help you understand why (I think) some people feel the sting of the repugnant conclusion (RC), but why I think they are ultimately wrong to do so. I should say that I personally don’t find the repugnant conclusion repugnant so what I’m about to say might be completely missing the point. I am slightly stung by the “very repugnant conclusion”, but that might be for another time.
In short, I think some people find RC repugnant based on a misunderstanding of what a life “barely worth living” would mean in practice. I think most people imagine such a life to be quite “bad” on the whole, but I think this is a mistake.
Note that the vast majority of people on earth want to continue living. This would include the vast majority of people who live in extreme poverty or who are undergoing horrific abuse. It would also include people who constantly consider suicide to end their pain but never go through with it. In normal parlance we would say these people live “bad” lives. However, we might conclude that these people are living lives worth living if they don’t want their life to end / don’t choose to end their life. So my guess is people imagine “a life barely worth living” to be a pretty “bad” one. The actual wording of “a life barely worth living” is inherently negative in how it is framed anyway. So RC would amount to a load of people with pretty “bad” lives by intuitive standards, being better than a smaller number of people with absolutely amazing lives. Accepting RC would be like creating another Africa with all it’s poverty and hardship instead of creating another Norway with all it’s happiness. Or creating loads of people attending daily suicide support groups rather than a smaller number of people living the best lives we can imagine. Most people would find these repugnant things to do and I personally would feel the sting here.
The problem with the above reasoning becomes clear when we think more carefully about “a life barely worth living”. Firstly, to state what should be obvious, such a life is worth living by definition. So to be put off by the existence of such lives doesn’t really make logical sense, unless you deny the theoretical existence of positive lives in the first place. This doesn’t negate people’s feeling of repugnance, but I think it should cause them to question it.
Where does this leave us with people attending daily suicide support groups? Well my preferred way forward is to question if these people do in fact have lives worth living, or at least to question if we have any idea on the matter. As is pointed out by Dasgupta (2016), the idea that someone who wants to continue living must be living a life of positive welfare ignores the badness of death. It is certainly possible for someone to be living a life of negative welfare, but be reluctant to end it because the subjective badness of death exceeds the badness of continuing to live. Death is indeed a horrible prospect for most when you consider factors such as religious prohibition, fear of the process of dying, the thought that one would be betraying family and friends, the deep resistance to the idea of taking one’s own life that has been built into us through selection pressure would cause someone even in deep misery to balk, and the revelation of one’s misery to others when one wants it to remain undisclosed even after death.
In light of this Dasgupta puts forward the “creation test” as a way to determine the zero-level of wellbeing. What is the worst life that you would willingly create? Dasgupta says that should be the zero level. Most altruists wouldn’t create more people living in extreme poverty, or people with constant thoughts of suicide, implying these people probably live negative lives. I personally would only create a life that most of us would say is very good!
I’m not saying Dasgupta’s creation test is perfect—I’m undecided on how useful it is. This paper argues that we have no sufficiently clear sense of what a minimally good life is like. If this is indeed true, as the paper argues, the RC loses its probative force because we can not judge lives “barely worth living” as being “bad” as we don’t really have a clue.
So to sum up my rather lengthy response, I think that many people who think RC is repugnant assume that “lives barely worth living” are those we would say are “bad” in common parlance which can lead to an understandable feeling of repugnance. I think they are wrong—either “lives barely worth living” are much better than being “bad”, in which case RC loses repugnance, or we don’t know how good “lives barely worth living” are and RC doesn’t even get off the ground at all.
This is exactly my intuition. When I think about “lives barely worth living” I imagine someone who is constantly on the edge of suicide. Then I think, well that seems really bad to me, but who am I to say that that person’s life is not worth living? If I can’t look that person in the eye and say, “your life is not worth living” (which I almost certainly can’t do) , then how can I say that my world of “lives barely worth living” is made up of people with better lives than them?
Your paraphrasing of Dasgupta’s insights is helpful, and I think incorporating the negativity of death may alleviate some of my perceived Repugnancy of the aforementioned Conclusion.
While I appreciate you sharing your thoughts, I don’t think replying to a post asking people to talk about why they dislike the repugnant conclusion with a lengthy argument about why those people are making a basic mistake is really going to help me achieve my goal here.
I don’t want to litigate these intuitions here, I want to understand them. We can do the litigation elsewhere.
You say “I’d like to have a better understanding of the intuitions that lead people to seeing this as such a serious problem, and whether I’m missing something that might cause me to put more weight on these sorts of concerns” in which case I think my whole comment should be of relevance and I am confused by your pushback, unless of course you are only interested in the opinion of people who find RC repugnant in which case I apologise.
I am also interested in the intuitions of people who find the RC intuitively problematic, even if they ultimately feel it is less bad than the alternatives.
I’m not interested (here) in arguments about why people who do take serious issue with the RC are wrong, and I think spending significant time on those here is actively counterproductive to what I’m trying to achieve.
There’s an intermediate case of “asking people who report being bothered by the RC pointed questions” – this is good insofar as it comes from sincere curiosity and helps uncover more information about those intuitions, and bad insofar as it (deliberately or accidentally) makes those people feel attacked or forced to defend themselves. You’ve been responding to several other answers here in the latter kind of way, and I wish you’d stop.
OK it’s your thread and I will leave, despite only good intentions. I’m very surprised to have had this pushback. If anyone I have responded has felt attacked by me I apologise.
I am also interested in the intuitions of people who find the RC intuitively problematic, even if they ultimately feel it is less bad than the alternatives.
Below is the relevant text from my original comment. Feel free to ignore the rest of it.
Note that the vast majority of people on earth want to continue living. This would include the vast majority of people who live in extreme poverty or who are undergoing horrific abuse. It would also include people who constantly consider suicide to end their pain but never go through with it. In normal parlance we would say these people live “bad” lives. However, we might conclude that these people are living lives worth living if they don’t want their life to end / don’t choose to end their life. So my guess is people imagine “a life barely worth living” to be a pretty “bad” one. The actual wording of “a life barely worth living” is inherently negative in how it is framed anyway. So RC would amount to a load of people with pretty “bad” lives by intuitive standards, being better than a smaller number of people with absolutely amazing lives. Accepting RC would be like creating another Africa with all it’s poverty and hardship instead of creating another Norway with all it’s happiness. Or creating loads of people attending daily suicide support groups rather than a smaller number of people living the best lives we can imagine. Most people would find these repugnant things to do and I personally would feel the sting here.
Interesting suggestion! It sounds plausible that “barely worth living” might intuitively be mistaken as something more akin to ‘so bad, they’d almost want to kill themselves, i.e. might well have even net negative lives’ (which I think would be a poignant way to say what you write).
I’ll try to help you understand why (I think) some people feel the sting of the repugnant conclusion (RC), but why I think they are ultimately wrong to do so. I should say that I personally don’t find the repugnant conclusion repugnant so what I’m about to say might be completely missing the point. I am slightly stung by the “very repugnant conclusion”, but that might be for another time.
In short, I think some people find RC repugnant based on a misunderstanding of what a life “barely worth living” would mean in practice. I think most people imagine such a life to be quite “bad” on the whole, but I think this is a mistake.
Note that the vast majority of people on earth want to continue living. This would include the vast majority of people who live in extreme poverty or who are undergoing horrific abuse. It would also include people who constantly consider suicide to end their pain but never go through with it. In normal parlance we would say these people live “bad” lives. However, we might conclude that these people are living lives worth living if they don’t want their life to end / don’t choose to end their life. So my guess is people imagine “a life barely worth living” to be a pretty “bad” one. The actual wording of “a life barely worth living” is inherently negative in how it is framed anyway. So RC would amount to a load of people with pretty “bad” lives by intuitive standards, being better than a smaller number of people with absolutely amazing lives. Accepting RC would be like creating another Africa with all it’s poverty and hardship instead of creating another Norway with all it’s happiness. Or creating loads of people attending daily suicide support groups rather than a smaller number of people living the best lives we can imagine. Most people would find these repugnant things to do and I personally would feel the sting here.
The problem with the above reasoning becomes clear when we think more carefully about “a life barely worth living”. Firstly, to state what should be obvious, such a life is worth living by definition. So to be put off by the existence of such lives doesn’t really make logical sense, unless you deny the theoretical existence of positive lives in the first place. This doesn’t negate people’s feeling of repugnance, but I think it should cause them to question it.
Where does this leave us with people attending daily suicide support groups? Well my preferred way forward is to question if these people do in fact have lives worth living, or at least to question if we have any idea on the matter. As is pointed out by Dasgupta (2016), the idea that someone who wants to continue living must be living a life of positive welfare ignores the badness of death. It is certainly possible for someone to be living a life of negative welfare, but be reluctant to end it because the subjective badness of death exceeds the badness of continuing to live. Death is indeed a horrible prospect for most when you consider factors such as religious prohibition, fear of the process of dying, the thought that one would be betraying family and friends, the deep resistance to the idea of taking one’s own life that has been built into us through selection pressure would cause someone even in deep misery to balk, and the revelation of one’s misery to others when one wants it to remain undisclosed even after death.
In light of this Dasgupta puts forward the “creation test” as a way to determine the zero-level of wellbeing. What is the worst life that you would willingly create? Dasgupta says that should be the zero level. Most altruists wouldn’t create more people living in extreme poverty, or people with constant thoughts of suicide, implying these people probably live negative lives. I personally would only create a life that most of us would say is very good!
I’m not saying Dasgupta’s creation test is perfect—I’m undecided on how useful it is. This paper argues that we have no sufficiently clear sense of what a minimally good life is like. If this is indeed true, as the paper argues, the RC loses its probative force because we can not judge lives “barely worth living” as being “bad” as we don’t really have a clue.
So to sum up my rather lengthy response, I think that many people who think RC is repugnant assume that “lives barely worth living” are those we would say are “bad” in common parlance which can lead to an understandable feeling of repugnance. I think they are wrong—either “lives barely worth living” are much better than being “bad”, in which case RC loses repugnance, or we don’t know how good “lives barely worth living” are and RC doesn’t even get off the ground at all.
This is exactly my intuition. When I think about “lives barely worth living” I imagine someone who is constantly on the edge of suicide. Then I think, well that seems really bad to me, but who am I to say that that person’s life is not worth living? If I can’t look that person in the eye and say, “your life is not worth living” (which I almost certainly can’t do) , then how can I say that my world of “lives barely worth living” is made up of people with better lives than them?
Your paraphrasing of Dasgupta’s insights is helpful, and I think incorporating the negativity of death may alleviate some of my perceived Repugnancy of the aforementioned Conclusion.
While I appreciate you sharing your thoughts, I don’t think replying to a post asking people to talk about why they dislike the repugnant conclusion with a lengthy argument about why those people are making a basic mistake is really going to help me achieve my goal here.
I don’t want to litigate these intuitions here, I want to understand them. We can do the litigation elsewhere.
You say “I’d like to have a better understanding of the intuitions that lead people to seeing this as such a serious problem, and whether I’m missing something that might cause me to put more weight on these sorts of concerns” in which case I think my whole comment should be of relevance and I am confused by your pushback, unless of course you are only interested in the opinion of people who find RC repugnant in which case I apologise.
I am also interested in the intuitions of people who find the RC intuitively problematic, even if they ultimately feel it is less bad than the alternatives.
I’m not interested (here) in arguments about why people who do take serious issue with the RC are wrong, and I think spending significant time on those here is actively counterproductive to what I’m trying to achieve.
There’s an intermediate case of “asking people who report being bothered by the RC pointed questions” – this is good insofar as it comes from sincere curiosity and helps uncover more information about those intuitions, and bad insofar as it (deliberately or accidentally) makes those people feel attacked or forced to defend themselves. You’ve been responding to several other answers here in the latter kind of way, and I wish you’d stop.
OK it’s your thread and I will leave, despite only good intentions. I’m very surprised to have had this pushback. If anyone I have responded has felt attacked by me I apologise.
Below is the relevant text from my original comment. Feel free to ignore the rest of it.
Yep, I appreciated this part! I also agree that intuitions about the set point seem key here.
Interesting suggestion! It sounds plausible that “barely worth living” might intuitively be mistaken as something more akin to ‘so bad, they’d almost want to kill themselves, i.e. might well have even net negative lives’ (which I think would be a poignant way to say what you write).