I think the part that’s the most unacceptable about the repugnant conclusion is that you go from an initial paradise where all the people who exist are perfectly satisfied (in terms of both life goals and hedonics) to a state where there’s suffering and preference dissatisfaction.
I hesitate to exegete intuitions, but I’m not convinced this is the story for most. Parfit’s initial statement of the RP didn’t stipulate the initial population were ‘perfectly satisfied’ but that they ‘merely’ had a “very high quality of life” (cf.). Moreover, I don’t think most people find the RP much less unacceptable if the initial population merely enjoys very high quality of life versus perfect satisfaction.
I agree there’s some sort intuition that ‘very good’ should be qualitatively better than ‘barely better than nothing’, so one wants to resist being nickel-and-dimed into the latter (cf. critical level util, etc.). I also agree there’s person-affecting intuitions (although there’s natural moves like making the addition of A+ also increase the welfare of those originally in A, etc.)
Okay, I agree that going “from perfect to flawed” isn’t the core of the intuition.
Moreover, I don’t think most people find the RP much less unacceptable if the initial population merely enjoys very high quality of life versus perfect satisfaction.
This seems correct to me too.
I mostly wanted to point out that I’m pretty sure that it’s a strawman that the repugnant conclusion primarily targets anti-aggregationist intuitions. I suspect that people would also find the conclusion strange if it involved smaller numbers. When a family decides how many kids they have and they estimate that the average quality of life per person in the family (esp. with a lot of weights on the parents themselves) will be highest if they have two children, most people would find it strange to go for five children if that did best in terms of total welfare.
I hesitate to exegete intuitions, but I’m not convinced this is the story for most. Parfit’s initial statement of the RP didn’t stipulate the initial population were ‘perfectly satisfied’ but that they ‘merely’ had a “very high quality of life” (cf.). Moreover, I don’t think most people find the RP much less unacceptable if the initial population merely enjoys very high quality of life versus perfect satisfaction.
I agree there’s some sort intuition that ‘very good’ should be qualitatively better than ‘barely better than nothing’, so one wants to resist being nickel-and-dimed into the latter (cf. critical level util, etc.). I also agree there’s person-affecting intuitions (although there’s natural moves like making the addition of A+ also increase the welfare of those originally in A, etc.)
Okay, I agree that going “from perfect to flawed” isn’t the core of the intuition.
This seems correct to me too.
I mostly wanted to point out that I’m pretty sure that it’s a strawman that the repugnant conclusion primarily targets anti-aggregationist intuitions. I suspect that people would also find the conclusion strange if it involved smaller numbers. When a family decides how many kids they have and they estimate that the average quality of life per person in the family (esp. with a lot of weights on the parents themselves) will be highest if they have two children, most people would find it strange to go for five children if that did best in terms of total welfare.