Yet in these cases, it is the lexicality, not the suffering focus, which is doing the work to avoid the counter-example. A total utilitarian could adopt lexicality in a similar way to avoid the (very/​) repugnant conclusion (e.g., lives in a ‘repugnant region’ between zero and some ‘barely worth living’ should be ‘counted as zero’ when weighing things up, save as a tie-breaker between equally-good worlds). [I’m not recommending this approach—lexicality also has formidable costs across the scales from its potential to escape population ethics counter-examples].
It seems to miss the mark to say it is an advantage for suffering-focused views to avoid the (v/​) repugnant conclusion, if the ‘suffering focus’ factor, taken alone, merely exchanges the (v/​) repugnant conclusion for something which looks even worse by the lights of common intuition; and where the resources that can be called upon to avoid either counter-example are shared between SF and ¬SF views.
I think the tools to avoid all three of the the Repugnant Conclusion, the Very Repugnant Conclusion and the Very Sadistic Conclusion (or the similar conclusion you described here) left available to someone who accepts Mere Addition (or Dominance Addition) are worse than those available to someone who rejects it.
Using lexicality as you describe seems much worse than the way a suffering-focused view would use it, since it means rejecting Non-Elitism, so that you would prioritize the interests of a better off individual over a worse off one in a one-on-one comparison. Some degree of prioritarianism is widely viewed as plausible, and I’d imagine almost no one would find rejecting Non-Elitism acceptable. Rejecting Non-Elitism without using lexicality (like Geometrism) isn’t much better, either. You can avoid this by giving up General Non-Extreme Priority (with or without lexicality) instead, and I wouldn’t count this against such a view compared to a suffering-focused one.
However, under a total order over populations, to avoid the RC, someone who accepts Mere Addition must reject Non-Antiegalitarianism and Minimal Inequality Aversion (or Egalitarian Dominance, which is even harder to reject). Rejecting them isn’t as bad as rejecting Non-Elitism, although I’m not yet aware of any theory which rejects them but accepts Non-Elitism. From this paper:
As mentioned above, Sider’s theory violates this principle. Sider rejects his own theory, however, just because it favours unequal distributions of welfare. See Sider (1991, p. 270, fn 10). Ng states that ‘Non-Antiegalitarianism is extremely compelling’. See Ng (1989, p. 239, fn 4). Blackorby, Bossert and Donaldson (1997, p. 210), hold that ‘weak inequality aversion is satisfied by all ethically attractive . . . principles’. Fehige (1998, p. 12), asks rhetorically ‘. . . if one world has more utility than the other and distributes it equally, whereas the other doesn’t, then how can it fail to be better?’. In personal communication, Parfit suggests that the Non-Anti-Egalitarianism Principle might not be convincing in cases where the quality of the good things in life are much worse in the perfectly equal population. We might assume, however, that the good things in life are of the same quality in the compared populations, but that in the perfectly equal population these things are equally distributed. Cf. the discussion of appeals to non-welfarist values in the last section.
And the general Non-Sadism condition is so close to Mere Addition itself that rejecting it (and accepting the Sadistic Conclusion) is not that great a cost to someone who already rejects Mere Addition, since they’ve already accepted that adding lives with what might be understood as positive welfare can be bad, and if it is bad, it’s small step to accept that it can sometimes be worse than adding a smaller number of lives of negative welfare.
Yet in these cases, it is the lexicality, not the suffering focus, which is doing the work to avoid the counter-example. A total utilitarian could adopt lexicality in a similar way to avoid the (very/​) repugnant conclusion (e.g., lives in a ‘repugnant region’ between zero and some ‘barely worth living’ should be ‘counted as zero’ when weighing things up, save as a tie-breaker between equally-good worlds). [I’m not recommending this approach—lexicality also has formidable costs across the scales from its potential to escape population ethics counter-examples].
It seems to miss the mark to say it is an advantage for suffering-focused views to avoid the (v/​) repugnant conclusion, if the ‘suffering focus’ factor, taken alone, merely exchanges the (v/​) repugnant conclusion for something which looks even worse by the lights of common intuition; and where the resources that can be called upon to avoid either counter-example are shared between SF and ¬SF views.
I think the tools to avoid all three of the the Repugnant Conclusion, the Very Repugnant Conclusion and the Very Sadistic Conclusion (or the similar conclusion you described here) left available to someone who accepts Mere Addition (or Dominance Addition) are worse than those available to someone who rejects it.
Using lexicality as you describe seems much worse than the way a suffering-focused view would use it, since it means rejecting Non-Elitism, so that you would prioritize the interests of a better off individual over a worse off one in a one-on-one comparison. Some degree of prioritarianism is widely viewed as plausible, and I’d imagine almost no one would find rejecting Non-Elitism acceptable. Rejecting Non-Elitism without using lexicality (like Geometrism) isn’t much better, either. You can avoid this by giving up General Non-Extreme Priority (with or without lexicality) instead, and I wouldn’t count this against such a view compared to a suffering-focused one.
However, under a total order over populations, to avoid the RC, someone who accepts Mere Addition must reject Non-Antiegalitarianism and Minimal Inequality Aversion (or Egalitarian Dominance, which is even harder to reject). Rejecting them isn’t as bad as rejecting Non-Elitism, although I’m not yet aware of any theory which rejects them but accepts Non-Elitism. From this paper:
And the general Non-Sadism condition is so close to Mere Addition itself that rejecting it (and accepting the Sadistic Conclusion) is not that great a cost to someone who already rejects Mere Addition, since they’ve already accepted that adding lives with what might be understood as positive welfare can be bad, and if it is bad, it’s small step to accept that it can sometimes be worse than adding a smaller number of lives of negative welfare.