the repugnant sadistic conclusion of total utilitarianism
Note that total utilitarianism does not lead to what is known as the “sadistic conclusion”. This conclusion was originally introduced by Arrhenius, and results when adding a number of people each with net negative welfare to a population is better than adding some (usually larger) number of people each with net positive welfare to that population.
Given what you say in the rest of the paragraph, I think by ‘repugnant sadistic conclusion’ you mean what Arrhenius calls the ‘very repugnant conclusion’, which is very different from the sadistic conclusion. (Personally, I think the sadistic conclusion is a much more serious problem than the repugnant conclusion or even the very repugnant conclusion, so it’s important to be clear about which of these conditions is implied by total utilitarianism.)
To someone who already rejects Mere Addition, the Sadistic Conclusion is only a small cost, since if it’s bad to add some lives with (seemingly) positive welfare, then it’s a small step to accept that it can sometimes be worse to add lives with negative welfare over lives with positive welfare. The Very Sadistic Conclusion can be avoided by being very prioritarian, but not necessarily lexically prioritarian (at the cost of separability/independence without lexicality).
To someone who already rejects Mere Addition, the Sadistic Conclusion is only a small cost, since if it’s bad to add some lives with (seemingly) positive welfare, then it’s a small step to accept that it can sometimes be worse to add lives with negative welfare over lives with positive welfare.
The question is whether one should accept some variety of CU or NU antecedently of any theoretical commitments to either. Naturally, if one is already committed to some aspects of NU, committing to further aspects of it will incur a relatively smaller cost, but that’s only because the remaining costs have already been incurred.
Note that total utilitarianism does not lead to what is known as the “sadistic conclusion”. This conclusion was originally introduced by Arrhenius, and results when adding a number of people each with net negative welfare to a population is better than adding some (usually larger) number of people each with net positive welfare to that population.
Given what you say in the rest of the paragraph, I think by ‘repugnant sadistic conclusion’ you mean what Arrhenius calls the ‘very repugnant conclusion’, which is very different from the sadistic conclusion. (Personally, I think the sadistic conclusion is a much more serious problem than the repugnant conclusion or even the very repugnant conclusion, so it’s important to be clear about which of these conditions is implied by total utilitarianism.)
To someone who already rejects Mere Addition, the Sadistic Conclusion is only a small cost, since if it’s bad to add some lives with (seemingly) positive welfare, then it’s a small step to accept that it can sometimes be worse to add lives with negative welfare over lives with positive welfare. The Very Sadistic Conclusion can be avoided by being very prioritarian, but not necessarily lexically prioritarian (at the cost of separability/independence without lexicality).
The question is whether one should accept some variety of CU or NU antecedently of any theoretical commitments to either. Naturally, if one is already committed to some aspects of NU, committing to further aspects of it will incur a relatively smaller cost, but that’s only because the remaining costs have already been incurred.