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Repug­nant conclusion

TagLast edit: 8 Aug 2022 20:00 UTC by Pablo

The Repugnant Conclusion is the implication, generated by a number of theories in population ethics, that an outcome with sufficiently many people with lives just barely worth living is better than an outcome with arbitrarily many people each arbitrarily well off. Derek Parfit, who first brought the Repugnant Conclusion to the attention of contemporary philosophers, stated it informally as follows: “For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better even though its members have lives that are barely worth living.”[1]

Further reading

Arrhenius, Gustaf, Jesper Ryberg & Torbjörn Tännsjö (2006) The repugnant conclusion, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, March (updated March 2017).

Blackorby, Charles, Walter Bossert & David Donaldson (2003) The axiomatic approach to population ethics, Politics, Philosophy & Economics, vol. 2, pp. 342–381.

Parfit, Derek (1984) Reasons and Persons, Oxford: Clarendon Press, ch. 17.

Spears, Dean & Mark Budolfson (2021) Repugnant conclusions, Social Choice and Welfare., vol. 57, pp. 567–588.

Zuber, Stéphane et al. (2021) What should we agree on about the repugnant conclusion?, Utilitas, pp. 1–5.

Related entries

population ethics | total view

  1. ^

    Parfit, Derek (1984) Reasons and Persons, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 388.

Min­i­mal­ist ex­tended very re­pug­nant con­clu­sions are the least repugnant

Teo Ajantaival24 Oct 2022 9:46 UTC
74 points
0 comments19 min readEA link

Spears & Bu­dolf­son, ‘Repug­nant con­clu­sions’

Pablo4 Apr 2021 16:09 UTC
60 points
14 comments1 min readEA link
(doi.org)

[Question] Why do you find the Repug­nant Con­clu­sion re­pug­nant?

Will Bradshaw17 Dec 2021 10:00 UTC
58 points
60 comments1 min readEA link

Avoid­ing the Repug­nant Con­clu­sion is not nec­es­sary for pop­u­la­tion ethics: new many-au­thor col­lab­o­ra­tion.

deanspears14 Apr 2021 0:48 UTC
114 points
16 comments1 min readEA link
(deanspears.medium.com)

A longter­mist cri­tique of “The ex­pected value of ex­tinc­tion risk re­duc­tion is pos­i­tive”

Anthony DiGiovanni1 Jul 2021 21:01 UTC
125 points
10 comments32 min readEA link

The re­pug­nant con­clu­sion is not a prob­lem for the to­tal view

Luca Stocco6 Aug 2022 14:38 UTC
30 points
11 comments7 min readEA link

Con­fi­dence in the premises of the Repug­nant Con­clu­sion—re­sults from a small survey

Vasco Grilo8 Oct 2022 21:08 UTC
19 points
2 comments1 min readEA link

The Repug­nant Con­clu­sion Isn’t

AppliedDivinityStudies23 Aug 2022 8:09 UTC
54 points
24 comments2 min readEA link

What is your con­fi­dence in the premises of the Repug­nant Con­clu­sion?

Vasco Grilo20 Sep 2022 16:30 UTC
16 points
11 comments3 min readEA link

Crit­i­cal sum­mary of Meacham’s “Per­son-Affect­ing Views and Sat­u­rat­ing Coun­ter­part Re­la­tions”

Arden Koehler5 Jan 2021 2:18 UTC
55 points
30 comments11 min readEA link

The prob­lem of pos­si­ble pop­u­la­tions: an­i­mal farm­ing, sus­tain­abil­ity, ex­tinc­tion and the re­pug­nant conclusion

Stijn6 Jul 2021 13:17 UTC
7 points
9 comments16 min readEA link

Re­duc­ing ex­is­ten­tial risks or wild an­i­mal suffer­ing?

stijnbruers28 Oct 2018 9:51 UTC
3 points
24 comments11 min readEA link

Is the rea­son­ing of the Repug­nant Con­clu­sion valid?

Adithya21 Apr 2022 23:33 UTC
3 points
16 comments6 min readEA link

Con­di­tional in­ter­ests, asym­me­tries and EA priorities

MichaelStJules21 Oct 2019 6:13 UTC
22 points
23 comments14 min readEA link

The stan­dard per­son-af­fect­ing view doesn’t solve the Repug­nant Con­clu­sion.

RedStateBlueState23 Aug 2022 19:58 UTC
21 points
6 comments1 min readEA link

Suffer­ing-Fo­cused Ethics (SFE) FAQ

EdisonY16 Oct 2021 11:33 UTC
77 points
22 comments25 min readEA link

Min­i­mal­ist ax­iolo­gies and pos­i­tive lives

Teo Ajantaival13 Nov 2021 10:57 UTC
54 points
12 comments25 min readEA link

A “Solip­sis­tic” Repug­nant Conclusion

Ramiro21 Jul 2022 16:06 UTC
13 points
0 comments6 min readEA link

Ar­gu­ing for util­i­tar­i­anism

Omnizoid14 Dec 2021 19:31 UTC
3 points
2 comments65 min readEA link

[Question] If you could 2x the num­ber of fu­ture hu­mans by re­duc­ing the QALYs per per­son by half, would you choose to do it? Why or why not?

Parmest Roy14 Oct 2022 14:06 UTC
2 points
0 comments1 min readEA link

The weight of suffer­ing (An­dreas Mo­gensen)

Global Priorities Institute17 Aug 2023 8:21 UTC
48 points
1 comment2 min readEA link

Be­ware eth­i­cal sys­tems with­out re­pug­nant conclusions

Ezra Newman2 Aug 2022 16:47 UTC
12 points
2 comments1 min readEA link

SIA > SSA, part 4: In defense of the pre­sump­tu­ous philosopher

Joe_Carlsmith1 Oct 2021 7:00 UTC
8 points
0 comments22 min readEA link

An Is­sue with the Repug­nant Conclusion

matthewp31 Dec 2021 12:48 UTC
−1 points
6 comments2 min readEA link

Does Effec­tive Altru­ism Lead to the Altru­is­tic Repug­nant Con­clu­sion?

RandomEA27 Jul 2017 20:49 UTC
2 points
14 comments2 min readEA link