- Authors: Dean Spears, Stéphane Zuber, Nikhil Venkatesh,Torbjörn Tännsjö, Christian Tarsney, H. Orri Stefánsson, Katie Steele, Jeff Sebo, Marcus Pivato, Toby Ord, Yew-Kwang Ng, Michal Masny, William MacAskill, Nicholas Lawson, Kevin Kuruc, Michelle Hutchinson, Johan E. Gustafsson, Hilary Greaves, Lisa Forsberg, Marc Fleurbaey, Diane Coffey, Susumu Cato, Clinton Castro, Tim Campbell, Mark Budolfson, John Broome, lexander Berger, Nick Beckstead, Geir B. Asheim
- Published in: Utilitas
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Abstract
The Repugnant Conclusion is an implication of some approaches to population ethics. It states, in Derek Parfit's original formulation,
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. (Parfit Reference Parfit1984: 388)
This conclusion has been the subject of several formal proofs of incompatibility in the literature (Ng Reference Ng1989; Arrhenius Reference Arrhenius2000, forthcoming) and has been an enduring focus of population ethics.
The Repugnant Conclusion served an important purpose in catalyzing and inspiring the pioneering stage of population ethics research. We believe, however, that the Repugnant Conclusion now receives too much focus. Avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion should no longer be the central goal driving population ethics research, despite its importance to the fundamental accomplishments of the existing literature.