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The Impossibility of a Satisfactory Population Ethics

In Hans Colonius & Ehtibar N. Dzhafarov (eds.), Descriptive and Normative Approaches to Human Behavior, Advanced Series on Mathematical Psychology (2011)

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  1. (3 other versions)The repugnant conclusion.Jesper Ryberg - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    In Derek Parfit's original formulation the Repugnant Conclusion is characterized 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” (Parfit 1984). The Repugnant Conclusion highlights a problem in an area of ethics which has become known as population ethics . The (...)
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  • Non-Archimedean population axiologies.Calvin Baker - forthcoming - Economics and Philosophy:1-22.
    Non-Archimedean population axiologies – also known as lexical views – claim (i) that a sufficient number of lives at a very high positive welfare level would be better than any number of lives at a very low positive welfare level and/or (ii) that a sufficient number of lives at a very low negative welfare level would be worse than any number of lives at a very high negative welfare level. Such axiologies are popular because they can avoid the (Negative) Repugnant (...)
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  • The repugnant conclusion can be avoided with moral intuitions intact: A lesson in order.Steven Kerr - manuscript
    The repugnant conclusion poses a conundrum in population ethics that has evaded satisfactory solution for four decades. In this article, I show that the repugnant conclusion can be avoided without sacrificing any moral intuitions. The resulting framework satisfies Parfit's requirements for `theory X'. This is achieved using non-Archimedean orders, which admit the possibility of pairs of goods for which no amount of one is better than a single unit of the other. I show that with minimal assumptions, not only are (...)
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  • Papers in Population Ethics.Elliott Thornley - 2023 - Dissertation, University of Oxford
    This thesis consists of a series of papers in population ethics: a subfield of normative ethics concerned with the distinctive issues that arise in cases where our actions can affect the identities or number of people of who ever exist. Each paper can be read independently of the others. In Chapter 1, I present a dilemma for Archimedean views in population axiology: roughly, those views on which adding enough good lives to a population can make that population better than any (...)
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  • Can Parfit’s Appeal to Incommensurabilities Block the Continuum Argument for the Repugnant Conclusion?Wlodek Rabinowicz - 2019 - In Paul Bowman & Katharina Berndt Rasmussen (eds.), Studies on Climate Ethics and Future Generations, Vol. 1. Institute for Futures Studies.
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  • (1 other version)Getting Personal: The Intuition of Neutrality Reinterpreted.Wlodek Rabinowicz - 2020 - In Paul Bowman & Katharina Berndt Rasmussen (eds.), Studies on Climate Ethics and Future Generations, Vol. 2. Institute for Futures Studies.
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  • A dilemma for lexical and Archimedean views in population axiology.Elliott Thornley - 2022 - Economics and Philosophy 38 (3):395-415.
    Lexical views in population axiology can avoid the Repugnant Conclusion without violating Transitivity or Separability. However, they imply a dilemma: either some good life is better than any number of slightly worse lives, or else the ‘at least as good as’ relation on populations is radically incomplete. In this paper, I argue that Archimedean views face an analogous dilemma. I thus conclude that the lexical dilemma gives us little reason to prefer Archimedean views. Even if we give up on lexicality, (...)
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  • Critical Levels, Critical Ranges, and Imprecise Exchange Rates in Population Axiology.Elliott Thornley - 2022 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 22 (3):382–414.
    According to Critical-Level Views in population axiology, an extra life improves a population only if that life’s welfare exceeds some fixed ‘critical level.’ An extra life at the critical level leaves the new population equally good as the original. According to Critical-Range Views, an extra life improves a population only if that life’s welfare exceeds some fixed ‘critical range.’ An extra life within the critical range leaves the new population incommensurable with the original. -/- In this paper, I sharpen some (...)
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  • The impossibility of a satisfactory population prospect axiology (independently of Finite Fine-Grainedness).Elliott Thornley - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (11):3671-3695.
    Arrhenius’s impossibility theorems purport to demonstrate that no population axiology can satisfy each of a small number of intuitively compelling adequacy conditions. However, it has recently been pointed out that each theorem depends on a dubious assumption: Finite Fine-Grainedness. This assumption states that there exists a finite sequence of slight welfare differences between any two welfare levels. Denying Finite Fine-Grainedness makes room for a lexical population axiology which satisfies all of the compelling adequacy conditions in each theorem. Therefore, Arrhenius’s theorems (...)
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  • Topics in Population Ethics.Teruji Thomas - 2016 - Dissertation, University of Oxford
    This thesis consists of several independent papers in population ethics. I begin in Chapter 1 by critiquing some well-known 'impossibility theorems', which purport to show there can be no intuitively satisfactory population axiology. I identify axiological vagueness as a promising way to escape or at least mitigate the effects of these theorems. In particular, in Chapter 2, I argue that certain of the impossibility theorems have little more dialectical force than sorites arguments do. From these negative arguments I move to (...)
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  • Consequentialism and Nonhuman Animals.Tyler John & Jeff Sebo - 2020 - In Douglas W. Portmore (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Consequentialism. New York, USA: Oup Usa. pp. 564-591.
    Consequentialism is thought to be in significant conflict with animal rights theory because it does not regard activities such as confinement, killing, and exploitation as in principle morally wrong. Proponents of the “Logic of the Larder” argue that consequentialism results in an implausibly pro-exploitation stance, permitting us to eat farmed animals with positive well- being to ensure future such animals exist. Proponents of the “Logic of the Logger” argue that consequentialism results in an implausibly anti-conservationist stance, permitting us to exterminate (...)
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  • Does Climate Change Policy Depend Importantly on Population Ethics? Deflationary Responses to the Challenges of Population Ethics for Public Policy.Mark Budolfson, Gustaf Arrhenius & Dean Spears - 2021 - In Budolfson Mark, McPherson Tristram & Plunkett David (eds.), Philosophy and Climate Change. Oxford University Press. pp. 111-136.
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  • (1 other version)Resources and the acceptability of the Repugnant Conclusion.Stephen J. Schmidt - forthcoming - Theoria. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science.
    Parfit’s Repugnant Conclusion argues, against intuition, that for any world A, another world Z with higher population and minimal well-being is better. That intuition is incorrect because the argument has not considered resources that support well-being. Z must have many more resources supporting well-being than A does. Z is repugnant because it spreads those resources among too many people; another world with Z’s resources and fewer people, if available, would be far superior. But Z is still better than A; it (...)
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  • Population Ethics and Different‐Number‐Based Imprecision.Gustaf Arrhenius - 2016 - Theoria 82 (2):166-181.
    Recently, in his Rolf Schock Prize Lecture, Derek Parfit has suggested a novel way of avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion by introducing what he calls “imprecision” in value comparisons. He suggests that in a range of important cases, populations of different sizes are only imprecisely comparable. Parfit suggests that this feature of value comparisons opens up a way of avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion without implying other counterintuitive conclusions, and thus solves one of the major challenges in ethics. In this article, I (...)
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  • A Fission Problem for Person-Affecting Views.Elliott Thornley - forthcoming - Ergo.
    On person-affecting views in population ethics, the moral import of a person’s welfare depends on that person’s temporal or modal status. These views typically imply that – all else equal – we’re never required to create extra people, or to act in ways that increase the probability of extra people coming into existence. -/- In this paper, I use Parfit-style fission cases to construct a dilemma for person-affecting views: either they forfeit their seeming-advantages and face fission analogues of the problems (...)
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  • What does incommensurability tell us about agency?Luke Elson - 2021 - In Henrik Andersson & Anders Herlitz (eds.), Value Incommensurability: Ethics, Risk. And Decision-Making. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 181-198.
    Ruth Chang and Joseph Raz have both drawn far-reaching consequences for agency from the phenomenon of incommensurability. After criticizing their arguments, I outline an alternative view: if incommensurability is vagueness, then there are no substantial implications for agency, except perhaps a limited form of naturalistic voluntarism if our reasons are provided by desires.
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  • Why the Non-Identity Problem Does Not Undermine our Obligations to the Future under Real-World Conditions.Johan Sandelin - 2019 - Philosophia 47 (3):851-863.
    When Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons, examined whether the Non-Identity Problem could be solved with the Impersonal Total Principle, he assumed perfect equality in the future population outcomes under his consideration. His thinking was that this assumption could not distort his reasoning, but would make it more simple and clear. He then reasoned that the best future population outcome, according to the Impersonal Total Principle, would be an enormous population, whose members have lives only barely worth living, as a (...)
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  • Incommensurability, the sequence argument, and the Pareto principle.Gustaf Arrhenius & H. Orri Stefánsson - 2024 - Philosophical Studies 181 (12):3395-3411.
    Parfit (Theoria 82:110–127, 2016) responded to the Sequence Argument for the Repugnant Conclusion by introducing imprecise equality. However, Parfit’s notion of imprecise equality lacked structure. Hájek and Rabinowicz (2022) improved on Parfit’s proposal in this regard, by introducing a notion of degrees of incommensurability. Although Hájek and Rabinowicz’s proposal is a step forward, and may help solve many paradoxes, it can only avoid the Repugnant Conclusion at great cost. First, there is a sequential argument for the Repugnant Conclusion that uses (...)
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  • Social choice ethics in artificial intelligence.Seth D. Baum - 2020 - AI and Society 35 (1):165-176.
    A major approach to the ethics of artificial intelligence is to use social choice, in which the AI is designed to act according to the aggregate views of society. This is found in the AI ethics of “coherent extrapolated volition” and “bottom–up ethics”. This paper shows that the normative basis of AI social choice ethics is weak due to the fact that there is no one single aggregate ethical view of society. Instead, the design of social choice AI faces three (...)
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  • Weak Superiority, Imprecise Equality and the Repugnant Conclusion.Karsten Klint Jensen - 2020 - Utilitas 32 (3):294-315.
    Derek Parfit defends the Imprecise Lexical View as a way to avoid the Repugnant Conclusion. Allowing for ‘imprecise equality’, Parfit argues, makes it possible to avoid some well-known problems for the Lexical View. It is demonstrated that the Lexical View has stronger implications than envisaged by Parfit; moreover, his assumption of Non-diminishing Marginal Value makes the Lexical View collapse into a much stronger view, which lets the two appear incompatible. Introducing imprecise equality does not address the latter problem. But it (...)
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  • Anonymity and Non-Identity Cases.Tomi Francis - 2021 - Analysis 81 (4):632-639.
    I argue for the principle of Anonymity, according to which two populations are equally good whenever they have the same anonymous distribution of wellbeing. I first show that, given transitivity of the at-least-as-good-as relation, Anonymity is entailed by the ``Non-Identity Principle'', according to which the consequence of bringing better rather than worse lives into existence is, all else equal, better. I then argue for the Non-Identity Principle on the basis that if it were false, it would follow that we fail (...)
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  • A new argument for moral error theory.Christopher Cowie - 2022 - Noûs 56 (2):276-294.
    Traditional arguments for moral error theory are based on identifying a problem with the metaphysics of moral properties. I provide a new argument that is based on the inconsistency of first‐order moral judgments. I illustrate this using impossibility results in population axiology.
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  • Group epistemic value.Jeffrey Dunn - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (1):65-92.
    Sometimes we are interested in how groups are doing epistemically in aggregate. For instance, we may want to know the epistemic impact of a change in school curriculum or the epistemic impact of abolishing peer review in the sciences. Being able to say something about how groups are doing epistemically is especially important if one is interested in pursuing a consequentialist approach to social epistemology of the sort championed by Goldman. According to this approach we evaluate social practices and institutions (...)
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  • The repugnant conclusion.Gustaf Arrhenius, Jesper Ryberg & Torbjörn Tännsjö - 2010 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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