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The Repugnant Conclusion: an Assessment and Critique of Utilitarianism As Applied To The Repugnant Conclusion: An Assessment and Critique of Utilitarianism as Applied to Future Populations A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Andrew Ryan Douglas Stauffer August 2012 © 2012 Andrew Ryan Douglas Stauffer. All Rights Reserved. 2 This thesis titled The Repugnant Conclusion: An Assessment and Critique of Utilitarianism as Applied to Future Population by ANDREW RYAN DOUGLAS STAUFFER has been approved for the Department of Philosophy and the College of Arts and Sciences by Alyssa R. Bernstein Associate Professor of Philosophy Howard Dewald Interim Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3 ABSTRACT STAUFFER, ANDREW RYAN DOUGLAS, M.A., August 2012, Philosophy The Repugnant Conclusion: An Assessment and Critique of Utilitarianism as Applied to Future Populations Director of Thesis: Alyssa R. Bernstein The Repugnant Conclusion is a problem for utilitarianism put forward by Derek Parfit that addresses population size and future persons. For any population made up of happy individuals, there is a much larger population made up of barely happy individuals. On total utilitarianism, the latter population is better than the former population, so long as the latter has greater total utility. In this thesis I examine and critique three responses to Parfit’s problem and argue that average utilitarianism solves the problem. First, I examine Tännsjö’s solution to the problem, which is to accept it. Second, I investigate Wolf’s negative utilitarianism. Third, I consider and defend on behalf of the utilitarian Neumann’s average utilitarian response. Last, I give non-utilitarian arguments for rejecting average utilitarianism, focusing on reproductive rights. Approved: _____________________________________________________________ Alyssa R. Bernstein. Associate Professor of Philosophy 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to give special thanks to my thesis committee members which include Dr. Bernstein, Dr. Lebar, and Dr. Carson, the professors in the department of philosophy, and especially my fellow graduate students. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………....3 Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………....4 List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………..6 Chapter I: Introduction: The Repugnant Conclusion……………………………………...7 Solutions…………………………………………………………………………10 Chapter II: Tännsjö’s Acceptance of the Repugnant Conclusion………………………..11 Tännsjö…………………………………………………………………………...11 The Actual Value of Our Actual Lives…………………………………………..16 Objections………………………………………………………………………..17 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….23 Chapter III: Wolf………………………………………………………………………...24 Popper, Obligation, and Beneficence…………………………………………....28 Popperian Consequentialism and the Repugnant Conclusion…………………...30 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….34 Chapter IV: Average Utilitarianism……………………………………………………...35 Parfit on Average Utilitarianism…………………………………………………36 Neumann on Average Utilitarianism………………………………………….....38 Hurka and Anglin on Average Utilitarianism…………………………………....43 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….47 Chapter V: Non-Utilitarian Reasons for Rejecting Average Utilitarianism ......................49 Unacceptable Conclusions .....................................................................................49 Sidgwick ................................................................................................................51 Brink ......................................................................................................................55 Conclusion .........................................................................................................................60 Works Cited .......................................................................................................................61 6 LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure I: Populations A and B ..........................................................................................7 Figure II: Populations A and Z... ......................................................................................9 Figure III: Killing and Utility Levels ..............................................................................39 7 CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION: THE REPUGNANT CONCLUSION In Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit argues that total utilitarianism, the view that “the best outcome is the one in which there would be the greatest quantity of happiness— the greatest net sum of happiness minus misery,”1 leads to what he calls the Repugnant Conclusion. This is, “for any possible population of at least 10 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.”2 Parfit explains the Repugnant Conclusion in detail. In Fig. I: Populations A and B below, Parfit compares “the outcomes of two rates of population growth.”3 These are two possible future populations. Figure I: Populations A and B 1 Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons. (New York: Oxford UP, 1984) 387. 2 Ibid. 388 3 Ibid. 385 8 The quality of life (or how well off the population is) is shown vertically and the number of people in the population is shown as the width of each block. In Fig. I, A has half as large a population as B, but the population as a whole is better off, on average. When Parfit writes of the people in B being less well off than people in A, he means that “[t]here might be worse housing, overcrowded schools, more pollution, less unspoilt countryside, fewer opportunities, and a smaller share per person of various other kinds of resources”.4 This refers, loosely, to “the quality of life”. Which population should a utilitarian try to bring about or favor? In one way, A would be better than B. This conforms to the moral intuitions of most people. It would be better for the individuals in population A since they would all be better off. This is implied by the hedonistic version of the impersonal average principle, the view that “the best outcome is the one in which there is the greatest average net sum of happiness, per life lived.”5 Nonetheless, Parfit and others quickly dismiss average utilitarianism, for reasons to be given below, in favor of total utilitarianism. However, this leads to the Repugnant Conclusion. According to total utilitarianism, population B in Fig. I would be better than population A. And another slightly larger population, C (not illustrated), containing people with lives slightly less worth living, would be better than B. This reasoning would continue until we reach a population Z that is very large and is made up of individuals whose lives are barely worth living. Under total utilitarianism, Z would be 4 Derek Parfit. “Overpopulation and the Quality of Life,” in The Repugnant Conclusion: Essays on Population Ethics, ed. Jesper Ryberg and Torbjörn Tännsjö. (n.p. Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2004), 7. 5 Derek Parfit. Reasons and Persons. (New York: Oxford UP, 1984), 386. 9 better than A. This is, essentially, the Repugnant Conclusion6 and is illustrated in Fig. II: Populations A and Z below.7 Figure II: Populations A and Z The repugnancy of this conclusion arises from the idea that an immensely large population made up of individuals with lives that are barely worth living (Z) is better than a much smaller population made up of individuals with lives very much worth living (A). Parfit describes the Z-lives as “painless but drab.”8 He writes, There is nothing bad in these lives; but there is little happiness, and little else that is good. The people in Z never suffer; but all they have is muzak and potatoes. Though there is little happiness in each life in Z, because there are so many of 6 In The Methods of Ethics, Henry Sidgwick takes a similar route as Parfit regarding population. He writes, “the point up to which, on Utilitarian principles, population ought to be encouraged to increase, is not that at which average happiness is the greatest possible … but that at which … happiness reaches its maximum.” Henry Sidgwick. The Methods of Ethics. Hackett, 1981. 415-416. 7 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The Repugnant Conclusion,” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/ (accessed June 1, 2011). (I have added the title, ‘Populations A and Z’ to this figure.) 8 Derek Parfit. “Overpopulation and the Quality of Life,” in The Repugnant Conclusion: Essays on Population Ethics, ed. Jesper Ryberg and Torbjörn Tännsjö. (n.p. Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2004), 9. 10 these lives Z is the outcome in which there would be the greatest total sum of happiness. Similarly, Z is the outcome in which there would be the greatest quantity of whatever makes life worth living.9 There are a number of reasons why the Repugnant Conclusion is repugnant. For example, the idea that we make the world a better place by adding more people instead of alleviating the suffering of those already alive is repugnant. This kind of calculation seems to misapply the utilitarian calculation of the value of individual lives. The focus is on the overall utility of the population as a whole and not on the value of individual lives that make up the population. In this essay I aim to 1.) clarify and respond to three possible utilitarian solutions to the Repugnant Conclusion, concluding that average utilitarianism is sufficient for solving the problem, and 2.) consider non-utilitarian arguments against the
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