On the Repugnance of the Repugnant Conclusion

Bibliographic Data

ID20142795
AuthorsThomas Søbirk Petersen (0000-0002-1955-8165, Roskilde University, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume72
Issue2
Pages126-137
Publication date2008-02-11
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTheoria (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0040-5825 • E-ISSN: 1755-2567
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1755-2567.2006.tb00949.x
OpenAlexW2049957548
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited15

The aim of this paper is to discuss the plausibility of a certain position in the philosophical literature within which the Repugnant Conclusion is treated, not as repugnant, but as an acceptable implication of the total welfare principle. I will confine myself to focus primarily on Törbjörn Tännsjö‘s presentation. First, I reconstruct Tännsjö‘s view concerning the repugnance of the RC in two arguments. The first argument is criticized for (a) addressing the wrong comparison, (b) relying on the controversial claim that the privileged people in our actual world only have lives barely worth living and (c) that Tännsjö‘s identification between Z-lives and privileged lives is restricted to certain versions of the notion ‘barely worth living’ - a restriction that weakens the force of the argument. The second argument is criticized because some of it premises entailed (b) and (d) for its implausible claim that non-imaginable outcomes cannot be compared

Argument (complex analysis) · Epistemology · Focus (optics) · Law and economics · Presentation (obstetrics) · Sociology · Medicine · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Theology and Philosophy of Evil

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