How Not to Avoid the Repugnant Conclusion

Bibliographic Data

ID23601422
AuthorsRuth Chang (0000-0002-2207-7792, University of Oxford, corresponding author)
Year2022
Pages15-37
Publication date2022-04-20
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueOxford Handbook of Population Ethics (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190907686.013.10
OpenAlexW4224324953
ISBN9780190907686
LanguageEN
References cited11

This chapter examines four seemingly promising ways to defuse continua or “spectra” arguments that exploit normative predicates like “better than,” “worse than,” “more choiceworthy,” “preferable to,” “best,” and the like in order to generate puzzles or paradoxes of normativity. The most famous of these arguments is Parfit’s continua argument in population ethics which leads to the Repugnant Conclusion, the claim that a world with a vast number of people with lives barely worth living is better than a world with a large number of people enjoying excellent lives. I argue that we cannot defuse such arguments by appeal to incommensurability, incomparability, indeterminacy, or, indeed, Parfit’s own suggested solution, lexical imprecision. If we are to find a solution to continua arguments, we must look elsewhere.

Appeal · Argument (complex analysis) · Economics · Epistemology · Exploit · Indeterminacy (philosophy) · Normative · Order (exchange) · Political science · Population · Sociology · Computer Science · Law · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics

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