IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/utilit/v33y2021i4p379-383_1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What Should We Agree on about the Repugnant Conclusion?

Author

Listed:
  • Zuber, Stéphane
  • Venkatesh, Nikhil
  • Tännsjö, Torbjörn
  • Tarsney, Christian
  • Stefánsson, H. Orri
  • Steele, Katie
  • Spears, Dean
  • Sebo, Jeff
  • Pivato, Marcus
  • Ord, Toby
  • Ng, Yew-Kwang
  • Masny, Michal
  • MacAskill, William
  • Lawson, Nicholas
  • Kuruc, Kevin
  • Hutchinson, Michelle
  • Gustafsson, Johan E.
  • Greaves, Hilary
  • Forsberg, Lisa
  • Fleurbaey, Marc
  • Coffey, Diane
  • Cato, Susumu
  • Castro, Clinton
  • Campbell, Tim
  • Budolfson, Mark
  • Broome, John
  • Berger, Alexander
  • Beckstead, Nick
  • Asheim, Geir B.

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 1984: 388)

Suggested Citation

  • Zuber, Stéphane & Venkatesh, Nikhil & Tännsjö, Torbjörn & Tarsney, Christian & Stefánsson, H. Orri & Steele, Katie & Spears, Dean & Sebo, Jeff & Pivato, Marcus & Ord, Toby & Ng, Yew-Kwang & Masny, Mic, 2021. "What Should We Agree on about the Repugnant Conclusion?," Utilitas, Cambridge University Press, vol. 33(4), pages 379-383, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:utilit:v:33:y:2021:i:4:p:379-383_1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S095382082100011X/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arrhenius, Gustaf, 2000. "An Impossibility Theorem for Welfarist Axiologies," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(2), pages 247-266, October.
    2. Marc Fleurbaey & Bertil Tungodden, 2010. "The tyranny of non-aggregation versus the tyranny of aggregation in social choices: a real dilemma," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 44(3), pages 399-414, September.
    3. Ng, Yew-Kwang, 1989. "What Should We Do About Future Generations?," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(2), pages 235-253, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Spears, Dean & Stefánsson, H. Orri, 2021. "Additively-separable and rank-discounted variable-population social welfare functions: A characterization," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    2. Walter Bossert & Susumu Cato & Kohei Kamaga, 2023. "Thresholds, critical levels, and generalized sufficientarian principles," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 75(4), pages 1099-1139, May.
    3. Cato, Susumu & Harada, Ko, 2023. "A new result on the impossibility of avoiding both the repugnant and sadistic conclusions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 232(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dean Spears & Mark Budolfson, 2021. "Repugnant conclusions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 57(3), pages 567-588, October.
    2. Spears, Dean & Budolfson, Mark, 2019. "Why Variable-Population Social Orderings Cannot Escape the Repugnant Conclusion: Proofs and Implications," IZA Discussion Papers 12668, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Walter Bossert & Susumu Cato & Kohei Kamaga, 2023. "Thresholds, critical levels, and generalized sufficientarian principles," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 75(4), pages 1099-1139, May.
    4. BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2006. "Population Ethics," Cahiers de recherche 2006-15, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
      • BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2006. "Population Ethics," Cahiers de recherche 14-2006, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    5. Geir B. Asheim & Stéphane Zuber, 2017. "Rank-discounting as a resolution to a dilemma in population ethics," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 17041, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    6. Stéphane Zuber, 2018. "Population-adjusted egalitarianism," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-01937766, HAL.
    7. Yves Arrighi & Mohammad Abu‐Zaineh & Bruno Ventelou, 2015. "To Count or Not to Count Deaths: Reranking Effects in Health Distribution Evaluation," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(2), pages 193-205, February.
    8. Christian Tarsney & Teruji Thomas, 2020. "Non-Additive Axiologies in Large Worlds," Papers 2010.06842, arXiv.org.
    9. Claudio Zoli, 2009. "Variable population welfare and poverty orderings satisfying replication properties," Working Papers 69/2009, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    10. BLACKORBY, Charles & BOSSERT, Walter & DONALDSON, David, 2002. "Critical-Level Population Principles and the Repugnant Conclusion," Cahiers de recherche 2002-15, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
    11. Marcus Pivato, 2020. "Rank-additive population ethics," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 69(4), pages 861-918, June.
    12. Franz, Nathan & Spears, Dean, 2020. "Mere Addition is equivalent to avoiding the Sadistic Conclusion in all plausible variable-population social orderings," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    13. Frank Cowell & Marc Fleurbaey & Bertil Tungodden, 2015. "The tyranny puzzle in social preferences: an empirical investigation," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 45(4), pages 765-792, December.
    14. , B. & ,, 2014. "Escaping the repugnant conclusion: rank-discounted utilitarianism with variable population," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 9(3), September.
    15. Charles Blackorby & Walter Bossert & David Donaldson, 2003. "The Axiomatic Approach to Population Ethics," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 2(3), pages 342-381, October.
    16. Fleurbaey, Marc & Zuber, Stéphane, 2015. "Discounting, risk and inequality: A general approach," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 34-49.
    17. Cato, Susumu & Harada, Ko, 2023. "A new result on the impossibility of avoiding both the repugnant and sadistic conclusions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 232(C).
    18. SAKAMOTO, Norihito, 2024. "A Class of Practical and Acceptable Social Welfare Orderings That Satisfy the Principles of Aggregation and Non-Aggregation : Reexamination of the Tyrannies of Aggregation and Non-Aggregation," RCNE Discussion Paper Series 12, Research Center for Normative Economics, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    19. de la Croix, David & Doepke, Matthias, 2021. "A soul’s view of the optimal population problem," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 98-108.
    20. Brown, Campbell, 2023. "Better than nothing: on defining the valence of a life," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 120063, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:utilit:v:33:y:2021:i:4:p:379-383_1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/uti .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.