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    Sum-utilitarianism implies the repugnant conclusion: a su... — Carmelics
    Home/Consequentialism
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    Sum-utilitarianism implies the repugnant conclusion: a sufficiently large but unhappy population is preferable to a small and happy one.

    Consequentialism
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

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    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Sum-utilitarianism defines welfare aggregation as strictly additive, with no diminishing weight assigned to additional lives at lower utility levels.
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    • 2.Parfit's Mere Addition Paradox demonstrates that each incremental step toward a larger, worse-off population appears locally rational under additive aggregation.
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    • 3.If local transitivity holds across all such steps, the global comparison between Z-world and A-world is entailed by the theory's own internal logic.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Bentham's original felicific calculus assigns moral weight to the sum of pleasures minus pains, treating each sentient subject as counting for one and none for more than one.
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    • 2.This principle of equal counting entails that a billion lives at barely-positive utility mathematically dominate a million lives at high utility when the aggregate difference is positive.
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    • 3.No structural feature of classical sum-utilitarianism permits a lexical or threshold-based override that would block this calculation without abandoning the theory's foundational commitments.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Sum-utilitarianism aggregates utilities across all individuals to compute social welfare.
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    • 2.A sufficiently large population with very low but positive utilities can produce a greater aggregate utility than a small population with high utilities.
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    Consequentialism

    Related

    A sufficiently large population with very low but positive utilities can produce...Bentham's original felicific calculus assigns moral weight to the sum of pleasur...If local transitivity holds across all such steps, the global comparison between...No structural feature of classical sum-utilitarianism permits a lexical or thres...
    +4 moreShow less
    Parfit's Mere Addition Paradox demonstrates that each incremental step toward a ...Sum-utilitarianism aggregates utilities across all individuals to compute social...Sum-utilitarianism defines welfare aggregation as strictly additive, with no dim...This principle of equal counting entails that a billion lives at barely-positive...

    Similar

    Average utilitarianism is Malthusian: it prefers a happier population ...93%Average utilitarianism evaluates populations by mean utility rather th...83%A smaller population with higher average utility scores better under a...82%Average utilitarianism assigns negative value to individuals whose uti...82%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: economic-justice
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    A third development worth mentioning has to do with population ethics. Sum-utilitarianism appears to be overly populationist, since it implies the “repugnant conclusion” (Parfit 1984) that we should aim for an unhappy but sufficiently large population in preference to a small and happy one. Conversely, average utilitarianism is “Malthusian”, preferring a happier population, no matter how small, to a less happy one, no matter how large. Here again there is an interesting tension, namely, between
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit