Agriculture Reference
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So, the Repugnant Conclusion has been presented as a problem for
the Total View. Let us see whether the Total View can deal with this
alleged problem. Can we somehow explain that it is not unpalatable?
Must we accept it, fully aware of its unintended consequences, by lack of
any convincing alternative? Can we embrace it as far as value theory is
concerned, but try to keep it out of the deontic domain? Should we focus
on the deontic domain and try to find alternatives for the Impersonal
View? In what follows, I will elaborate a bit on those possible reactions
to the Repugnant Conclusion in order to get a more vivid understanding
of what it entails. My question here is not whether any intuitive judge-
ment about this implication of the Total View should be endorsed. My
aim is rather to figure out what the implication that has been described
as the Repugnant Conclusion actually is.
Several arguments have been brought forward for showing that the
Total View can avoid the Repugnant Conclusion, or that the Repugnant
Conclusion is not as repugnant as it may initially seem. One of those
arguments is directed against the criticism that the Total View requires the
expansion of the population. Against this criticism it is claimed that an
expansion of the population is only required if there is no more efficient
way to maximise welfare. Provided that there are equally good options of
raising the total amount of welfare, the Total View does not require the
addition of happy people. If other ways of raising overall welfare are more
efficient, proponents of the Total View will favour those other ways.
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Another argument by defenders of the Total View takes on the criti-
cism that the idea of raising overall happiness by making more happy
people is repugnant, because there are more urgent ways of raising
overall happiness. Indeed, raising overall happiness can also be achieved
by making existing people happier. In the present world, there are many
people that struggle with a very low quality of life. According to the
critics of the Total View, achieving a higher quality of life for those
people is more important than raising overall welfare by making more
happy people. The same holds for animals. Similarly to the above issue,
defenders of the Total View have argued that the Total View does not
require (and does not even allow) creating more people if there are more
efficient ways of maximising welfare.
Defenders of the Total View have argued that the position would not
lead to the Repugnant Conclusion. Given the present situation of the
world, it seems unlikely that adding more people would be the best
means of realising more happiness, or so they have argued. According to
some defenders of the Total View, it seems much more likely to achieve
more happiness by focusing our efforts on ameliorating the situation
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