Repugnant Conclusion and Expected Misery Argument - Killing Happy Animals: Explorations in Utilitarian Ethics - page 122

if character is taken as a direct evaluative focal point, either the only one
or one among others. 41
As we have seen, utilitarianism, including Prior Existence Utilitarianism,
can condemn the character of the couple that intends to have the miser-
able child. Hence, Prior Existence Utilitarianism can justify the common
sense idea that there is something morally wrong about the parents
having the child. Prior Existence Utilitarianism can point out that the
parents have a bad character if they intent to have this child and let it
suffer. In order to do this, one does not need to take into account the
welfare of this particular contingent child. Doing so, after all, is not
possible according to the Prior Existence View. Rather, one needs to
judge such a character on the basis of its general tendency to maximise
welfare. The idea is that a character that is compatible with letting such
a miserable child suffer is not a character that generally maximises
welfare. In that sense, Prior Existence Utilitarianism can subscribe to the
common sense judgements that those parents cannot be expected to be
good parents and should not have children at all.
Before I proceed by exploring whether Prior Existence Utilitarianism
can also support the idea that the project of having the child as such
is morally wrong, I will say a bit more about the above-mentioned
character evaluation. Evelien Pluhar has denied that Prior Existence
Utilitarianism can make such a character evaluation. I will argue that
this denial is mistaken.
First, Pluhar claims that a couple that would deliberately conceive the
Wretched Child believing that 'God makes no mistakes' could not be
accused of bad character. 42 Apparently, Pluhar thinks that the couple
could not be accused of having bad character in this case because they
do not have evil intentions. However, this argumentation is mistaken.
Utilitarianism does not determine the goodness of somebody's character
on the basis of his or her intentions. A character is evaluated in terms of
its general tendency to maximise welfare. A character that is compatible
with having the miserable child is not likely to generally lead to the best
consequences in terms of neutral welfare maximisation.
Secondly, Pluhar claims that even if the couple acted from monstrous
intentions, their character could not be dismissed on utilitarian grounds .
According to Pluhar, utilitarians 'can judge character traits to be good
or bad solely by reference to their consequences'. 43 Pluhar specifies:
'Specifically, one must ask how much harm (disutility) such traits are
apt to cause.' 44 Pluhar claims that for a utilitarian, it is only the action
that can be directly evaluated. Character can only be indirectly evalu-
ated. Thus, the evaluation of the character follows the evaluation of the