Is the repugnant conclusion repugnant?

Abstract

In part four of Reasons and Persons Derek Parfit illuminates so many problems concerning population ethics that moral philosophers are sure to be kept busy devising solutions for some time to come. One of the problems which has attracted most attention is the one which Parfit named the Repugnant Conclusion. Recent discussion on the Repugnant Conclusion has mainly been concerned with the problem of developing a theory of beneficence - Theory X, as Parfit calls it - which does not lead to the Repugnant Conclusion, and which succeeds in meeting the further minimal requirements for adequacy Parfit outlines.’ Several theories have been suggested, but no convincing theory has yet been found. Another important part of this discussion has been concerned with the axiological presuppositions on which the Repugnant Conclusion is based. It has been suggested that the Repugnant Conclusion is built on an insufficient theory of values and that, when a correct axiology is employed, consequentialist moral principles do not lead to the Repugnant Conclusion after all. This suggestion has not been thoroughly developed, but whether the alternative axiological theories actually succeed in blocking versions of the Repugnant Conclusion is, as I have argued elsewhere (Ryberg 1996), very dubious. Though a few philosophers have suggested that the Repugnant Conclusion does not deserve its name in the first place (Sikora 1978, Attfield 1983), a remarkably small part of recent discussion has been concerned with what seems to be the crux of the matter, namely, whether the Repugnant Conclusion is repugnant at all. In the present paper this question will be discussed. It will be suggested - and this will probably strike many as highly controversial - that the Repugnant Conclusion is not an unacceptable conclusion after all.