Why the repugnant conclusion is inescapable

Abstract

By proving that all leading population axiologies imply the very repugnant conclusion, this paper argues that the repugnant conclusion should not be a decisive factor against any population-level ethical theory. The repugnant conclusion is often used to support the view that we should accept only population-level ethical theories that avoid the repugnant conclusion. However, this paper demonstrates that this is not a feasible requirement, as the very repugnant conclusion is implied by all leading population axiologies, including not only total utilitarianism but also averagism, Ng’s Theory X0, and indeed all axiologies in the population ethics literature. The paper extends these results to account for incomplete, intransitive, rank-dependent, person-affecting, and pluralist axiologies, using a more general characterization of repugnant scenarios and proving that the full range of these axiologies each imply an extended version of the repugnant conclusion. Ultimately, the paper argues that the repugnant conclusion is a problem for every population-level ethical theory, and so repugnance is not a special problem for any of the leading families of axiologies. – AI-generated abstract.