Very repugnant conclusion
Within the field of population ethics, the very repugnant conclusion is a strengthened variant of the repugnant conclusion. It holds that, for any population experiencing very high levels of well-being, certain ethical frameworks—particularly total utilitarianism—may deem it preferable to have a vastly larger population in which most individuals have lives barely worth living, and some experience significant suffering. The total sum of well-being in such a world may outweigh that of the smaller, happier population, thereby rendering it the superior outcome under specific evaluative criteria.{{cite web |title=The Very Repugnant Conclusion |url=https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=110e2189a930e4de714b81db2c137b2548b9bcca |website=CiteseerX |accessdate=18 April 2025}}
This conclusion presents a more severe challenge to moral intuitions than the standard repugnant conclusion, as it appears to conflict with egalitarian and prioritarian values. In response, some philosophers advocate for revisions to prevailing ethical theories rather than accepting such counterintuitive implications.{{cite web |title=The Very Repugnant Conclusion |url=https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6vYDsoxwGQraeCJs6/the-very-repugnant-conclusion |website=LessWrong |author=Wei Dai |date=6 July 2023 |accessdate=18 April 2025}}
The repugnant conclusion
{{main|Repugnant conclusion}}
First articulated by philosopher Derek Parfit, the repugnant conclusion suggests that a very large population with lives barely worth living is better than a smaller population with a very high quality of life. This is because, according to some ethical theories, the sheer number of individuals in the larger population, even with their lower well-being, outweighs the higher well-being of the smaller population. This conclusion challenges traditional moral intuitions about the value of life and well-being.{{cite web |last=Arrhenius |first=Gustaf |title=The Repugnant Conclusion |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion/ |website=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |date=2021-09-21 |access-date=2025-04-18}}
The very repugnant conclusion
Building upon the repugnant conclusion, the very repugnant conclusion explicitly states that for any population with very high well-being, there exists a larger population with a significant number of individuals with negative well-being and many more with barely positive well-being that is still considered better. This idea further complicates the ethical landscape by introducing the possibility that a population with a mix of negative and barely positive well-being could be morally preferable to one with uniformly high well-being.
Ethical implications
The repugnant conclusion and its stronger version, the very repugnant conclusion, raise profound questions about how we should weigh the well-being of different individuals and populations. They challenge the notion that the quality of life is more important than the quantity of lives, suggesting that the sheer number of people in a population can outweigh the quality of their lives. This leads to a reevaluation of traditional moral intuitions and forces a deeper examination of what constitutes a good world.