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How Repugnant is the Repugnant Conclusion? A Reply to Huemer
Saul Smilansky
In his fascinating 'In Defence of Repugnance' (Huemer 2008), Michael Huemer seeks to defend the
Repugnant Conclusion, which (building upon Parfit 1984) he defines as follows:
(RC): For any world full of happy people, a world full of people whose lives were just barely
worth living would be better, provided that the latter world contained enough people.
(Huemer 2008: 899)
Huemer laments that despite the powerful arguments in its favour the Repugnant Conclusion is
almost universally despised and considered to be obviously unacceptable. He seeks to correct this,
marshalling a series both of theoretical and pragmatic arguments that, he hopes, might move the
philosophical community away from its overwhelming intuitive sense of repugnance. Of crucial
importance is Huemer's claim that the RC is, as he puts it, 'congenial in practice' (p.928). For, with all
the ingenuity of the argumentation that precedes it, it seems that it is on this last issue that the battle
for acceptance will be decided: unless Huemer succeeds in convincing us that a world operating in
accordance with the RC will be congenial, or at least minimally acceptable, he will not have
succeeded in defending the RC in the way he wishes. At most, we will be left with the widespread
philosophical feeling with which we begun, namely, that the RC is indeed fatally repugnant, and that
hence our task is merely to find what is wrong with the argument that leads to it.
I will argue that Huemer does not succeed in making the Repugnant Conclusion congenial.
He seems unduly optimistic even in terms of Total Utility, but the main problem is that he does not
seem to properly distinguish between two pertinent ideals, which I will call the ideal of Utility
Maximization (UM) and the ideal of Beneficiary Maximization (BM). The first seeks to maximize
overall utility, while the second seeks to maximize the number of people who will be around to
benefit from utility. Once we have this distinction in proper focus, we can see that Huemer's strongest
arguments support the latter. We ought to maximize the number of beneficiaries, people who are
carriers of utility, as long as their lives are even slightly worth living. And the reason is not even
Total Utility. Pace Huemer, we are led to repugnance in the fullness of dreadfulness. Some of
Huemer's arguments, indeed, seem unrelated to well-being: in that case, we could be led to the Even
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More Repugnant Conclusion, where the proviso blocking the descent into further repugnance,
according to which life must at least be "minimally worth living", would be abandoned.
Huemer's discussion here surrounds his figure 7:
FIGURE 7
Here is his analysis of the situation:
According to the Total Utility Principle, the optimum is the point where total utility is
greatest. This is shown as point P on the diagram. The total utility is the area of rectangle PO,
since this is equal to the population times the average utility. Q, on the other hand, represents
a crowded world with low positive welfare. The total utility of this world is the area of
rectangle QO, which is much smaller (in moving from P to Q, we lose the area of PR and gain
only the area of QS). (p.929)
Huemer seems to be led astray in his analysis of Total Utility by the geometry he has drawn. In the
graph things do indeed proceed according to his description. But this is merely because Q is placed
so close to O. If we pull Q over to our right by a few more inches, we will have a vertically short but
horizontally much longer rectangle QO. As long as that rectangle is sufficiently long, it will
encompass more space (representing more utility) than PR. Huemer claims that 'Given any plausible
view about the actual effects of population growth, the Total Utility Principle does not support such a
conclusion' [of an ever-increasing population] (p.929). The reason is that 'as the population increases,
further additions will start to have greater impacts on our average level of well-being, until eventually
we are so cramped and are subsisting on such bare resources that average welfare goes negative'
(ibid.). It is not clear to me what it would mean for average utility to go negative. If it means that
average utility declines, even steeply, this still would not lead to the result that Huemer requires. If
average welfare were an acceptable criterion, the Repugnant Conclusion would not have gotten off
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the ground in the first place. As we go on to increase the population, the rectangle will indeed begin
to lose in height (representing the decline in average utility), but as long as it gains enough in length
(the number of people), total utility may increase quite far in the direction of Z, a world of perfect
repugnance.1
But will the horizontal rectangle QO be large enough to give us a great deal of repugnance?
That is in part an empirical question (it is in part not empirical, because "repugnant" isn't), but there
is no reason, as far as I can see, for Huemer to be confident here. In order for his case to work Total
Utility needs to shrink fairly soon in our graph. Again, falling average utility is in itself not a worry,
reality needs to be grim not only in terms of average utility but in that the overall total decreases. And
that seems to be something that it would be quite difficult to achieve, through the mere increase of
population. People can be very crowded and not terribly happy as a result, without falling into
negative utility. Many large cities and indeed countries (in poor East and Central Asian countries, for
example) are heavily populated, but the welfare level is very far from the "worth living" level. Were
such places less crowded, the average level of utility would indeed probably rise, but the massive
population levels in themselves seem liveable, at least for people who are used to living under such
conditions. This means that there is ample potential for increasing the world's population so much
that the average utility will dip well into repugnance, while overall utility still remains safely
positive.
The main problem, however, is that Total Utility is not the criterion that we should be
discussing. It is debatable whether it is a plausible criterion in itself, but its merits lie beyond our
scope here. The point is that, in any case, it is not the criterion that is supported by Huemer's own
main arguments in favour of the repugnant conclusion. He says that he 'has sided not only with (RC)
but with its logically stronger brother, the Total Utility Principle' (p.928). But Total Utility, or Utility
Maximization, is not what, on Huemer's arguments, leads to the Repugnant Conclusion.2
Huemer's main arguments support what I have called Beneficiary Maximization (BM). Take,
first, his supreme normative principle, the Benign Addition Argument (pp.901-4). This claims that as
long as existing people will gain in well-being, adding 'some new people with worthwhile lives'
(p.902) will be good. The basis for this, Huemer claims, is the Modal Pareto Principle, which
'expresses a very weak general condition of benevolence – roughly speaking, we should favour
outcomes that are good for everyone' (p.904). And 'everyone' includes those people who would not
exist were we to take alternative decisions, such as to limit population size. Huemer also warns us not
to imagine ourselves as people living in a world with very high utility, who are then reluctant to
approve the coming into being of additional people, since this will result in a lower average utility.
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To see things in that way, Huemer argues, is to fall for the "egoistic bias", and to merely assume that
we are not among those who will not exist on a more miserly decision. (pp.907-8).
Similarly, Huemer argues that we must overcome the "actualist bias". Consider a couple who
already has children but is contemplating having another one. We would typically see the decision as
very much optional, and think that it is reasonable for the couple to make it on the basis of the
proposed utility for the people who already exist (such as themselves and the existing children). But
once this new child, Sally, exists, we cannot view her existence in such a dispensable way, even if
she has somewhat lowered everybody else's well-being. Now the fact that Sally is enjoying her life
matters a great deal. However, Huemer argues, deciding whether a world with or without this child is
better 'cannot depend upon the time at which one is speaking' (p.928). Again, the perspective of the
potentially living crucially matters.
Huemer's final argument is directly supportive of Beneficiary Maximization. According to the
"More-Is-Better Argument", 'Worthwhile lives are good. More of a good thing is better. Therefore,
increasing the number of worthwhile lives makes the world better' (p.923).
Whether by insisting that we count the claims of the people who would not exist were we to
operate on the basis of our repugnance, or directly by claiming that more happy people make the
world better, Huemer's argumentation leads to making Beneficiary Maximization our ideal. As long
as people's lives are minimally worthwhile, as many of them as possible should come to exist. The
two types of arguments he offers have very different philosophical force: I do not think that a
potential person is owed existence, and wronged if this is not forthcoming. Even if we assume that
such a claim makes sense, it cannot be very strong. An impersonal argument, according to which it is
impersonally good that many people (living lives that are worth living) exist, seems to me much more
compelling. But since Huemer puts forth both arguments, we need to see where this leads to.
In any case, we are dealing here with an ideal that is quite different from that of Utility
Maximization. In UM, the goal is to maximize total utility. If, in a certain context, the best way of
doing so is to limit the number of people that come to exist, then that's clearly what should be done.
But if BM is the correct guide, then we should not limit the number of people who can benefit from
living, however high the price we would need to pay (even in terms of total utility). The two
considerations coincide in the original Repugnant Conclusion, because utility is maximized through
the maximization of beneficiaries. But this is a coincidence. In Huemer's own example above, it is
good that Sally exists even if the combined decline in the utility of her parents and siblings, as a
result of her existence, is greater than the utility she herself enjoys. Huemer's own argumentation
calls for her birth, which cannot make sense in terms of his purported principal of Total Utility. If
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viewed in person-related terms, Beneficiary Maximization is a "democratic" ideal, calling for
everyone to have an existential "vote", not because this will generate the best utilitarian result but
because, morally, everyone must count. And in impersonal terms, an increasing population is simply
good (whether or not that is the best way to increase overall well-being), because it is good in itself
that those people exist, and can have a well-being. They enjoy life, and people who enjoy life
enhance the goodness of the world. As long as the lives under consideration pass the minimal test of
being worth living, it is bad if a potential person does not materialize, and it is always good that more
people rather than fewer exist.
Let us return to the question of repugnance. If we remain with the obligation to maximize the
good but reinterpret it to mean Beneficiary Maximization, this should imply, in practice, doing what
we can to encourage as high a birth rate as possible. For example, we ought to try and financially
encourage women, particularly in the Third World (our incentives would be much more effective
there), to give birth as early and as often as possible. In general, we can lament the fact that whenever
a woman becomes pregnant she will not be able to get pregnant again for the next nine months or so.
But whenever she is not pregnant, this is an opportunity for Beneficiary Maximization that must not
be missed. And we should aim to generate as many viable children as possible in every pregnancy.
Within a couple of generations, our world should be swarming with hundreds of billions of people,
living chokingly congested lives of bare subsistence. Indeed, as a Huemerian one must hope that soon
baby-creation could be done artificially, so that the goal of an ever-increasing population size will no
longer be constrained by the current biological limitations.3
Moreover, the scope of Beneficiary Maximization does not seem to be limited to coexisting
persons. If three people can live at a given level of utility for 20 years each, one replacing the other
on his or her death, this would seem to be preferable (other things being equal) to one person's living
at the same level of well-being till the age of 61, according to Beneficiary Maximization (but not, of
course, according to Utility Maximization). Beneficiary Maximization is willing to sacrifice not only
Total Utility, but the number of years in which a given individual can benefit from utility – for the
sake of maximizing the number of persons who will experience it. A world in which everyone lives
only until the age of 20 sounds monstrous – but if this enables us to increase the number of
beneficiaries, then a Huemerian position seems committed to it. And a state of affairs whereby four
people live till the age of 15 is (other things being equal) better than one where three people live till
they are 20; and so on.
Finally, it is important to see how far the logic of Huemer's arguments may take us from a
welfare-maximization perspective. It is not only that, as we have seen, Beneficiary Maximization is a
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distinct ideal from Utility Maximization, and can work against it. The "More-Is-Better Argument",
for instance, can support the maximization of the number of people for broadly Kantian reasons: if
the existence of rational agents is "worthwhile", then it is good to maximize the number of such
agents, irrespective of any welfare consideration. Beneficiary Maximization will thus turn into mere
Person Maximization, for the good (that is to be maximized) is no longer that there are more people
who can enjoy life. Well-being ceases to be the issue. And this in turn seems to mean that bringing
about more people can be good, even if their lives fall below the threshold of being worth living
(when this notion is understood, as it has been, in welfarist terms). Parfit and Huemer have not
stooped this low into repugnance, but doing so may be required. We might call this the Even More
Repugnant Conclusion: a situation where there may be no principled bottom to maximization – and
thus to repugnance. The best possible world might be a world where everyone lives a life that he or
she feels not to be worth living.4
We have seen that without quite recognizing this, Huemer in fact defends Beneficiary
Maximization. This can be achieved in the "traditional" way of maximizing the number of people
existing in any given time, but also by people being replaced by others (so that more people exist in a
given time span, living shorter consecutive lives). In any case, Total Utility is no longer a constraint
upon our actions. A further possibility is to see the existence of people as impersonally good, for
"Kantian" reasons, even if those people themselves will view their lives as not worth living. This
generates the Even More Repugnant Conclusion. All this leads to the maximization of repugnance: if
we follow Huemer's arguments, we will manifestly not be led to a world that is "congenial in
practice". The logic of his arguments implies that we ought to create as many people as possible,
even when this means that everyone ends up leading very short lives that are barely worth living –
and perhaps even not that.
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Notes
1. There is a similar problem in the discussion of the next graph, figure 8. As Huemer says, 'at very
high population levels, further increases in population decrease average welfare for the traditional
reasons… Again, the optimum point is P, and Q represents a low-average-utility alternative that
clearly has lower total utility' (p.930). Lower average utility decreases total utility only if (a) the rise
in population size is severely curtailed, or (b) we somehow dip into levels where life ceases to be
worth living, and Huemer cannot assume either.
2. It is noteworthy that Huemer does not base his defence of the Repugnant Conclusion on Parfit's
Mere Addition Paradox, which attempts merely to track our minimalist intuitions and avoid more
demanding theoretical commitments. Rather, Huemer gets to the RC though Total Utility and (as I
am arguing) Beneficiary Maximization. It is only natural, then, that he is led to greater repugnance.
3. This will require a complete revision in our moral attitudes, for (at least on Huemer's more extreme
arguments) we must begin to see reluctance to give birth – as expressed, say, in using birth control
methods, or by sexual abstinence – as the moral equivalent of harm, and perhaps of murder. The
potentially living have, according to Huemer, moral standing no less than those of us who are already
lucky enough to happen to be around. But I will not develop these further implications here.
4. The difficulty raised in this and the previous paragraph can partly mitigate each other, since, if life
is so bad, at least it might be short. This recalls the Woody Allen joke about the two elderly women
in an old age home, complaining that the food is terrible and then that there is so little of it.
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References
Huemer, Michael (2008). 'In Defence of Repugnance' Mind 117: 899-933.
Parfit, Derek (1984). Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.