Perfectionism and the Repugnant Conclusion

Simon Beard

doi:10.1007/s10790-019-09687-4

Abstract

The Repugnant Conclusion and its paradoxes pose a significant problem for outcome evaluation. Derek Parfit has suggested that we may be able to resolve this problem by accepting a view he calls ‘Perfectionism’, which gives lexically superior value to ‘the best things in life’. In this paper, I explore perfectionism and its potential to solve this problem. I argue that perfectionism provides neither a sufficient means of avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion nor a full explanation of its repugnance. This is because even lives that are ‘barely worth living’ may contain the best things in life if they also contain sufficient ‘bad things’, such as suffering or frustration. Therefore, perfectionism can only fully explain or avoid the Repugnant Conclusion if combined with other claims, such as that bad things have an asymmetrical value relative to many good things. This combined view faces the objection that any such asymmetry implies Parfit’s ‘Ridiculous Conclusion’. However, I argue that perfectionism itself faces very similar objections, and that these are question-begging against both views. Finally, I show how the combined view that I propose not only explains and avoids the Repugnant Conclusion but also allows us to escape many of its paradoxes as well.

Highlights

The Nature of PerfectionismThe details of perfectionism remain undeveloped. Derek Parfit, the view’s main proponent, only briefly stated it twice in his published works
According to the Repugnant Conclusion: Compared with the existence of many people who would all have some very high quality of life, there is some much larger number of people whose existence would be better, even though these people would all have lives that were barely worth living
I argue that perfectionism provides neither a sufficient means of avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion nor a full explanation of its repugnance

Summary

The Nature of Perfectionism

The details of perfectionism remain undeveloped. Derek Parfit, the view’s main proponent, only briefly stated it twice in his published works. On the first of these, the qualitative difference in the value of the best things in life compared to other good things that make lives worth living is a difference in their value for the people who enjoy them, which I will refer to as their welfare value This is the classical way of making such claims. The loss of his greatest feats could not be made good by any number of successful shoelace-tyings.)[16] Convincing as such arguments seem in the above passages, when evaluating different quantities and qualities of good things within individual lives, they cannot justify the perfectionist’s claims about the value of the best things in life and the Repugnant Conclusion. By the ‘all things considered’ value of a life, I mean the value it contributes to a population that contains it - leaving aside any distributional considerations such as whether it makes that population more or less equal

The Problem with Perfectionism

Perfectionism and the Quality of Life

Is my view ‘Ridiculous’?

Quality of Life and Population Ethics

Conclusion