Abstract

AbstractCritical-Range Utilitarianism is a variant of Total Utilitarianism which can avoid both the Repugnant Conclusion and the Sadistic Conclusion in population ethics. Yet Standard Critical-Range Utilitarianism entails the Weak Sadistic Conclusion, that is, it entails that each population consisting of lives at a bad well-being level is not worse than some population consisting of lives at a good well-being level. In this paper, I defend a version of Critical-Range Utilitarianism which does not entail the Weak Sadistic Conclusion. This is made possible by what I call ‘undistinguishedness’, a fourth category of absolute value in addition to goodness, badness, and neutrality.

Highlights

  • In addition to the good, the bad, and the neutral, there is an overlooked fourth category of absolute value

  • The well-being level of a life is the personal value for the person living it, and we assume that personal value is interpersonally measurable

  • For an illustration of how Undistinguished Critical-Range Utilitarianism avoids the barely-not-bad version of the Repugnant Conclusion, consider the following two-dimensional vector diagram (Figure 9): Figure 9

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Summary

Introduction

In addition to the good, the bad, and the neutral, there is an overlooked fourth category of absolute value. To see that Undistinguished Critical-Range Utilitarianism entails the barely-not-bad version of the Weak Repugnant Conclusion, compare the A population with a variant of the Z population, which we can call Barely Not Bad Z, consisting of lives at a well-being level just marginally higher than a bad well-being level (Figure 11): Figure 11.

Results
Conclusion

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