scholarly journals Nondeterminacy and Population Ethics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders Herlitz
Keyword(s):  
General View ◽  
Repugnant Conclusion ◽  
Population Ethics ◽  
Partial Orderings ◽  
Population Axiology ◽  
Plausible Theory ◽  
Mere Addition ◽  
Mere Addition Paradox ◽  
The Continuum ◽  
Formal Constraints

This paper synthesizes a general view out of Derek Parfit’s last views on how to avoid the Repugnant Conclusion and presents the general features of a plausible theory of population ethics based on Parfit’s suggestions. The paper argues that a plausible population axiology provides only partial orderings and implies that some outcomes are nondeterminate in their ranking. The paper shows, first, how the combination of what Parfit calls “imprecise equality” and the “Wide Dual Person-Affecting Principle” allows one to avoid both the Continuum Argument and the Improved Mere Addition Paradox. Second, the paper shows how this is enough to in principle also refute Gustaf Arrhenius’s impossibility theorems. Third, the paper suggests that a plausible population axiology must allow for nondeterminacy, that whatever the substance of the axiology is, it can only provide partial orderings of outcomes, and that if we revise Arrhenius’s adequacy conditions these can condition what a satisfactory population axiology looks like. Finally, the paper illustrates how one can apply normative theories that allow for nondeterminacy and also infer formal constraints on the theories in light of the consequences of their application.

scholarly journals Population axiology and the possibility of a fourth category of absolute value

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-110
Author(s):  
Johan E. Gustafsson
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Repugnant Conclusion ◽  
Population Ethics ◽  
Absolute Value ◽  
Critical Range ◽  
Population Axiology

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.

Feldman's Desert-Adjusted Utilitarianism and Population Ethics

Utilitas ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gustaf Arrhenius
Keyword(s):  
Repugnant Conclusion ◽  
Population Ethics ◽  
Fred Feldman ◽  
Population Axiology

Fred Feldman has proposed a desert-adjusted version of utilitarianism, ‘justicism’, as a plausible population axiology. Among other things, he claims that justicism avoids Derek Parfit's ‘repugnant conclusion’. This paper explains the theory and tries to straighten out some of its ambiguities. Moreover, it is shown that it is not clear whether justicism avoids the repugnant conclusion and that it is has other counter-intuitive implications. It is concluded that justicism is not convincing as a population axiology.

Multidimensional Consequentialism and Population Ethics

2018 ◽  
pp. 51-70
Author(s):  
Martin Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Impossibility Theorem ◽  
Worth Living ◽  
Average Quality ◽  
Population Ethics ◽  
Main Claim ◽  
Moral Aspect ◽  
Mere Addition ◽  
Mere Addition Paradox

The main claim of this chapter is that multidimensional consequentialists have reason to reject some of the key premises of Parfit’s Mere Addition Paradox as well as Arrhenius’s sixth impossibility theorem. The latter is the most general and far-reaching impossibility theorem in the literature on population ethics. The chapter shows that multidimensional consequentialists can reasonably maintain that the mere addition of people who have lives worth living is not always entirely right. To add what Parfit calls “extra people” is right with respect to one moral aspect (the size of the population) but wrong with respect to another (the average quality of life).

Population Ethics, the Mere Addition Paradox, and the Structure of Consequentialism

2020 ◽  
pp. 473-497
Author(s):  
Melinda A. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Population Problem ◽  
Population Ethics ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Mere Addition ◽  
Mere Addition Paradox

In this paper, I describe three structural issues population ethics raises for any form of consequentialism that embraces what we can call the basic maximizing idea, the idea that it makes things better, in a morally relevant sense, to make things better for people. What we say about those structural issues will in turn determine what we say about some of the most challenging problems of population ethics. I explore a handful of our options here, discarding some and leaving others on the table. My primary focus is on how those options propose to resolve the mere addition paradox, a population problem that is important in its own right and whose resolution is defining for what we will want to say about many other population problems.

Mere addition and the best of all possible worlds

1999 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEPHEN GROVER
Keyword(s):  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Worth Living ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Repugnant Conclusion ◽  
Best Possible World ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Mere Addition ◽  
Mere Addition Paradox ◽  
Better Than

The quantitative argument against the notion of a best possible world claims that, no matter how many worthwhile lives a world contains, another world contains more and is, other things being equal, better. Parfit's ‘Mere Addition Paradox’ suggests that defenders of this argument must accept his ‘Repugnant Conclusion’: that outcomes containing billions upon billions of lives barely worth living are better than outcomes containing fewer lives of higher quality. Several responses to the Paradox are discussed and rejected as either inadequate or unavailable in a theistic context. The quantitative argument fails if some world is such that addition to it is not possible, i.e., if it is intensively infinite, as Liebniz claimed. If the notion of such a world is incoherent, then no world is quantitatively best and the quantitative argument succeeds, but only at the cost of embracing the Repugnant Conclusion.

scholarly journals Calibrating Variable-Value Population Ethics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dean Spears ◽  
H. Orri Stefánsson
Keyword(s):  
Recent Literature ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Small Population ◽  
World Population ◽  
Repugnant Conclusion ◽  
Population Ethics ◽  
Calibration Methods ◽  
Population Sizes ◽  
Mere Addition

Variable-Value axiologies propose solutions to the challenges of population ethics. These views avoid Parfit’s Repugnant Conclusion, while satisfying some weak instances of the Mere Addition principle (for example, at small population sizes). We apply calibration methods to Variable-Value views while assuming: first, some very weak instances of Mere Addition, and, second, some plausible empirical assumptions about the size and welfare of the intertemporal world population. We find that Variable-Value views imply conclusions that should seem repugnant to anyone who opposes Total Utilitarianism due to the Repugnant Conclusion. So, any wish to avoid repugnant conclusions is not a good reason to choose a Variable-Value view. More broadly, these calibrations teach us something about the effort to avoid the Repugnant Conclusion. Our results join a recent literature arguing that prior efforts to avoid the Repugnant Conclusion hinge on inessential features of the formalization of repugnance. Some of this effort may therefore be misplaced.

Mere Addition and Two Trilemmas of Population Ethics

1998 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Carlson
Keyword(s):  
Mirror Image ◽  
Population Ethics ◽  
Population Theory ◽  
Mere Addition ◽  
Mere Addition Paradox

A principal aim of the branch of ethics called ‘population theory’ or ‘population ethics’ is to find a plausible welfarist axiology, capable of comparing total outcomes with respect to value. This has proved an exceedingly difficult task. In this paper I shall state and discuss two ‘trilemmas’, or choices between three unappealing alternatives, which the population ethicist must face. The first trilemma is not new. It originates with Derek Parfit's well-known ‘Mere Addition Paradox’, and was first explicitly stated by Yew-Kwang Ng. I shall argue that one horn of this trilemma is less unattractive than Parfit and others have claimed. The second trilemma, which is a kind of mirror image of the first, appears hitherto to have gone unnoticed. Apart from attempting to resolve the two trilemmas, I shall suggest certain features which I believe a plausible welfarist axiology should possess. The details of this projected axiology will, however, be left open.

An ensemble view of thrombin allostery

2012 ◽  
Vol 393 (9) ◽  
pp. 889-898 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernhard C. Lechtenberg ◽  
Stefan M.V. Freund ◽  
James A. Huntington
Keyword(s):  
Structural Changes ◽  
Allosteric Regulation ◽  
Monovalent Cation ◽  
Coagulation Cascade ◽  
General View ◽  
Multiple Substrates ◽  
Dynamic View ◽  
Static View ◽  
Two State Model ◽  
The Continuum

Abstract Thrombin is the central protease of the coagulation cascade. Its activity is tightly regulated to ensure rapid blood clotting while preventing uncontrolled thrombosis. Thrombin interacts with multiple substrates and cofactors and is critically involved in both pro- and anticoagulant pathways of the coagulation network. Its allosteric regulation, especially by the monovalent cation Na+, has been the focus of research for more than 30 years. It is believed that thrombin can adopt an anticoagulant (‘slow’) conformation and, after Na+ binding, a structurally distinct procoagulant (‘fast’) state. In the past few years, however, the general view of allostery has evolved from one of rigid structural changes towards thermodynamic ensembles of conformational states. With this background, the view of the allosteric regulation of thrombin has also changed. The static view of the two-state model has been dismissed in favor of a more dynamic view of thrombin allostery. Herein, we review recent data that demonstrate that apo-thrombin is zymogen-like and exists as an ensemble of conformations. Furthermore, we describe how ligand binding to thrombin allosterically stabilizes conformations on the continuum from zymogen to protease.

Does Climate Change Policy Depend Importantly on Population Ethics?

2021 ◽  
pp. 111-136
Author(s):  
Gustaf Arrhenius ◽  
Mark Budolfson ◽  
Dean Spears
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Policy Evaluation ◽  
Climate Change Policy ◽  
Policy Response ◽  
Population Ethics ◽  
Impossibility Results ◽  
Climate Policies ◽  
Change Policy ◽  
Population Axiology

Choosing a policy response to climate change seems to demand a population axiology. A formal literature involving impossibility theorems has demonstrated that all possible approaches to population axiology have one or more seemingly counterintuitive implications. This leads to the worry that because axiological theory is radically unresolved, this theoretical ignorance implies serious practical ignorance about what climate policies to pursue. This chapter offers two deflationary responses to this worry. First, it may be that given the actual facts of climate change, all axiologies agree on a particular policy response. In this case, there would be a clear dominance conclusion, and the puzzles of axiology would be practically irrelevant (albeit still theoretically challenging). Second, despite the impossibility results, the authors prove the possibility of axiologies that satisfy bounded versions of all of the desiderata from the population axiology literature, which may be all that is needed for policy evaluation.

What Should We Do About Future Generations?

1989 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yew-Kwang Ng
Keyword(s):  
Ideal Theory ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Repugnant Conclusion ◽  
Total Utility ◽  
Mere Addition ◽  
Theory X

Parfit's requirements for an ideal Theory X cannot be fully met since the Mere Addition Principle and Non-Antiegalitarianism imply the Repugnant Conclusion: Theory X does not exist. However, since the Repugnant Conclusion is really compelling, the Impersonal Total Principle should be adopted for impartial comparisons concerning future generations. Nevertheless, where our own interests are affected, we may yet choose to be partial, trading off our concern for future (or others') goodness with our self-interests. Theory X' (maximization of number-dampened total utility) meets all Parfit's requirements except the Mere Addition Principle in less compelling cases.

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