More Lives Better Than Good Lives

This chapter presents a conclusion that has attracted much attention in the area of moral philosophy known as population ethics. It is called "the Repugnant Conclusion". According to this conclusion there is for any population of people all leading lives of a very high quality another possible population in which all people lead lives barely worth living but which would nevertheless be ethically better as long as the population is sufficiently large. To many this sounds totally absurd. But, if the conclusion seems clearly repugnant, why consider it in the first place? Why waste any time on such a bizarre comparison of possible population scenarios? As will be suggested in this chapter, it turns out not to be an easy task to avoid the Repugnant Conclusion.