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Part of a series on
Utilitarianism
Predecessors
Mozi
Śāntideva
David Hume
Claude Adrien Helvétius
Cesare Beccaria
William Godwin
Francis Hutcheson
William Paley
Key proponents
Jeremy Bentham
John Stuart Mill
Henry Sidgwick
R. M. Hare
Peter Singer
Types of utilitarianism
Negative
Rule
Act
Two-level
Total
Average
Preference
Classical
Key concepts
Pain
Suffering
Pleasure
Utility
Happiness
Eudaimonia
Consequentialism
Equal consideration
Felicific calculus
Utilitarian social choice rule
Problems
Demandingness objection
Mere addition paradox
Paradox of hedonism
Replaceability argument
Utility monster
Related topics
Rational choice theory
Game theory
Neoclassical economics
Population ethics
Effective altruism
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The mere addition paradox (also known as the repugnant conclusion) is a problem in ethics identified by Derek Parfit and discussed in his book Reasons and Persons (1984). The paradox identifies the mutual incompatibility of four intuitively compelling assertions about the relative value of populations. Parfit’s original formulation of the repugnant conclusion is that “For any perfectly equal population with very high positive welfare, there is a population with very low positive welfare which is better, other things being equal.”[1]
^Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 388.
and 27 Related for: Mere addition paradox information
The mereadditionparadox (also known as the repugnant conclusion) is a problem in ethics identified by Derek Parfit and discussed in his book Reasons...
individual together. The main problem for total utilitarianism is the "mereadditionparadox", which argues that a likely outcome of following total utilitarianism...
monster has been invoked in debates about population. Derek Parfit's mereadditionparadox suggests that additional humans would add to total happiness, even...
The paradox of hedonism, also called the pleasure paradox, refers to the practical difficulties encountered in the pursuit of pleasure. For the hedonist...
Mereadditionparadox: (Parfit's paradox) Is a large population living a barely tolerable life better than a small, happy population? Moore's paradox:...
to study the ethics of reproduction. Derek Parfit Mereadditionparadox Kavka, Gregory. "The Paradox of Future Individuals" (PDF). {{cite journal}}: Cite...
Normative Population Theory: A Person Affecting Solution to Parfit's MereAdditionParadox" (PDF). Philosophical Studies. 81 (2–3): 263–282. doi:10.1007/bf00372786...
Political Science, 41(2), pp. 608–18; Daniel W. Drezner (1999). The Sanctions Paradox: Economic Statecraft and International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge...
Petersburg paradox was first proposed by Nicholas Bernoulli in 1713 and solved by Daniel Bernoulli in 1738. D. Bernoulli argued that the paradox could be...
pleasures of the intellect ... a much higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation." However, he accepts that this is usually because the intellectual...
the non-identity problem. Another problem Parfit looks at is the mereadditionparadox, which supposedly shows that it is better to have a lot of people...
A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently...
beliefs in the process of debate, these beliefs are kept from declining into mere dogma. It is not enough for Mill that one simply has an unexamined belief...
aid, and humane society). "Where humanitarian efforts seek a positive addition to the happiness of sentient beings, it is to make the unhappy happy rather...
self-interested reasons support adoption of the moral point of view, such as "the paradox of hedonism", which counsels that happiness is best found by not looking...
predecessors". "Even though Hume wrote with an anti-Whig animus, it is, paradoxically, correct to regard the History as an establishment work, one which implicitly...
philanthropists like Dustin Moskovitz Average and total utilitarianism Mereadditionparadox (also called the repugnant conclusion) Person-affecting view The...
Temkin argues, in addition to considerations of priority. Beginning with his groundbreaking ‘Intransitivity and the MereAdditionParadox,’ and culminating...
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