2026/01/15 by Tomi Francis · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Income, Poverty, and Inequality #Philosophical Ethics and Theory #Political Philosophy and Ethics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0266267125100631
openalex publication_date 2026/01/15 · openalex created_date 2026/01/16 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
Abstract This paper concerns the difficulty of avoiding an additive version of the Very Repugnant Conclusion. An impossibility theorem is provided which shows that we cannot avoid this version of the Repugnant Conclusion even if we deny the Mere Addition Principle and closely related principles which place limits on the badness of adding happy people, such as “Dominance Addition” and additive “Non-Sadism” conditions. I argue that the impossibility theorem shows that the additive version of the Very Repugnant Conclusion cannot reasonably be avoided by population-ethical means alone. One must instead either deny structural conditions such as acyclicity, adopt a radically unorthodox fixed-population axiology, or accept this version of the Very Repugnant Conclusion.