27 upvotes, 4 direct replies (showing 4)
I'm fairly sure that's the point of the Repugnant Conclusion. It highlights that under utilitarianism the 50 billion miserable wretches would be morally preferable, when this is evidently not true.
Comment by Kafka_Valokas at 14/01/2020 at 11:34 UTC*
17 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Yup, that's definitely the point, although I strongly disagree with the claim that even classical utilitarianism leads to this conclusion, let alone other versions of utilitarianism.
Edit: Please don't downvote a comment just because you disagree with it. I've explained my opinion in more detail below.
Comment by [deleted] at 14/01/2020 at 16:20 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
We should also clarify here that the repugnant conclusion is a rebuttal of classical act utilitarianism; Parfit himself espoused a form of rule consequentialism, and was sometimes referred to as a utilitarian (though this is obviously disputed, and to my knowledge he preferred the term "consequentialist").
Comment by fencerman at 15/01/2020 at 18:49 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Comment by StarChild413 at 16/01/2020 at 07:29 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
But you could just as easily extend this out the other way and say that the ideal society is Adam (with or without Eve depending on how far you want to take it) in a version of the Garden that lacked the Tree Of Knowledge Of Good And Evil so they had no choice but to stay in it forever, after all, minimal number of people in basically perfect bliss, shouldn't that be the Repugnant Conclusion's dream scenario
