Repugnance without Mere Addition

Tomi Francis

Economics and Philosophy, 2026, vol. 42, issue 3, _7

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.

Date: 2026
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