Critical-Level Population Principles and the Repugnant Conclusion

Charles Blackorby, Walter Bossert and David Donaldson

Cahiers de recherche from Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques

Abstract: Critical-level generalized-utilitarian population principles with positive critical levels pro-vide an ethically attractive way of avoiding the repugnant conclusion. We discuss the axiomatic foundations of critical-level generalized utilitarianism and investigate its rela-tionship to the sadistic and strong sadistic conclusions. A positive critical level avoids the repugnant conclusion. We demonstrate that, although no critical-level generalized-utilitarian principle can avoid both the repugnant and strong sadistic conclusions, princi-ples that avoid both have significant defects.

Keywords: Polation Ethics; Critical-Level Generalized Utilitarianism; Regnant Conclusion. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 14 pages
Date: 2002
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/1866/486 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: CRITICAL-LEVEL POPULATION PRINCIPLES AND THE REPUGNANT CONCLUSION (2002)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mtl:montde:2002-15

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cahiers de recherche from Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sharon BREWER ().