Mere Addition Paradox - Criticisms and Responses

Criticisms and Responses

Some scholars, such as Larry Temkin, argue that the paradox is resolved by the conclusion that the "better than" relation is not transitive, meaning that our assertion that B- is better than A by way of A+ is not justified—it could very well be the case that B- is better than A+, and A+ is better than A, and yet A is better than B-. The paradox is defeated, it is argued, by asserting that A+ is actually worse than A, in other words, that adding people of less-than-average happiness into the world makes the overall situation worse. This is the conclusion of "average utilitarianism", which aims at maximizing average happiness. However, this solution may commit one to the position that it is actually bad for people of less than average happiness to be born, even if their lives are worth living.

Another position argues for some threshold above the level at which lives become worth living, but below which additional lives would nonetheless make the situation worse. Parfit argues that for this position to be plausible, such a threshold would be so low as to apply only to lives that are "gravely deficient" and which, "though worth living ... must be crimped and mean." Parfit calls this hypothetical threshold the "bad level," and argues that its existence would not resolve the paradox because population A would still be better than an enormous population with all members having lives at the "bad level."

Torbjörn Tännsjö argues that we have a false intuition of the moral weight of billions upon billions of lives "barely worth living". He argues that we must consider that life in Z would not be terrible, and that in our actual world, most lives are actually not far above, and often fall below, the level of "not worth living". The Repugnant Conclusion therefore is not repugnant.

Another criticism is that the paradox only considers utility at one point in time, instead of taking into account the population's sum utility over time. While mere addition may increase the present value of net utility, it may damage the sum-over-time of utility, such as by consuming extra resources that will be unavailable for future generations.

Also, it has been argued that the conclusion is an illusion: since it is much easier for us to empathise with different individuals than with groups, we naturally focus on the decrease in average utility for each individual, rather than the fact there are many more individuals to enjoy it.