Arrhenius, Gustaf , Stefánsson, H. Orri | 2024
In: Mosquera, J. & O. Torpman (ed.), Studies on Climate Ethics and Future Generations vol. 6. Working Paper Series 2024:10–17
Parfit (2016) responded to the Sequence Argument for the Repugnant Conclusion by introducing imprecise equality. However, Parfit’s notion of imprecise equality lacked structure. Hájek and Rabinowicz (2022) improved on Parfit’s proposal in this regard, by introducing a notion of degrees of incommensurability. Although Hájek and Rabinowicz’s proposal is a step forward, and may help solve many paradoxes, it can only avoid the Repugnant Conclusion at great theoretical cost. First, there is a sequential argument for the Repugnant Conclusion that uses weaker and intuitively more compelling assumptions than the Sequence Argument, and which Hájek and Rabinowicz’s proposal only undermines, in a principled way, by allowing for seemingly implausible weight to be put on the disvalue of inequality. Second, if Hájek and Rabinowicz do put such seemingly implausible weight on the disvalue of inequality, then they will have to accept that a population A is not worse than another population B even though everyone in B is better off than anyone in A.
