Ooh, I was hoping we'd get to this. A few weeks ago when I dealt with thought experiment 46, I mentioned that it didn't look like we were going to cover Derek Parfit's Repugnant Conclusion, but here it is! There is an error in the index of The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, so it looked like we were done with Parfit, but apparently not. Anyway, let's read the experiment and see what I'm talking about.
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Carol had decided to use a large slice of her substantial wealth to improve life in an impoverished village in southern Tanzania. However, since she had reservations about birth-control programmes, the development agency which she was working with had to come up with two possible plans.
The first would involve no birth-control element. This would probably see the population of the village rise from 100 to 150 and the quality of life index, which measures subjective as well as objective factors, rise modestly from an average of 2.4 to 3.2.
The second plan did include a non-coercive birth-control programme. This would see the population remain stable at 100, but the average quality of life would rise to 4.0.
Given that only those with a quality of life ranked as 1.0 or lower consider their lives not to be worth living at all, the first plan would lead to there being more worthwhile lives than the second, whereas the second would result in fewer lives, but ones which were even more fulfilled. Which plan would make the best use of Carol's money?
Source: Part four of Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit, 1984.
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 154.
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After showing the mathematical error in last week's thought experiment, you might be tempted to try the same method here to arrive at a conclusion, but what do you think? Is that the right way to consider this issue? I'll be back on Friday with an answer that shows my work.
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Carol had decided to use a large slice of her substantial wealth to improve life in an impoverished village in southern Tanzania. However, since she had reservations about birth-control programmes, the development agency which she was working with had to come up with two possible plans.
The first would involve no birth-control element. This would probably see the population of the village rise from 100 to 150 and the quality of life index, which measures subjective as well as objective factors, rise modestly from an average of 2.4 to 3.2.
The second plan did include a non-coercive birth-control programme. This would see the population remain stable at 100, but the average quality of life would rise to 4.0.
Given that only those with a quality of life ranked as 1.0 or lower consider their lives not to be worth living at all, the first plan would lead to there being more worthwhile lives than the second, whereas the second would result in fewer lives, but ones which were even more fulfilled. Which plan would make the best use of Carol's money?
Source: Part four of Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit, 1984.
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 154.
---------------------------------------------------
After showing the mathematical error in last week's thought experiment, you might be tempted to try the same method here to arrive at a conclusion, but what do you think? Is that the right way to consider this issue? I'll be back on Friday with an answer that shows my work.
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