本文探讨了功利主义中两个主要问题：令人厌恶的结论和末日结论。令人厌恶的结论指出，存在一个更优的世界状态，其中每个人的福利水平都非常低。末日结论则认为，在负功利主义下，应该摧毁整个宇宙。文章提出了一种名为“起源调整”的解决方案，通过调整福利的零点来解决这些问题。这种方法借鉴了临界水平功利主义的思想，认为存在一个临界福利水平，低于该水平的生活是负面的。虽然起源调整可以缓解上述问题，但也会带来新的挑战，如虐待狂结论和奥梅拉斯结论。然而，这些新问题与原先的问题相比，显得不那么严重。

🌍**令人厌恶的结论与负功利主义的挑战**：功利主义伦理观面临“令人厌恶的结论”，即大量低福利人口的世界可能优于少量高福利人口的世界，以及负功利主义可能导致“末日结论”，即存在痛苦的世界不如无人的世界。

⚖️**起源调整：重新定义中性生活**：通过“起源调整”，将“增加生命不影响总效用”与“零快乐零痛苦的生命”分离。向上调整意味着无苦无乐的生活是坏的，向下调整则意味着是好的，解决了简单地将零点视为中性的问题。

⬆️**向上调整与虐待狂结论**：对于“令人厌恶的结论”，向上调整原点意味着，只有当一个世界拥有大量勉强高于临界水平的人口时，它才优于一个只有少数非常幸福的人的世界。然而，这可能导致“虐待狂结论”，即创造不值得活的生命可能优于创造值得活的生命。

⬇️**向下调整与奥梅拉斯结论**：对于“末日结论”，向下调整原点意味着，即使存在一些痛苦，中性的生活也可能具有积极价值。虽然这可以避免摧毁宇宙，但可能导致“奥梅拉斯结论”，即一个好世界可能存在个体承受巨大痛苦的情况。

Published on February 19, 2025 6:35 PM GMT

Utilitarianism is a common ethical viewpoint, especially here, but it is not free of problems. Two of these problems (here collectively called the Undesirable Conclusions) will be discussed here and one of the two given a better name. Origin adjustment will then be used to solve these problems, but at the cost of creating new ones. However, these problems are significantly lesser than the existing ones.

Throughout, I will discuss utility as if it only applies to people. Many argue that it does not, but that adds substantial extra complexity to the wording, and does not significantly change the arguments. It also includes a degree of weighting by importance that adds even more complexity.

I will also assume that all utilitarianism is hedonic in nature. While there are some problems there, it is the easiest to work with, and many utilitarians are hedonic utilitarians, so this isn't a weak man of utilitarianism.

Undesirable Conclusions

To start with, I will discuss Undesirable Conclusions. These are not simply conclusions that are bad, they are specifically bad-seeming (paradoxical, immoral, etc.) conclusions caused by additivity. The focus here is on two of them: the Repugnant Conclusion and the Apocalyptic Conclusion, and it is these that are actually called Undesirable Conclusions here.

Repugnant Conclusion

The first Undesirable Conclusion is Parfit's well-known Repugnant Conclusion. It states that, for any world-state, there is a better world-state in which every individual has very low positive welfare.

The proof is as follows:

Let A be any world-state where everyone has equal, relatively high, positive welfare.Then, add another person with very low positive welfare. This world (call it A') is better than A.We can then redistribute the welfare evenly. According to most ethical systems, this world (B) is at least as good as A'.We can repeat this process until everyone in a much larger world-state has very low positive welfare.By transitivity, this world-state (call it Z) is better than A.

This is, as the name suggests, repugnant, but relies on two main features:

It is good to create someone with positive welfare.It is good to redistribute the same amount of welfare evenly.

Following Arrhenius (2000), the first principle will be called Mere Addition and the second called the Egalitarian Principle. While his main impossibility theorem is more complex than this, it should be clear from the above argument that Mere Addition and the Egalitarian Principle imply the Repugnant Conclusion.

There has been a lot of discussion on the Repugnant Conclusion, with many possible ways to deal with it. Here, I will focus on the critical-level solution, which adjusts the origin such that the resulting conclusion is not repugnant.

Apocalyptic Conclusion

Now for the second Undesirable Conclusion, the Apocalyptic Conclusion. This states that, given negative utilitarianism, one should destroy the universe. More precisely, it states that any world-state with anyone experiencing non-zero suffering is worse than the world-state with nobody.

The proof of this conclusion is as follows.

Anyone experiencing suffering has a life worse than anyone experiencing zero suffering.If we create multiple people, each with negative welfare, we make the world worse.Therefore, the world is worse than a world with nobody in.

Here, the controversial principle, and the easiest to reject, is the first, but this is key to negative utilitarianism.

The actual principle that will be rejected is implicit here. It is that someone experiencing zero suffering has a life with neutral welfare.

Discussion

The two Undesirable Conclusions are in an imporant sense dual. Each of them looks at a life with little pleasure and little suffering and adds a large number of them up, to create a world that is either very good or very bad. There are three clear solutions to this:

A life with little pleasure and little suffering is not neutral.Utility is not additive.Addition doesn't work like that.

Point 3 is obviously wrong. Addition does, in fact, work like that. The closest to a serious argument in this vein is lexical-threshold negative utilitarianism, where some levels of suffering are lexically worse. This can be considered as them being infinitely bad with respect to lesser sufferings.

Point 2 leads to things like average utilitarianism and maximin. But these clearly have problems.

Average utilitarianism implies an extreme form of the negation of the Repugnant Conclusion, where a world with one person with extremely high welfare is better than a world with a large number of people with negligibly lower welfare.

Maximin, on the other hand, has a problem with utility monsters. It is better for a world to have a large number of people with extreme negative welfare rather than one person with a negligibly more negative welfare and everyone else with extreme positive welfare.

So, the focus here will be on point 1. Why is a life with zero pleasure and zero suffering one that can be added or subtracted without adjusting the utility? And what do either of these have to do with barely being worth living?

In some philosophies (Epicureanism, for example), this life is the ideal, while in others, it is distinctly bad. Just because the number zero is used in these concepts doesn't mean they're the same.

As such, I use a concept I refer to as origin adjustment to deal with this. It is fundamentally taken from critical-level utilitarianism, which refers to a critical level of welfare such that lives below that are neutral or negative, but still worth living.

Origin Adjustment

Fundamentally, the concept of origin adjustment decouples "a life such that adding it keeps the total utility the same" from "a life with zero pleasure and zero pain", as well as "a life barely worth living". An upwards adjustment of the origin means that a life with neither pleasure nor pain would be bad, while a downwards one means that it would be good.

Repugnant Conclusion - Upwards Adjustment

For the Repugnant Conclusion, the appropriate adjustment is upwards. A common description of a life barely worth living is one spent working on an assembly line, eating only potatoes and listening to only muzak.

But this doesn't sound like a neutral life, it sounds pretty crap!

As such, perhaps the origin needs to be shifted upwards, so that a neutral life is somewhat better than that, even if that life is not so bad that it would be better not to exist.

This is the view of some forms of critical-level utilitarianism, and is the view I hold to. While it is still possible to form a Repugnant-style Conclusion, this conclusion only holds that a world with a huge population barely above the critical level is better than a world with a small number of incredibly happy people, and this is entirely acceptable, depending on what the critical level is.

Sadistic Conclusion

However, there are still problems here. This sort of argument leads to the Sadistic Conclusion:

There exists a set B of people with lives not worth living and a set G of people with lives worth living such that it is better to create B than G.

This is because the lives in G, while worth living, are below the critical level.

However, in a blog post by Stuart Armstrong, he argues (convincingly, in my opinion) that the Sadistic Conclusion isn't that bad. The creation of G is a negative thing, as is the creation of B, while the description and name suggests the much stronger claim that there exists a set B of people with lives not worth living such that it is good to create B. This does not follow.

However, in negative utilitarianism, it might.

Apocalyptic Conclusion - Downwards Adjustment

Here, we have the opposite problem. Even lives that are going well contain some suffering, and so a purely negative utilitarian perspective would have them be negative in value.

As such, the necessary adjustment here is downwards, so that a neutral life can have some positive amount of suffering in it.

There is a history of something similar in the Epicurean concept of aporia and ataraxia (basically, lack of physical and mental suffering, respectively) as actively good states, rather than merely neutral ones. However, contra Epicurus, I treat these as lack of suffering rather than as pleasure, and so consider Epicureanism to be a form of negative hedonism.

With this adjustment, there is a region of non-zero suffering that is considered to be a good life, and so, assuming that there are enough people above that line, it is not good to destroy the universe. If there are not, then it might in fact be good to destroy the universe, but that isn't a problem with negative utilitarianism as such.

The Omelas Conclusion

The counterpart to the Sadistic Conclusion here appears to be something like the following:

There exists a good world-state such that any individual is suffering arbitrarily much.

This is because a large number of slightly positive lives (ones with a small amount of suffering) can outweigh the arbitrary amount of suffering.

While this is a problem, it is also one found in regular utilitarianism and negative-leaning utilitarianism. Lexical-threshold utilitarianism could be used instead of negative-leaning, creating a threshold of infinitely bad extreme suffering as well as one of non-bad mild suffering, but this has the same problem as any other lexical-threshold utilitarianism, so I would just bite the bullet and accept the Omelas Conclusion.

Discuss