Theoria 82 (2):166-181 (
2016)
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Abstract
Recently, in his Rolf Schock Prize Lecture, Derek Parfit has suggested a novel way of
avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion by introducing what he calls “imprecision” in value comparisons.
He suggests that in a range of important cases, populations of different sizes are only imprecisely
comparable. Parfit suggests that this feature of value comparisons opens up a way of avoiding
the Repugnant Conclusion without implying other counterintuitive conclusions, and thus solves one
of the major challenges in ethics. In this article, I try to clarify Parfit’s proposal and evaluate whether
it will help us with the paradoxes in population ethics.