Objections to the “Repugnant Conclusion” Using seemingly sound logical steps, David Parfit arrived at the “repugnant conclusion” that a world with a very large number of people with very good lives is worse than a world with many more people whose lives are barely worth living. I will present his argument and conclusion, and then explain how we can escape such a counterintuitive notion by reconsidering how we measure and compare people's well-being. I argue that all individuals inherently deserve a certain level of well-being that exceeds that of a life barely worth living, and that cannot be offset by an increase in the number of people. Parfit asks us to compare different populations and evaluate the goodness of each of these scenarios. In every population, every individual deserves an equal level of well-being. These populations are shown below, where the width of the block represents the number of individuals and the height represents the level of welfare: the taller the blocks, the higher the welfare. In population A, there are few people, but they each have a relatively high level of well-being. The A+ population is the same scenario with an addition of people who each have a lower level of well-being, but whose lives are still worth living. Despite inequalities, Parfit argues that adding interesting lives can never make an outcome worse, so the quality of the outcome in population A+ is at least as good as that in population A. Population B has the same number of individuals than the population. A+ does and these two populations have the same average well-being, but the distribution of well-being is equal in population B. Perhaps the better off in population A+ have transferred part of their well-being to the less well-off ...... middle of paper ......g children may be able to pursue other things that might increase their happiness. There are many other benefits, and birth control has already been offered in many countries (developing and developed) where it was previously inaccessible and women were mostly extremely willing and happy to use it; freedom and free will improve people's lives. Population Z isn't too far-fetched, and similar versions already exist in parts of the world, as well as in famine, disease, and war-torn regions that are much worse. Works Cited Arrhenius, Gustaf, Ryberg, Jesper and Tännsjö, Torbjörn, "The Repugnant Conclusion", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) Parfit, Derek (2004). “Overpopulation and quality of life”. In J. Ryberg and T. Tännsjö (eds.), The Repugnant Conclusion. Kluwer Academic Publishers. 7-22.