Huemer's Descriptive Argument Analysis

Huemer devises the mere addition argument to support Parfit’s repugnant conclusion, but this is not effective in practice because it presupposes important considerations for the argument to work. The mere addition argument relies on the prior belief that world A+ is superior to world A in virtue of total happiness, even though more reliable measurements prove otherwise. Huemer also uses subjective comparisons to justify the superiority of A+, so it is not able to provide a reliable measurement. As a result, the repugnant conclusion does not necessarily follow because Huemer’s first argument cannot guarantee that A+ is a better world. Huemer defended the repugnant conclusion by proposing the mere addition argument. According to the mere addition …show more content…
This conclusion should not follow because Huemer uses subjective criteria to analyze the scenarios. It is reasonable to suppose that people can be happily contented with an objectively bad life, even though the entire world is not better of in regard to welfare. I also challenge the importance of total happiness because it is possible that the world can possess greater totals once a sufficient mass is reached and yet consist of marginal lives. Clearly, it is not reasonable to still claim that the larger world is better because the state of its inhabitants is not correlated with the increases in total happiness. As a result, worlds should be compared on objective measurements consisting of average individual happiness in order to account for the discrepancy between total happiness and individual …show more content…
At the very least, world A+ should not be inferior to world A because there is nothing intrinsically wrong with life satisfaction as long as the total happiness is greater. Additionally, the individuals in world X acquire additional happiness in A+ while the new inhabitants are able to exist, so the new world is better for all members. As a result, Huemer can assert that objective measurements should not determine the better world because the inhabitants are contented with their daily lives. Huemer can also oppose the criterion on average happiness because under this theory, it is possible for a better world to exist with a huge suffering population, provided that the total average is less than a smaller population. Intuitively, many suffering people is far worse than a suffering population since there is a greater amount of suffering, so totals should be used as the main basis of