It’s totally fine that Ethics can rank A>B and C>D without ranking A vs C.
In the repugnant conclusion case, you are ranking A>B and B>C, which implies that you can rank A>C. It wouldn’t make sense to not be able to rank A>C under these circumstances.
In the example with the happy people, perhaps there is an acceptable range, say anywhere from one very happy person to 20 sort of happy people.
If you do that, then you are able to rank 19 happy people versus 20 slightly less happy ones, but you are not able to rank 20 happy people versus 21 slightly less happy ones. That isn’t logically impossible, but it leads to weird conclusions. For instance, it may mean that if you are comparing 19 people to 20, adding one unchanged person to the comparison changes it into a comparison of 20 to 21 and suddenly you are no longer able to do it. “I am not able to compare these groups” doesn’t suddenly mean that it’s not arithmetic; arithmetic can then be used to figure out what things you can and cannot compare.
In the repugnant conclusion case, you are ranking A>B and B>C, which implies that you can rank A>C. It wouldn’t make sense to not be able to rank A>C under these circumstances.
If you do that, then you are able to rank 19 happy people versus 20 slightly less happy ones, but you are not able to rank 20 happy people versus 21 slightly less happy ones. That isn’t logically impossible, but it leads to weird conclusions. For instance, it may mean that if you are comparing 19 people to 20, adding one unchanged person to the comparison changes it into a comparison of 20 to 21 and suddenly you are no longer able to do it. “I am not able to compare these groups” doesn’t suddenly mean that it’s not arithmetic; arithmetic can then be used to figure out what things you can and cannot compare.
Sorites paradoxes are everywhere, heaps, baldness, colour boundaries. We live with them just fine.
This is that, the worm is not a life, Alice is. Middle is muddled. Type difference.