Abstract
This paper raises a worry about the non-identity intuition. As one part of the non-identity problem, the non-identity intuition tells us that when choosing between bringing a person with a good life into existence and bringing a person with a great life into existence, we have moral reason to bring the person with a great life into existence. But there is a worry to be had about the non-identity intuition. Because the non-identity intuition compares future persons exclusively in regard to their well-being, the non-identity intuition values future persons solely for the well-being enjoyed by each of them. Therefore, or so the worry goes, the non-identity intuition fails to be compatible with what it means to value persons for their own sake.
Vilma: Vilma has decided to have a child. She can either conceive Fair or Sterling. Fair would have a good life and Sterling would have a great life.
Non-Identity Intuition: In the choice between bringing into existence a person with a good life or a person with a great life, we have moral reason to bring into existence the person with a great life.
The non-identity intuition stands in conflict with another popular intuition. The so-called person-affecting intuition states that an act can only be morally objectionable if an individual is rendered worse off by it. Following the person-affecting intuition, Vilma’s act of conceiving Fair is not objectionable, as it does not render Fair worse off, given that Fair would not have existed if Vilma would have chosen to conceive Sterling instead. This conclusion, however, conflicts with the non-identity intuition’s claim that Vilma has a moral reason to conceive Sterling rather than Fair.
The conflict between the non-identity intuition and the person-affecting intuition is known as the non-identity problem. Very broadly speaking, existing attempts to solve the non-identity problem fall into three categories. First, following Derek Parfit who popularized the non-identity problem, some have argued that the non-identity intuition demonstrates that the person-affecting intuition rests on a mistake and should therefore be rejected.2 Second, those who are less prepared to abandon the person-affecting intuition have attempted to reconcile both intuitions, usually by offering modified, less stringent versions of the person-affecting intuition. Third, while much less common, a number of commentators have opted to solve the conflict between both intuitions by preserving the person-affecting intuition and rejecting the non-identity intuition instead.3
Still, at least some of the commentators who find themselves in the third category and reject the non-identity intuition, consider themselves as ‘biting a bullet’:4 while they rather let go of the non-identity intuition than the person-affecting intuition, they still feel the intuitive pull of both intuitions. If it only were possible, or so it seems, they would happily affirm both. But if even those who solve the non-identity problem by rejecting the non-identity intuition may only reject the latter under duress, it seems that the non-identity intuition and its appeal are perhaps too readily accepted.
This paper casts doubt on the non-identity intuition. It takes the following tension in our philosophical thinking about the non-identity intuition as its starting point. Note that, on the one hand, there is something immediately plausible and attractive in the non-identity intuition’s implicit suggestion that improving, benefiting, and bettering lives is paramount. Because morality requires us to take seriously the well-being and suffering of individuals, it seems that by conceiving Fair, Vilma fails on a morally significant aspect: if she chooses to conceive Fair rather than Sterling, she is simply failing to take seriously the – albeit small – burdens that Fair would be experiencing, especially when compared to Sterling’s burden-free life.
Yet, on the other hand, there is something uneasy in the non-identity intuition. It seems peculiar to suggest that just because one person’s life would have less well-being than another’s, this person is somehow less apt for existence than the other. And while there may be a number of explanations for this unease, one explanation is found in the fact that we normally do not apply a yardstick to the lives of different individuals. This is because ranking individuals by the levels of well-being that they enjoy, or by anything else for that matter, does not sit right with the fact that we value individuals for their own sake, and thus value them independently of any of their features. Indeed, given that Fair and Sterling’s lives would both be worth living and would both be rich in loves and hates and ups and downs, why precisely should we agree that the levels of well-being in Fair and Sterling’s lives are morally relevant when choosing whom to bring into existence?
Starting from this tension between caring about the bettering of lives and caring about refraining from ranking lives, this paper presses one particular worry against the non-identity intuition. This worry suggests that because the non-identity intuition values future persons for the sake of the well-being which they would enjoy in their lives, it is incompatible with what it means to value persons for their own sake. In light of this incompatibility, or so the paper concludes, the non-identity intuition is not only less appealing than often thought, but is ultimately morally problematic.
The paper’s discussion proceeds in five sections. The first and second section sketch the first and second pole of the tension respectively, while showing why two existing objections to the non-identity intuition are unsuccessful. The third section outlines the worry that the non-identity intuition is incompatible with what it means to value persons for their own sake, which is then pressed against two defenses of the non-identity intuition in the fourth section. The fifth section addresses a final objection and concludes.
1 The First Pole
More needs to be said on the previous claim that the non-identity intuition may just harbor a tension between two deeply plausible moral ideas: between caring about the bettering of people’s lives and caring about refraining from ranking people in a way which may conflict with what it means to value persons for their own sake.
Evidently, the first pole of this tension is reflected in the fact that the non-identity intuition refers to Fair and Sterling’s differential levels of well-being in order to establish that one has reason to bring Sterling rather than Fair into existence. Yet the centrality of this concern for well-being is further brought out by considering how one existing objection to the non-identity intuition falls flat, precisely because it fails to register this point.
There is a debunking response to the non-identity problem which suggests that the strong intuitive appeal of the non-identity intuition can be explained by the implicit assumptions we tend to make regarding Vilma’s character. The defective character explanation proposes that we are attracted to the non-identity intuition because we implicitly assume that choosing to bring Fair rather than Sterling into existence is indicative of a character failing on Vilma’s part. It is a choice which reveals Vilma as being insensitive to suffering,5 as being affectively cold because she is failing to emotionally react to the fact that Fair would be worse off,6 as failing in her role as a parent,7 or as having a defective attitude towards her moral obligations.8
While the defective character explanation helpfully points out that our intuitions should not always be taken at face value, it cannot fully explain the non-identity intuition. This is because it fails to engage with the predominant understanding of the non-identity intuition, on which Vilma’s choice and character are irrelevant. Rather, the thought is that our reason for bringing Sterling rather than Fair into existence arises exclusively from facts about Fair and Sterling, i.e., from the fact that Fair would have a good life and Sterling would have a great life. Indeed, this also means that the defective character explanation cannot explain why, for cases in which Vilma’s character is stipulated to be laudable, people are still attracted to the non-identity intuition.
Thus, the defective character explanation cannot explain the non-identity intuition because it fails to reflect the first pole of the tension. It does not register that it is precisely because we care about people and their well-being, and because we want them to be as happy as possible, that it seems plausible to think that we have reason to bring Sterling rather than Fair into existence, and thus plausible to affirm the non-identity intuition.
2 The Second Pole
The second pole of the tension suggests that the non-identity intuition may rank people in a way which is potentially inappropriate. While this needs more motivation than the first pole, this concern has already been pointed to by the so-called expressivist objection, which has been advanced against previous versions of the non-identity intuition.
To begin with, note that less recent discussions of the non-identity intuition often proceeded in the following way: They introduced cases in which one is choosing between bringing either a person with a disability or a person without a disability into existence. They then stipulated that because a person’s life would be negatively affected by having a disability, the person with a disability will necessarily have a lower level of well-being than the person without a disability. Thus, or so they concluded, one has reason to bring the person without a disability into existence.9
Pro-disability scholars have firmly pushed back against such discussions, with two responses worth mentioning in this context.10 First, they have rejected the claim that people with disabilities necessarily have a lower overall level of well-being than people without disabilities.11 This can be granted, and has been granted in more recent discussions of the non-identity intuition, as we might simply stipulate that Fair’s life in Vilma would include burdens such as being trapped in an unfulfilling job, and suffering deaths among her loved ones. In comparison, Sterling’s life would be free from such concerns.
Second, pro-disability scholars offered the expressivist objection, which states that those who subscribe to the claim that we have reason to bring a person without a disability rather than a person with a disability into existence express an objectionable attitude towards people with disabilities and thus fail to respect them appropriately.12 This is because affirming that we should bring a person without a disability rather than a person with a disability into existence implies that persons with disabilities are viewed as being of lower value or as somehow less worthy of existence than persons without disabilities. Thus, people with disabilities are given less respect than people without disabilities. Further, some have argued that this intrinsically objectionable lack of respect is compounded by the fact that the latter is likely to also be harmful to people with disabilities, as it may cause emotional and psychological harm, or expose them to discriminatory speech or practices.13
By offering cases like Vilma, which avoid the first reply, recent discussions of the non-identity intuition are seemingly also sidestepping the expressivist objection. Yet this may not be entirely successful. Given that the very structure of non-identity cases has not changed, the idea at the core of the expressivist objection may still be pressed against Vilma. It remains true that one future person is implicitly labeled to be of lower value or less worthy of existence than another. In light of this, affirming that Fair’s lower level of well-being provides us with a moral reason to bring Sterling rather than Fair into existence still appears to express an objectionable attitude towards people with low or mediocre levels of well-being and thus to manifest a lack of respect towards them. Possibly, this may even be thought to reinforce existing biases against those who fall short of society’s perfectionist standard of living a professionally and personally successful life – biases which may sometimes suggest that such individuals are to be pitied, patronized, and avoided, rather than to be provided with the same basic respect, societal recognition, and peer support which is awarded to those who excel in their lives.
For two reasons, this only provides limited support for the second pole of our tension, and thus for the claim that the non-identity intuition may be inappropriately ranking individuals. First, the expressivist objection is controversial, as it has been equally argued that those who support the non-identity intuition never express any lack of respect towards existing people.14 Second, and more significantly, even if the expressivist objection is granted, the non-identity intuition may plausibly be justified by independent, overriding reasons of well-being, which apply above and beyond the fact that its proponents might fail to expressly respect certain groups of people.15 This may render the non-identity intuition all-things-considered justified based on the first pole’s concern for the well-being of individuals, whether or not its proponents respect existing people.
But there is no need for the expressivist objection to carry the day. Rather, this section merely motivates the second pole of the tension and thus the worry that the non-identity intuition may be ranking people inappropriately. The latter will be spelled out in the remainder of this piece.
3 The Worry
This section outlines the main worry of this paper, which proposes that the non-identity intuition’s focus on well-being is at odds with what it means to value persons for their own sake.
Well-Being Assumption: All other things being equal, when deciding whom to bring into existence, an individual’s level of well-being is a morally relevant, reason-giving feature.
In cases like Vilma, in which no other considerations are present, the well-being assumption implies that an individual’s level of well-being is the only morally relevant, reason-giving feature, and should therefore determine one’s choice. Thus, it underlies the non-identity intuition’s claim that, in Vilma, one ought to bring Sterling rather than Fair into existence.
Although the well-being assumption is at the core of the non-identity problem, it is rarely subjected to direct examination. Of course, those who attempt to solve the non-identity problem by arguing against the non-identity intuition and in favor of the person-affecting intuition, are implicitly rejecting the well-being assumption. But it is precisely because this kind of rejection proceeds implicitly and automatically, and follows from arguments given upstream, that the well-being assumption, taken by itself, is never really examined and dismantled. This means that especially for those who are already sympathetic to the non-identity intuition, the well-being assumption continues to exert intuitive force.
This section undermines this intuitive force. It suggests that the well-being assumption, and therefore the non-identity intuition, should be rejected because they fall short of adhering to a fundamental moral desideratum regarding how we value persons.
There are questions about what kind of value persons have, about what properties give rise to the value of persons, and about what constitutes the metaphysical grounds for this value.16 But no matter what stance we take on these questions, it often seems agreed upon that when valuing persons, we value them for who they are, rather than for the sake of anything else. That is, we value them intrinsically, or for their own sake.17 Alternatively, one might say that we value persons non-derivatively, unconditionally, or as ends-in-themselves.
The Desideratum: In order for moral principles to be compatible with what it means to value persons for their own sake, they must refrain from valuing persons for the sake of anything other than themselves.18
In particular, in order to adhere to the desideratum, moral principles need to refrain from valuing persons both instrumentally and extrinsically. First, valuing a person instrumentally means valuing them for the sake of their effects, or as a means to an end. For instance, a moral principle which permits the killing of one person in order to use their organs to save five others values people instrumentally, for the sake of their organs’ ability to save others and bring about a greater good. This is captured by a well-known objection to the moral theory of utilitarianism, which tells us that the right action is the action which maximizes well-being. This objection rejects utilitarianism because it values people instrumentally, or as a means to the end of maximizing the aggregate amount of well-being in the world.19
Second, moral principles may fail to value persons for their own sake, even when they do not value persons instrumentally. This is because they may still value persons extrinsically, or for the sake of something other than themselves.20 They may, for instance, value persons for the sake of their relation with something else, or for the sake of some of their features. A religious moral principle which values persons because they are God’s children values persons extrinsically, for the sake of their relation to God, rather than for their own sake. And a perfectionist, Nietzschean moral principle which values persons for the creative excellence manifested in their lives values persons extrinsically because it values them for the sake of one of their features – their creative excellence – rather than for their own sake. It is worth mentioning that since valuing persons instrumentally also values persons for the sake of something other than themselves, valuing persons instrumentally is technically a subcategory of valuing persons extrinsically. Still, for the purposes of this discussion, it is helpful to keep both types distinct and to reserve the term ‘valuing extrinsically’ for the non-instrumental, non-intrinsic valuing of persons.
One consideration needs highlighting. In everyday life, individuals may sometimes value others both instrumentally and extrinsically. They may value their barista as a means to getting their morning coffee, or they may value their teacher for their academic brilliance. But the desideratum is not concerned with such individual attitudes, or with the question of whether such attitudes are objectionable. Indeed, this was the concern of the expressivist objection. Rather, the desideratum is concerned with moral principles, and makes a more general point about the content that we want our moral principles to have.
In fact, the remainder of this section proposes that the well-being assumption, when applied to cases like Vilma, is incompatible with the desideratum and thus should be rejected as a moral principle. This is because in such cases, the well-being assumption values future persons extrinsically, or for the sake of the amount of well-being which they would enjoy in their lives.
From the outset, two points should be kept in mind. First, we cannot actually value future persons for their own sake, given that future persons do not exist and may never come into existence. But this is not what the desideratum requires of us. The desideratum states that in order to be compatible with what it means to value persons for their own sake, moral principles should refrain from valuing persons for the sake of anything other than themselves. It is possible, however, to affirm moral principles which value future persons instrumentally or extrinsically; consider a moral principle which permits us, all other things being equal, to bring future persons into existence with the sole aim of using them as a cheap source of labor.
Second, the desideratum is distinct from the person-affecting intuition, and posits a more attractive and less contentious claim than the latter. The person-affecting intuition, which states that moral reasons are only provided by actions that affect individuals in some way or another, makes the comprehensive assertion that states of affairs, the environment, and non-human animals cannot provide us with moral reasons. The desideratum makes no such claim. It does not tell us what thing in the world may or may not give rise to moral reasons. It merely asks us to ensure that our moral principles refrain from valuing persons instrumentally and extrinsically.
Before discussing whether a focus on the well-being of future persons violates the desideratum, it is instructive to reflect on the well-being of existing persons. Specifically, it is instructive to reflect on when and why the well-being of existing persons provides us with moral reasons.
Indeed, some might have been puzzled by the initial tension introduced above, which tells us that caring about a person’s well-being can come apart from what it means to value persons for their own sake. After all, it may easily seem as if valuing someone for their own sake just means valuing their well-being and considering their well-being to be reason-giving. But this is not quite correct. A person’s well-being may provide us with moral reasons in some instances, such as when distributing medical aid, but fail to do so in others, such as when allocating basic moral and legal rights.
Still, by drawing on the above claim that we value persons for their own sake, it is possible to give a rough-and-ready explanation of when and why a person’s well-being provides us with moral reasons. It is because we value each person for their own sake, that we want each person to do as well as possible and value their well-being. This means that we value a person’s well-being because we value the person, and never the other way round.
Based on this, we can see why a person’s well-being provides us with moral reasons in some cases, but not in others: A person’s well-being provides us with moral reasons because we value the person’s well-being for the person’s own sake.21 So, if valuing a person for her own sake gives us reasons to take their well-being into consideration in a specific case, then their well-being, too, provides us with moral reasons. For instance, when distributing medical aid, a person’s injury and resulting low level of well-being often provides us with moral reasons because we want to ease each person’s suffering, for their own sake, and are in the position to do so. Thus, we consider the person who has the greatest injury and the most urgent need for treatment to provide us with the strongest reasons and thus to have the strongest claim to aid.
In other cases, it is precisely because we value a person for their own sake, that their well-being does not provide us with moral reasons. When allocating basic moral and legal rights, such as a right to be rescued or against being killed, valuing people for their own sake does not give us reasons to take their well-being into consideration. Indeed, a moral principle which would allocate such rights based on well-being would value people extrinsically and fail the desideratum.22
We can now turn to future persons, and to the question of whether a focus on the well-being of future persons violates the desideratum. In particular, we can turn to future persons whose lives would be worth living, as seen in the standard non-identity case of Vilma. Crucially, this leads us to the main worry of this paper, which states that because the well-being assumption fails to adhere to the desideratum in cases like Vilma, the well-being assumption fails to be compatible with what it means to value persons for their own sake.
The well-being assumption tells us that in cases like Vilma, well-being provides us with reasons to act and is the value based on which we should choose whom to bring into existence. But, as seen above, the value of well-being is derivative from the value of persons, and only provides us with moral reasons if the value which a person has for her own sake grounds those reasons of well-being. So, for whose sake would well-being provide us with moral reasons in Vilma? It cannot be Fair or Sterling. As Fair would have a good life, it seems perfectly acceptable to bring Fair into existence, for Fair’s sake, and the same applies to Sterling. This means that although the well-being assumption attributes value to the amounts of well-being which would be enjoyed by Fair and Sterling, it does not derive this value from the value which Fair and Sterling have for their own sake. It does not derive the value of well-being from the value of a particular person for whose sake we would care about such well-being, instead valuing the amounts of well-being as enjoyed by future persons independently of that. Thus, it departs from the above account of when and why the well-being of persons provides us with moral reasons.
Perhaps this is pointing out the obvious. It is the very goal of many discussions of the non-identity intuition to demonstrate that well-being matters, even when no particular person is adversely affected and the person-affecting intuition does not apply. And this goal is best reached by discussing the well-being of future persons who cannot (yet) be valued for their own sake. Still, we should be highly suspicious of any departures from the above account of when and why the well-being of persons provides us with moral reasons, if only because of the fact that, when applied to existing persons, such departures quickly steer us into dangerously utilitarian waters. If we take the amounts of well-being as enjoyed by persons to provide us with moral reasons, rather than persons themselves, we have reason to save the life of happy Holly instead of the life of unhappy Ursula, rather than to give both of them an equal chance to be saved. Equally, we would have reason to kill one person if it allows us to save five others with their organs. And, as stated above, the fact that the well-being assumption is tackling future persons, who cannot be valued for their own sake, does not render it immune to the worry that it may fall short of adhering to the desideratum. Specifically, the desideratum requires that we refrain from positing moral principles that value persons for the sake of anything other than themselves. But the well-being assumption, in cases like Vilma, cannot deliver on this. It tells us to choose between Fair and Sterling based on the amounts of well-being that would be enjoyed by each of them, over and above the significance which their well-being would have for each of them, for their own sake.
This can be explained in more detail. Although Fair and Sterling do not yet exist and may never exist, one already knows that, once brought into existence, Fair and Sterling would be persons and would be valued for their own sake. And one knows that both of them would have good lives, well worth living for each of them – Fair’s life for Fair’s sake and Sterling’s life for Sterling’s sake. Given that Fair and Sterling would both be valued for their own sake, once brought into existence, and given that both of them would have good lives worth living for their own sake, Sterling’s greater amount of well-being and Fair’s merely good amount of well-being do not provide us with moral reasons, for each of their own sakes. For each of their own sakes, all is well, since both Fair and Sterling would live good lives. In spite of this, the well-being assumption is taking Sterling’s greater amount of well-being to provide moral reasons for bringing Sterling rather than Fair into existence. Therefore, it is attributing moral value to the well-being enjoyed by Fair and Sterling, over and above the relevance which Fair and Sterling’s well-being would have for Fair, for Fair’s sake and for Sterling, for Sterling’s sake. But this means that the well-being assumption is valuing Fair and Sterling for the sake of the amount of well-being that each of them would enjoy. The amount of well-being which Fair and Sterling would enjoy in their lives, however, is but one of the features of Fair and Sterling and of who they would be as persons, once brought into existence. Because it values Fair and Sterling for the amount of well-being they would enjoy, the well-being assumption values Fair and Sterling extrinsically, or for the sake of something other than themselves.23 Therefore, the well-being assumption fails to adhere to the desideratum.
Flat-footedly, one might say that the well-being assumption is just like an analogous ‘extroversion assumption.’ Such an assumption would stipulate that when all lives are worth living, a person’s degree of extroversion is a morally relevant, reason-giving feature. For instance, if one is able to bring either Ina or Exa into existence, who would both have lives worth living, but Ina would be mildly extroverted and Exa would be greatly extroverted, the extroversion assumption states that one should bring Exa rather than Ina into existence. But this seems nonsensical. Just like the well-being assumption, the extroversion assumption values future persons extrinsically, for the sake of something other than themselves, and thus violates the desideratum.
So far, it has been argued that in cases like Vilma, in which the lives of future persons are worth living, the well-being assumption is incompatible with the desideratum. But things are different in cases in which, unlike in Vilma, the lives of future persons are not worth living. In fact, the well-being assumption can be shown to be compatible with the desideratum in such cases.
This needs explanation. Note that, as it stands, the argument of this section is vulnerable to the following worry, which plays on the alleged similarity between cases with lives worth living and cases with lives not worth living. Consider an inverted non-identity case in which one could bring either Rue or Mis into existence.24 Rue and Mis’s lives would not be worth living, but Mis’s life would be even more miserable than Rue’s. Intuitively, it seems that one should not bring either of them into existence, but that, if one must create one of them, one has reason to bring Rue rather than Mis into existence. After all, Rue would have a less painful life than Mis. In this inverted non-identity case, it seems innocuous to compare one’s respective moral reasons against bringing Rue and Mis into existence, and to then conclude that one’s reason against bringing Mis into existence is stronger than one’s reason against bringing Rue into existence. But then, or so the worry goes, why is it likewise not innocuous to compare one’s moral reasons for bringing Fair and Sterling into existence in the standard non-identity case, and to conclude that one’s reason for bringing Sterling into existence is stronger? After all, just like Rue would have a better life than Mis, Sterling would have a better life than Fair. But if this seems plausible, perhaps it is a mistake to propose that the well-being assumption violates the desideratum.
To answer this worry, we need to be able to explain why well-being is reason-giving in the inverted non-identity case, despite not being reason-giving in the standard non-identity case. To this aim, let’s start from the so-called procreation asymmetry. The procreation asymmetry states that, intuitively, the fact that a future person’s life would not be worth living gives us a reason against bringing them into existence, while, intuitively, the fact that a future person’s life would be worth living does not give us a reason in favor of bringing them into existence. The procreation asymmetry, however, merely observes our intuitions about procreation and is in need of justification. Just why are our reasons so asymmetric?
In effect, a justification of the procreation asymmetry can be arrived at by returning to the desideratum.25 Let us start from the second leg, which states that the fact that a future person’s life would be worth living does not give us a reason to bring them into existence. In the earlier parts of this section, it was argued that the well-being assumption’s claim that Sterling’s higher level of well-being provides us with a moral reason to choose Sterling over Fair, values both of them extrinsically and thus violates the desideratum. But the same can be said about a case in which one could bring a single future person into existence and their life would be worth living. This is because the suggestion that a future person S’s level of well-being provides us with a moral reason to bring them into existence, does not consider the fact that S would be a person, valued for her own sake, as a reason for bringing S into existence.26 Instead, it considers the fact that S would have a certain level of well-being as a reason for bringing S into existence. But this values S extrinsically, for the amount of well-being that S would enjoy in their life, and thus stands in violation of the desideratum. For our purposes, it is just as if we would consider S’s level of extroversion as a reason for bringing S into existence – this, too, would violate the desideratum.
Yet the desideratum also sheds light on the first leg of the procreation asymmetry. It illustrates why we have reason against bringing S into existence, if S’s life would not be worth living. It is precisely because we value persons for their own sake, rather than for the amount of well-being that they enjoy in their lives, that a future person’s well-being provides us with moral reasons in cases in which their life would not be worth living. For S’s own sake, and because we feel for S, we want to spare S the pain of undergoing a life with an extremely low level of well-being. Thus, for S’s own sake, we have reason to ensure that S does not have to undergo such a life, and therefore a reason against bringing them into existence. In cases in which the lives of future persons are not worth living, the well-being assumption is compatible with the desideratum.
With this explanation of the procreation asymmetry in hand, the previous worry can be answered. The fact that a future person’s life would not be worth living gives us a reason against bringing them into existence, for their own sake, while the fact that a future person’s life would be worth living does not give us a reason in favor of bringing them into existence, for their own sake. This means that we have a reason against bringing Rue into existence and a reason against bringing Mis into existence. We can compare both reasons and conclude that the latter is stronger than the former. But we do not have respective reasons in favor of bringing Fair and Sterling into existence, and therefore cannot compare them. In effect, this reveals a non-identity asymmetry: We have a reason to bring into existence the less miserable out of two persons for their own sake, if we must create one of them, but we have no reason to bring into existence the happier out of two persons, for their own sake, if we may create one of them. Ultimately, the inverted non-identity case fails to undermine the claim that the well-being assumption violates the desideratum in standard non-identity cases like Vilma.
Before wrapping up, note that because this section examines the well-being assumption, it stays silent on what prospective parents may or may not do. Nonetheless, some may worry that it comes with an unwelcome implication. It may seem to imply that prospective parents who choose which embryo to implant based on specific characteristics, e.g., their level of happiness, degree of extroversion, or predisposition to develop certain diseases, value their future children extrinsically and inappropriately.
In response, recall that this discussion is concerned with the question of which moral principles are compatible with the desideratum, rather than with individual attitudes. So, the question is really whether a moral principle that permits prospective parents to choose which future person to bring into existence based on personal preferences adheres to the desideratum. It may well do so. Others have suggested that because bringing a child into existence is a deeply personal business, parents may often be permitted to make a choice based on their own preferences.27 Parents may, for instance, wish for their child to share certain features with them, such as being very physically capable or being deaf, or wish for their child to lack certain features that they have, such as a predisposition to certain diseases. So while more careful analysis is necessary, it seems at least plausible that a principle which carves out space for parental preferences may adhere to the desideratum: It comes with an independent justification regarding parental self-determination and, unlike the well-being assumption, never stands in direct conflict with what it means to value persons for their own sake.
All in all, whether the expressivist objection’s concern for individual attitudes is correct in stating that the non-identity intuition is disrespectful towards those whose lives are not perfect is one worry. Another is that the non-identity intuition fails to be compatible with how we value persons more generally. As long as the lives of future persons would be worth living, there is nothing in the idea that we value persons for their own sake, which says that we also have reason to maximize the well-being which future persons would enjoy in their lives.28 It is rather the opposite. As long as the lives of future persons would be worth living, taking the amounts of well-being that future persons would enjoy in their lives as reason-giving means that we value those future persons for this well-being, and thus for something other than themselves.
4 Arguments for the Well-Being Assumption
Oftentimes, the non-identity intuition and its underlying well-being assumption are presupposed rather than established. Still, two arguments – one less and one more promising – set out to justify them, and do so while affirming that we value persons for their own sake. This section examines and rejects both of these arguments.
If prospective parents have moral reasons to care about the potential for well-being of their future children, then it would seem that they should also have reason to aim to have children who are more advantaged rather than leave this to chance or nature.30
is compatible [..] with respecting persons as ends in themselves. We are not treating a future child merely as a means when we aim to have the child who will enjoy the most advantaged life.31
In response to the idea of procreative beneficence, critics have long highlighted that Savulescu and Kahane fail to offer an argument in support of their claim that a future person’s level of well-being is morally relevant when deciding whom to bring into existence.32 Still, it is worth spelling out why procreative beneficence, contrary to Savulescu and Kahane’s declaration, also fails to be compatible ‘with respecting persons as ends in themselves.’ This is not because procreative beneficence values future persons instrumentally, or as a means, but because it values them extrinsically, for the sake of the well-being enjoyed by each of them.
Plausibly, one aims for the specific child Cn, which one will bring into existence, to be the happiest they could possibly be. But if one cares about the well-being of one’s future children and wants them to do as well as possible, one cares for the potential well-being of one’s future child C1 for C1’s sake, for the potential well-being of one’s future child C2 for C2’s sake, for the potential well-being of one’s future child C3 for C3’s sake, etc. That is, one’s aim to have the child with the highest level of well-being would always be individuated to the specific future child (respectively, C1, C2, C3, etc.) that would be brought into existence.
If, contrary to this suggestion, and following Savulescu and Kahane’s proposal, one aims to have the happiest child between C1, C2, and C3, then one is diverging from caring for the well-being of one’s respective future child C1, C2, or C3, each for their own sake. Instead, one cares about having the child Cn that would have the greatest amount of well-being in their life – whoever they would be among C1, C2, C3, etc. Such a view, however, is valuing future persons like C1, C2, and C3 extrinsically, because it values them for the sake of the amounts of well-being enjoyed by each of them – something which is at odds with ‘respecting persons as ends in themselves,’ and at odds with the desideratum.
Now to the second, more promising justification for the well-being assumption, offered by Johann Frick. Frick explicitly sets out to avoid the worry that the non-identity intuition fails to value people for their own sake. In fact, Frick specifically proposes that a person’s well-being matters because we care for each person for their own sake. As Frick states, our reasons to care about a person’s well-being are ‘bearer-regarding,’ and rooted in ‘the existence of S, a being with moral status.’33
Containing two steps, Frick’s argument in favor of the well-being assumption begins by explaining that for each future person, ‘we have moral reason to want her life to go as well as possible in an absolute sense, unconstrained by questions of practical feasibility.’34 Here, wanting someone’s life to go as well as possible in an absolute sense seems to refer to the fact that we regret that people have burdens in their life and instead wish for their lives to be maximally happy and burden-free, even if this is not realistically possible. For instance, we might wish for someone who lives with a hereditary disease to be free of this burden, for their sake, despite the fact that their genetic makeup renders this impossible. Along the same lines, or so Frick’s proposal goes, if Fair is brought into existence, we would regret that Fair’s life is not going as well as possible in an absolute sense, because, for Fair’s sake, we wish that she would have an even better life. This is the case even if, realistically, Fair’s life could not have been happier. Yet if Sterling is brought into existence, there is no such regret, since Sterling’s life would already go as well as possible in an absolute sense. Therefore, or so Frick argues, bringing Sterling into existence would better fulfill the bearer-regarding reason that we have for wanting each person’s life to go as well as possible in an absolute sense, which we have precisely because we value each person for their own sake.
However, while Frick subsequently concludes that ‘we should aim to select that person whose life we expect to go absolutely best,’ this conclusion does not yet follow.35 It does not yet follow since our moral reason to want a person’s life to go as well as possible in an absolute sense is a bearer-regarding reason. Qua bearer-regarding reason, it does not apply to the future person Cn, whomever this person may be, but is individuated according to each possible bearer: it applies to one’s possible future child C1 for C1’s sake, to one’s possible future child C2 for C2’s sake, to one’s possible future child C3 for C3’s sake, etc. Thus, it has not yet been shown that we have reason to select the person whose life would go best in an absolute sense.
[A]ny outcome in which I create a new person S is subject to a moral standard (that of S’s well-being), which is grounded in the existence of S, a being with moral status. This moral standard is satisfied if S has a life that is worth living, and failed if she has a life that is not worth living.36
Principle of Standard Selection: If I have a choice between bringing about Outcome 1 to which standard X applies, or bringing about Outcome 2 to which standard Y applies, and
- (i)standard X and standard Y are standards of the same kind,
- (ii)standard Y is satisfied to a higher degree in Outcome 2 than standard X is satisfied in Outcome 1, and
- (iii)all else is equal,
then I have contrastive reason to bring about Outcome 2 rather than Outcome 1.
Selection Requirement: In a choice between creating two possible persons, I have contrastive moral reason to create that person S for whom I can better satisfy the moral standard [the standard of S’s well-being] that will obtain if I create that person.37
The principle of standard selection tells us that even though Fair and Sterling would bring different moral standards into existence, we have a contrastive reason to bring about the outcome which contains the standard that can be satisfied to a higher degree. Thus, we should accept the selection requirement, and have reason to bring Sterling rather than Fair into existence.
Notably, the argument’s second, outcome-based step moves away from Frick’s previous commitment to bearer-regarding reasons. For when looking at the selection requirement, it is no longer true that ‘[o]ur reasons to make it the case that S is happy [are] bearer-regarding not state-regarding reasons.’38 Instead, the contrastive reason for bringing about the outcome which better satisfies the standard of S’s well-being, whoever S will be, appears to provide us with a state-regarding reason.
By itself, it may seem innocuous for Frick’s argument to venture into state-regarding reasons. But this changes once we recognize that such venturing means that Frick’s argument, too, ends up valuing future persons extrinsically. In effect, we may grant the principle of standard selection, which says nothing about persons. But if we value persons for their own sake and put stock in the desideratum, it is unclear why we would sign up to the selection requirement when looking at cases like Vilma, in which the lives of future persons are worth living. In Vilma, positing that we have a reason to aim to better satisfy the moral standard of S’s well-being – in this case, the moral standard of [Fair’s and Sterling’s] well-being – no matter who S will be, means that we are no longer valuing Fair’s well-being for Fair’s sake, and Sterling’s well-being for Sterling’s sake. Rather, the selection requirement assigns moral value to the amounts of well-being enjoyed by Fair and Sterling over and above the value which this well-being has for Fair for Fair’s and Sterling for Sterling’s sake. Thus, the selection requirement, too, values Fair and Sterling extrinsically and for the sake of the amount of well-being which each of them would enjoy.
What is really at stake here can be further illustrated by applying the selection requirement to a very different kind of case. Consider choosing between whether a hamster is bringing pup Ave into existence, which would have a good life, or is bringing pup Brill into existence, which would have a great life. Once brought into existence, we would value pup Ave’s well-being for Ave’s sake, and pup Brill’s well-being for Brill’s sake. Indeed, given the limited insight we have into the minds and lives of hamsters, some may think that their well-being is all that we can reasonably care about when caring about hamsters for their own sake. Thus, it may seem plausible to affirm the selection requirement for such a case, and to accept that we have a contrastive moral reason to choose Brill over Ave, given that we can better satisfy the moral standard that will obtain if Brill is brought into existence. At the very least though, we can make a weaker, merely comparative observation: When contrasting procreative cases involving hamsters and procreative cases involving human beings, it seems more plausible to apply the selection requirement to cases with hamsters than to cases with human beings.
Let me explain. What it means to value some being for their own sake can depend on what kind of being they are. While valuing a hamster for their own sake may – let us say – mean nothing more than to value their well-being, valuing a person for their own sake does not work in the same way. We all know what it is like to be a person. And valuing another person for their own sake means valuing them for who they are as a person, rather than for anything else. In light of this, taking a person’s well-being to give rise to moral reasons in a case, despite the fact that valuing the person for their own sake does not give rise to such reasons, means reducing our valuing of a person to valuing just their well-being. It means valuing a person for the sake of their well-being, and thus for the sake of something other than themselves.
Ultimately, and despite being promising at first, Frick’s argument in favor of the non-identity intuition and its underlying well-being assumption remains at odds with the desideratum, and with what it means to value persons for their own sake.39
5 Concluding Thoughts
Before wrapping up, it is important to attend to an objection which is often raised against arguments which reject the non-identity intuition. This objection insists that the conclusions which we arrive at once we reject the non-identity intuition, make such a rejection untenable. Such conclusions may be found in comparatively realistic cases, such as Depletion, in which one can either use up resources in the present, or conserve resources for the benefit of future generations, or in slightly less realistic cases, such as Buttons, in which one can either press a button and bring a million people with great lives into existence, or press another button and bring a million people with mediocre lives into existence.40 In either case, a rejection of the non-identity intuition leads us to what is deemed to be the intuitively wrong conclusion, i.e., that it is permissible to use up all the resources in the present, rendering the lives of future people more difficult, and that it is permissible to bring into existence a million people with mediocre lives, rather than a million people with great lives.
Yet adopting the non-identity intuition purely because it allows us to deliver certain conclusions is inadvisable, for four reasons. First, note that in order to be able to advocate for policies which, in cases like Depletion, ensure the well-being of future generations, we do not need to accept the non-identity intuition. Recall that the above discussion explicitly affirms the well-being assumption for cases in which, unlike in Vilma, the lives of future persons are not worth living. For the sake of each future person, we have reason to ensure that their lives would be worth living. Yet this already goes a very long way towards accommodating cases like Depletion. It means that we have reason to preserve resources and to combat climate change in order to avoid that the lives of future people are rendered not worth living by, e.g., natural catastrophes, rising sea levels, or a lack of resources. In effect, it seems like a tall order to ensure that no future lives will be marred in this way.
Second, it has been argued that we have a range of other reasons for safeguarding the well-being of future people, and thus for wanting to implement policies which preserve resources and combat climate change. For instance, we may have reasons for valuing humanity and its flourishing for its own sake, as well as reasons to ensure humanity’s survival in order to give meaning to our current lives and to have confidence in the value of human activity.41
Third, even if we reject the non-identity intuition, we are still able to explain much of its appeal in real-life cases by way of the defective character explanation, as sketched in the first section. Possibly, we condemn those who willfully choose policies which impose harm on future persons not because they are acting contrary to the non-identity intuition, but because we assume that they are of morally questionable character. Let me explain. While it may be, all other things being equal, permissible to bring about populations with a mediocre level of well-being rather than populations with a high level of well-being, an agent’s permissibility to bring about populations with a mediocre level of well-being may be affected and altered by other moral concerns. For instance, the agent’s action may be rendered impermissible if it is based on reasons and motivations which fail to adhere to the desideratum, and thus fail to be compatible with what it means to value people for their own sake, e.g., because the agent takes no care to bring into existence a population with lives worth living, and only accidentally ends up doing so.
Fourth, this leaves us with cases like Buttons. Some might be steadfast in their claim that it would be morally objectionable to bring a million people with mediocre lives rather than a million people with great lives into existence.42 Still, conclusions are not all that matters. While we obviously want our moral principles to be able to deliver what we consider to be the intuitively correct conclusions, moral principles are always part of a larger nexus of theoretical, normative commitments. And when determining moral principles, we generally strive for those principles to cohere with those other normative commitments, especially if they are as fundamental as a concern for appropriately valuing persons. This means that if a moral principle, such as the well-being assumption, and the intuitions which support it, such as Buttons, fail to cohere with a fundamental normative commitment, such as a commitment regarding how we value persons, this should at least give us pause. After all, counter-intuitive conclusions can often be explicated via alternative routes, or shown to be mistaken, while foundational normative commitments are less flexible.
All in all, the aim of this discussion was to cast doubt on the non-identity intuition, which is regularly presupposed, but rarely probed. In particular, the paper proceeded by exploring the suspicion, already raised by the expressivist objection, that the non-identity intuition may be inappropriately ranking or valuing persons. It concluded that such a suspicion is, indeed, well justified. Because it stipulates that the well-being enjoyed by future persons provides us with moral reasons when choosing whom to bring into existence in cases like Vilma, the non-identity intuition values future persons extrinsically, and for the sake of the amount of well-being enjoyed by each of them. Therefore, it falls short of the desideratum that moral principles should be compatible with what it means to value persons for their own sake.
Acknowledgements
For comments and discussion, I am thankful to Ralf Bader, Sebastien Bishop, Johann Frick, William Levine, Chong-Ming Lim, Adriano Mannino, Véronique Munoz-Dardé, Korbinian Rüger, and Hannah Tierney, as well as two anonymous reviewers. I’m also grateful to audiences at the 2nd nyu Philosophical Bioethics Workshop, the Munich-Berkeley Workshop in Population Ethics, and the Society for Applied Philosophy’s Annual Conference at St Anne’s College, Oxford.
Biographical Note
Jessica J.T. Fischer is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bristol.
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For the purposes of this discussion, how good a person’s life is, is assumed to track the person’s level of well-being. No particular theory of well-being is presupposed.
David Boonin, The Non-identity Problem and the Ethics of Future People (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), David Heyd, “The Intractability of the Nonidentity Problem,” in Harming Future Persons, ed. M. Roberts and D. Wasserman (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009), 3–25. This is but a strongly simplified sketch of the different solutions to the non-identity problem.
Label found in Heyd, “The Intractability,” 5,17, and Boonin, The Non-identity Problem, 191.
Ben Bramble, “The Defective Character Solution to the Non-Identity Problem,” Journal of Philosophy 118, no.9 (2021), 504–520.
James J. Delaney, “Revisiting the Non-Identity Problem and the Virtues of Parenthood,” American Journal of Bioethics 12, no.4 (April 2012), 24–26; David Wasserman, “The Nonidentity Problem, Disability, and the Role Morality of Prospective Parents,” Ethics 116, no.1 (October 2005), 132–52.
Robert Noggle, “Impossible Obligations and the Non-Identity Problem,” Philosophical Studies 176, (June 2019), 2371–2390.
See, for instance, Parfit, Reasons and Persons.
For an overview of the debate, including its ramifications for political justice, see Sean Aas, “Evaluative Diversity and the (Ir)Relevance of Well-Being,” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability, ed. A. Cureton and D. Wasserman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).
Barnes, Elizabeth. 2009. “Disability, Minority, and Difference,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 26, no. 4: 337–355. See also See Adrienne Asch and David Wasserman, “Where Is the Sin in Synecdoche? Prenatal Testing and the Parent-Child Relationship,” in Quality of Life and Human Difference: Genetic Testing, Health Care, and Disability, ed. David Wasserman, Jerome Bickenbach, and Robert Wachbroit, 172–216 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 181–182.
Asch and Wasserman, “Where is the Sin in Synecdoche?,” Christopher Gyngell and Thomas Douglas, “Selecting Against Disability: The Liberal Eugenic Challenge and the Argument from Cognitive Diversity,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 35, no.2 (May 2018), 319–340, Erik Parens and Adrienne Asch, “The disability rights critique of prenatal genetic testing: reflections and recommendations,” The Hastings Centre Report 29, no.5 (September-October 1999), 1–22.
For the distinction between these two versions of the expressivist objection, see Gyngell and Douglas, “Selecting Against Disability.” For an overview of several different interpretations of the expressivist objection and its counterarguments, see Bjørn Hofmann, “‘You are Inferior!’ Revisiting the Expressivist Argument,” Bioethics 31: no.7 (September 2017), 505–514.
Michelle Bayefsky and Benjamin Berkman, “Implementing expanded prenatal genetic testing: Should parents have access to any and all fetal genetic information,” The American Journal of Bioethics 22, no.2 (February 2022), 4–22. For a reply, see Noah Berens and David Wasserman, “Restricting Access, Stigmatizing Disability?” The American Journal of Bioethics 22, no.2 (2022), 25–27.
Jeff McMahan, “Causing Disabled People to Exist and Causing People to Be Disabled,” Ethics 116, no. 1 (2005), 77–99.
For classic discussions, see Christine Korsgaard, “Two Distinctions in Goodness,” The Philosophical Review 92, no.2 (1983), 169–195 and Rae Langton, “Objective and Unconditioned Value,” Philosophical Review 116, no.2 (2007), 157–185, as well as Wlodek Rabinowicz and Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen, “A Distinction in Value: Intrinsic and For Its Own Sake,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series 100 (2000), 33–51 and Shelly Kagan, “Rethinking Intrinsic Value,” The Journal of Ethics 2, (1998), 277–297. For more recent discussions, see Sarah Buss and Nandi Theunissen (edt.) Rethinking the Value of Humanity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), and Nandi Theunissen, The Value of Humanity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).
This is about how persons are valued rather than about what value persons have. Thus, it does not commit us to anything regarding the specific type of value which persons have, or about its grounds, e.g., whether the value of persons is actually unconditional. This paper only assumes that persons have, in a very broad sense, value for their own sake, but takes no position on how this value is, in a more narrow sense, defined, explained, or grounded.
Alternatively, one may posit a weaker version of the desideratum which states that there is a pro tanto reason against valuing persons in such ways, but that this pro tanto reason can be outweighed in the presence of conflicting reasons, e.g., in lesser evil scenarios. The upcoming objection against the well-being assumption likewise applies to such a weaker version, given that no conflicting reasons are present in cases like Vilma.
See Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), Richard Yetter Chappell, “Value Receptacles,” Noûs 49, no.2 (2015), 322–332.
The key point is that persons are valued for the sake of something other than themselves. This means that nothing hinges on the label of valuing ‘extrinsically.’ We could also refer to it as valuing conditionally or valuing derivatively.
See Joseph Raz, “The Role of Well-being,” in The Roots of Normativity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022). Also outlined and endorsed in Johann Frick, “Conditional Reasons and the Procreation Asymmetry,” Philosophical Perspectives 34, no.1 (December 2020), 53–87.
For purposes of illustration, this paragraph only references cases which are clear-cut. But, of course, this is not always the case. For instance, one may wonder whether a patient’s expected level of well-being provides us with moral reasons when distributing medical treatments. Consider a case in which, all other things being equal, one has to decide on which patient to bestow treatment. If treated, X would live for another two years, while Y would live for another twenty years. While settling whether expected well-being provides us with moral reasons is beyond this discussion, two thoughts are worth keeping in mind. First, a moral principle which states that one has moral reason to treat Y rather than X, purely based on expected well-being, seems to value both X and Y extrinsically and to be incompatible with the desideratum. Second, this does not mean that one should flip a coin. After all, a moral principle may deliver the same conclusion (treat Y), but arrive at this conclusion via a kind of reasoning which is not solely based on well-being. Perhaps it may appeal to what principles both patients would agree to, or suggest that health institutions have an implicit duty to improve medical outcomes if doing so can be achieved at no additional cost.
While defending the expressivist objection, Adrienne Asch and David Wasserman have argued that the non-identity intuition commits the ‘“sin” of synecdoche,’ which consists in inferring from one single feature of a future person the conclusion that one should choose against bringing them into existence. While objecting to extrinsic rather than synecdochic valuing, this paper was partly inspired by their discussion. See Asch and Wasserman, “Where Is the Sin in Synecdoche?”
Per Algander and Katharina Berndt Rasmussen, “Asymmetry and Non-Identity,” Utilitas 31 (2019), 213– 230.
For a recent justification of the procreation asymmetry, see Frick, “Conditional Reasons.” Frick’s main argument proceeds via the idea of ‘moral standards,’ to be introduced in the next section. For a critical discussion of Frick’s justification, see Krister Bykvist and Tim Campbell, “Frick’s Account of the Procreation Asymmetry,” Studies on Climate Ethics and Future Generations, Vol. 4, edited by Joe Roussos and Paul Bowman, 263–280.
Aside from his justification based on moral standards, Frick also offers another argument for the second leg of the procreation asymmetry. This argument points in the same direction as the concern outlined in this paragraph, as Frick writes, ‘if our reasons to be concerned with S’s happiness derive, not from the contribution that S’s happiness makes to a valuable state of affairs, but rather from S herself, then, where S does not exist independently of our action, there is no moral pressure to create S, just so that she may experience happiness’ (Frick, “Conditional Reasons,” 68, original emphasis).
Asch and Wasserman, “Where Is the Sin in Synecdoche?,” Wasserman, “The Nonidentity Problem.”
Of course, some may simply affirm that we have pure well-being-based reasons to bring Sterling into existence due to the fact that Sterling would contribute a greater amount of well-being to the world. But such reasons unquestionably fall short of the desideratum: They value future persons instrumentally, and fall prey to the same objection that utilitarianism has been charged with, as outlined in the earlier parts of this section.
Julian Savulescu and Guy Kahane, “The Moral Obligation to create children with the Best Chance of the Best Life,” Bioethics 23, no.5 (2009), 274–290. First proposed in Julian Savulescu, “Procreative beneficence: why we should select the best children,” Bioethics 15, no. 5 (October 2001), 413–426. For objections, see Peter Herissone-Kelly, “The Lack of an Obligation to Select the Best Child: Silencing the Principle of Procreative Beneficence,” in Parental Responsibility in the Context of Neuroscience and Genetics, ed. Kristien Hens, Daniela Cutas and Dorothee Horstkötter (Springer International Publishing, 2017), Alan Holland, “The Case against the Case for Procreative Beneficence,” Bioethics 30: no.7 (September 2016), 490–499, Ben Saunders, “First, do no Harm: Generalized Procreative Non-Maleficence,” Bioethics 31, no.7 (August 2017), 552–558, Sarah E. Stoller, “Why We are Not Morally Required to Select the Best Children: A Response to Savulescu,” Bioethics 22, no.7 (August 2008), 365, and Robert Sparrow, “A Not-so-new Genetics: Harris and Savulescu on Human Enhancement.” Hastings Centre Report 41, no.1 (January-February 2011), 36–37.
Savulescu and Kahane, “The Moral Obligation,” 276.
Savulescu and Kahane, “The Moral Obligation,” 283.
Found, for instance, in Holland, “The Case against,” Saunders, “First, do no Harm,” and Stoller, “Why We are Not Morally Required.”
Frick, “Conditional Reasons,” 68.
Frick, “Conditional Reasons,” 80, original emphasis.
Frick, “Conditional Reasons,” 81.
Frick, “Conditional Reasons,” 72.
Frick, “Conditional Reasons,” 79, original emphasis.
Frick, “Conditional Reasons,” 68, original emphasis.
One may think that the well-being assumption can be defended by appeal to a risk argument advanced by those with anti-natalist sympathies. Anti-natalists consider procreation to always be potentially problematic, since bringing people into existence always exposes them to the risk of ending up with a life not worth living. They might argue that because of Sterling’s higher level of well-being, Sterling is less likely than Fair to end up with a life not worth living. Thus, we should bring Sterling into existence, for Sterling’s sake, and spare Fair the higher risk of ending up with a life not worth living, for Fair’s sake. But while certainly tracking something crucial more generally, this argument is unfitting in this specific context, due to the fact that it relies on ex ante probabilities of harm. In comparison, the non-identity intuition and Vilma include no such ex ante probabilities of harm, but are constrained to an ex post perspective from which we already know for sure how Fair and Sterling’s lives would turn out: good and great. Therefore, the anti-natalist’s risk argument fails to address the non-identity intuition as it is standardly discussed in the literature. For arguments in favor of anti-natalism, see David Benatar, Better never to have been: The harm of coming into existence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), Seana Shiffrin, “Wrongful Life, Procreative Responsibility, and the Significance of Harm,” Legal Theory 5, (1999), 117–148, Rivka Weinberg, The risk of a lifetime: how, when, and why procreation may be permissible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
For Depletion, see Parfit, Reasons and Persons.
Samuel Scheffler, Why Worry about Future Generations? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). For a related contractualist account of such reasons, including a concern for respecting future individuals, see Rahul Kumar, “Risking Future Generations,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21, no.2 (2018), 245–257.
It is unclear how this conclusion can be justified, beyond intuitions. Even if well-being as such has moral value, and even if this value supplies us with reasons, this does not establish that we have reason to bring the population with the higher level of well-being into existence, at least not unless we also stipulate that well-being requires promotion. As Samuel Scheffler writes on a related point, and while discussing the value of humanity: ‘From the fact that our reasons of beneficence have an attachment-independent source, it does not follow that their content must be understood along utilitarian or axiological lines. [..] If there is some reason to conceive of these reasons in utilitarian or axiological terms, it must come from somewhere else. There is no direct route from the bare fact that humanity is valuable to a conception of beneficence as requiring us, ceteris paribus, to promote optimal population outcomes.’ Scheffler, Why Worry About Future Generations?, 102–103.
