Can it be better or worse for a person to exist than not to exist at all? This old and challenging existential question has been raised anew in contemporary moral philosophy, mainly for two reasons. First, traditional “impersonal” ethical theories, such as utilitarianism, have counterintuitive implications in population ethics, for example, the repugnant conclusion. Second, it has seemed evident to many that an outcome can be better than another only if it is better for someone, and that only moral theories (...) that are in this sense “person affecting” can be correct. The implications of this Person-Affecting Restriction will differ radically, however, depending on which answer one gives to the existential question. The negative answer, which we argue against, would make the restriction quite untenable. Hence, many of the problems regarding our moral duties to future generations turn around the issue at hand. (shrink)

One response to Derek Parfit's invokes the relation of . Since parity is a form of in John Broome's terms, three doubts which Broome raises about accounts involving incommensurateness in Weighing Lives pose a challenge for this response. I discuss two of these. They emerge from a discussion of various intuitions about . I argue that an account based on parity may be no less consistent with Broome's intuitions than is his own vagueness view.

On parity views of mere addition if someone is added to the world at a range of well-being levels – or ‘neutral range’ – leaving existing people unaffected, addition is on a par with the initial situation. Two distinct parity views – ‘rough equality’ and fittingattitudes views – defend the ‘intuition of neutrality’. The first can be interpreted or adjusted so that it can rebut John Broome’s objection that the neutral range is wide. The two views respond in distinct ways (...) to two of Broome’s other objections. Both views can, nonetheless, be plausibly defended against these objections. (shrink)

Seemingly every theory of population ethics is confronted with unpalatable implications. While various approaches to the subject have been taken, including non-consequentialist approaches, this area has been dominated by utilitarian thought. The two main approaches to population ethics have been total utilitarianism () and average utilitarianism (). According to TU, we should seek to bring about the state of affairs that maximizes the total amount of happiness. According to AU, we should seek to bring about the state of affairs that (...) maximizes average per capita happiness. Both theories have been afflicted by seemingly strong objections, and as a result, numerous variations and hybrids have been introduced. Despite the widespread disagreement in the field, though, a near consensus has developed in rejecting AU as an absurd view. In this article, however, I will go against the grain and argue that AU is the theory of population ethics that we should endorse. (shrink)

This paper defends the claim that if a person P exists, there can be true positive comparisons between P's existence and P's never having existed at all in terms of what is better or worse for P. If correct, this view will have significant implications for various fundamental issues in population ethics. I try to show how arguments to the contrary fail to take note of a general ambiguity in comparisons when compared alternatives contain their own different standards (or, in (...) the case of non-existence, a lack thereof) on which to base these comparisons. After having answered arguments against the possibility of making positive comparisons, the paper develops a positive account of how to make existence/non-existence comparisons in terms of personal value whilst accepting that a person's non-existence fails to make any contact with the relevant categories of personal value. The guiding idea is the following: When some item satisfies some relevant standard, we can, I argue, infer that it satisfies this standard better than something that fails to satisfy this standard (be this failure due to empirical or conceptual reasons). (shrink)

Effective altruism is committed to Altruistic Maximization – the claim that any impact of giving to charities ought to be maximized at the margins and counterfactually. This may lead to counterintuitive or contradictory conclusions in certain cases. For instance, when we can bring about a substantial benefit to few or a tiny benefit to a larger number at the same cost, spreading of benefits across a great number of recipients can compensate substantial loss for fewer people. However, sometimes the perspective (...) of widely spreading tiny benefits instead than giving substantial benefits to small groups is counterintuitive, and repugnantly wrong. Call this the ‘Altruistic Repugnant Conclusion.’ Standard solutions to the Repugnant Conclusion do not work if applied to the Altruistic Repugnant Conclusion. The Altruistic Repugnant Conclusion can be rebutted by giving up on the idea that judgements on such cases should be precise. But imprecision undermines Altruistic Maximization. Hence a dilemma for effective altruists follows: either they accept some strongly counterintuitive judgments—weakening the attractiveness of their position—or they give up on the maximizing requirement, thus admitting sub-optimal contributions. (shrink)

This paper discusses the handicapped child case and some other variants of Derek Parfit's non-identityproblem (Parfit, 1984) The case is widely held to show that there is harmless wrongdoing, and that amoral system which tries to reduce wrongdoing directly to harm (``person-affecting morality'')is inadequate.I show that the argument for this does not depend (as some have implied it does) on Kripkean necessity of origin. I distinguish the case from other variants (``wrongful life cases'') of the non-identityproblem which do not bear (...) directly on person-affecting morality as I understand it. And finally, I describe a respect in which the handicapped child case is puzzling and counter-intuitive, even on the supposition that it is a case of harmless wrongdoing. I conclude that the case is ``hard'': it will take more than the rejection of person-affecting morality to remove its puzzling character. (shrink)

This intuition may be contrasted with the incompatible intuitions that might support, say, average utilitarianism. According to average utilitarianism we should bring about that outcome which has the highest average utility. That someone would have a higher than average level of utility is, therefore, ceteris paribus a reason to act so that that person exists. Because of this, the basic intuition is a reason for rejecting average utilitarianism.

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This article casts light on the moral implications of the possibility of human extinction, with a specific focus on extinction caused by an interruption in human reproduction. In the first two paragraphs, I show that moral philosophy has not yet given promising explanations for the wrongness of this kind of extinction. Specifically, the second paragraph contains a detailed rejection of John Leslie’s main claims on the morality of extinction. In the third paragraph, I offer a demonstration of the fact that (...) a moral view which stresses the permissibility of some types of human extinction can be effectively constructed, while in the following paragraph I propose a prima facie defense of a new approach to the topic which is likely to provide us with reasons in favor of the wrongness of a premature departure of humankind. (shrink)

Environmental ethics has been strongly influenced by biological ideas. This essay traces a number of these influences. Unfortunately, environmental ethicists have tended to produce moral theories on a grand scale. This tendency is criticized. It is argued that environmental ethicists should allow the ecological conception of the complexity of biological communities to influence their conception of the moral community. If this were to happen, it is argued, they would have to turn away from grand theories to 'theories of the middle (...) range' while adopting a more 'empirical' approach to moral philosophy. (shrink)

This paper discusses what the so-called Priority View implies regarding possible people. It is argued that this view is plausible when applied to fixed populations, but that, when applied to the issue of possible people, it faces certain difficulties. If it is claimed that possible people fall within the scope of the Priority View, we are led to the repugnant conclusion at a faster pace than we are by, e.g., utilitarianism. And if it is claimed that possible people do not (...) fall within the scope of the Priority View, we shall have to combine this view with a different view in order to avoid certain counter-intuitive judgements. Such a combined view, however, leads to intransitivities. At the end of the paper, I discuss what these conclusions imply regarding both the Priority View and our moral obligations to possible people. (shrink)

I argue that utilitarianism cannot accommodate a basic sort of moral judgment that many people want to make. I raise a real-life example of shockingly bad behavior and ask what can the utilitarian say about it. I concede that the utilitarian can say that this behavior caused pain to the victim; that pain is bad; that the agent’s behavior was impermissible; even that the agent’s treatment of the victim was vicious. However, there is still one thing the utilitarian cannot say, (...) namely that the agent wronged the victim, that they violated her. According to utilitarianism, moral offenses are offenses against global utility, right reason or the totality of sentient beings, but never against individual victims, yet this aspect of the action – that it is an offense against a particular person –is highlighted when we say that this action wronged that woman. (shrink)

Why should ‘better than’ be transitive? The leading answer in ethics is that values do not change with context. But this cannot be the entire source of transitivity, I argue, since transitivity can fail even if values never change, so long as they are complex, with multiple dimensions combined non-additively. I conclude by exploring a new hypothesis: that all alleged cases of nontransitive betterness, such as Parfit’s Repugnant Conclusion, can and should be modelled as the result of complexity, not context-relativity.

We should seek to justify, from a moral perspective, policies associated with serious and irreversible risks to the health of human beings, their societies, and the environment for these risks may have great impacts on the autonomy of both existing and future persons. The ideal of discursive democracy provides a way of morally justifying such policies to both existing and future persons. It calls for the inclusive, informed, and uncoerced deliberation toward an agreement of both existing and future persons, which (...) can serve as a justificatory basis for such public policies. This agreement best protects their fundamental interests and basic needs, and garners their general acceptance. It does so by upholding their agency in decision-making processes and, more specifically, by counseling a maxim of precaution in their public reasoning. The aim of this maxim is to protect the social and environmental conditions that will enable members of existing and future generations to review and, if necessary, revise decisions made in the past but that impact upon them in the present. Precautionary public reasoning thus serves to uphold the decisional agency of existing and future persons, which is a necessary condition of their democratic involvement in the policies that affect them and thus of their autonomous existence defined by their conceptions of the good. (shrink)

We should not have children because (i) we have no child-regarding reasons to do so, (ii) we have child-regarding reasons not to do so, and (iii) although we have other-regarding reasons to do so, these reasons are not decisive. Objections to (i) include that life is always good and that possible individuals would choose life if given the opportunity. These fail if there is no duty to create even a good life (the argument from asymmetry), all lives are bad (the (...) argument from quality of life), and potential parents are not entitled to produce lives without the permission of the offspring (the argument from assumed consent). The failure of the objections is not, however, self-evidently inevitable if a hedonistic axiology is used. It becomes inevitable with a switch to an autonomy-respecting, need-based theory of value. There is no need to become existent (i), and there is a need to avoid frustration, pain, and suffering once an individual has been brought into existence (ii). Since any life can be or turn out to be very bad, potential parents put their children in harm’s way by creating them (the argument from risk). To see this and to see how the preferences of the potential parents do not change the situation (iii), it is necessary to assume a concept of gambling that allows genuinely serious harm in case the player loses. (shrink)

I present a qualified new defense of antinatalism. It is intended to empower potential parents who worry about their possible children’s life quality in a world threatened by environmental degradation, climate change, and the like. The main elements of the defense are an understanding of antinatalism’s historical nature and contemporary varieties, a positional theory of value based on Epicurean hedonism and Schopenhauerian pessimism, and a sensitive guide for reproductive decision-making in the light of different views on life’s value and risk-taking. (...) My conclusion, main message, to the concerned would-be parents is threefold. If they believe that life’s ordinary frustrations can make it not worth living, they should not have children. If they believe that a noticeably low life quality makes it not worth living and that such life quality can be reasonably expected, they should not have children, either. If they believe that a noticeably low life quality is not reasonably to be expected or that the risk is worth taking, they can, in the light of their own values and beliefs, have children. The conclusion is supported by a combination of the extant arguments for reproductive abstinence, namely the arguments from consent, moral asymmetry, life quality, and risk. (shrink)

I defend the 'Repugnant' Conclusion that for any possible population of happy people, a population containing a sufficient number of people with lives barely worth living would be better. Four lines of argument converge on this conclusion, and the conclusion has a simple, natural theoretical explanation. The opposition to the Repugnant Conclusion rests on a bare appeal to intuition. This intuition is open to charges of being influenced by multiple distorting factors. Several theories of population ethics have been devised to (...) avoid the Repugnant Conclusion, but each generates even more counterintuitive consequences. The intuition opposing the Repugnant Conclusion is thus among the best candidates for an intuition that should be revised. (shrink)

-/- I start from three premises, roughly as follows: (1) that if possible world x is better than world y for every individual who exists in either world, then x is better than y; (2) that if x has a higher average utility, a higher total utility, and no more inequality than y, then x is better than y; (3) that better than is transitive. From these premises, it follows that benefits given to the worse off contribute no more to (...) the world’s value than equal-sized benefits given to the better off. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that coming into existence can benefit (or harm) aperson. My argument incorporates the comparative claim that existence canbe better (or worse) for a person than never existing. Since these claimsare highly controversial, I consider and reject a number of objectionswhich threaten them. These objections raise various semantic, logical,metaphysical and value-theoretical issues. I then suggest that there is animportant sense in which it can harm (or benefit) a person not to comeinto existence. Again, I consider and (...) reject some objections. Finally, Ibriefly consider what the conclusions reached in this paper imply for ourmoral obligations to possible future people. (shrink)

Jeff McMahan appeals to what he calls the “Time-relative Interest Account of the Wrongness of Killing ” to explain the wrongness of killing individuals who are conscious but not autonomous. On this account, the wrongness of such killing depends on the victim’s interest in his or her future, and this interest, in turn, depends on two things: the goods that would have accrued to the victim in the future; and the strength of the prudential relations obtaining between the victim at (...) the time of the killing and at the times these goods would have accrued to him or her. More precisely, when assessing this interest, future goods should be discounted to reflect reductions in the strength of such relations. Against McMahan’s account I argue that it relies on an implausible “actualist” view of the moral importance of interests according to which satisfactions of future interests only have moral significance if they are satisfactions of actual interests. More precisely, I aim to show that the Time-relative Interest Account does not have the implications for the morality of killing that McMahan takes it to have, and implies, implausibly, that certain interest satisfactions which seem to be morally significant are morally insignificant because they are not satisfactions of actual interests. (shrink)

It is shown that the basic postulate of utilitarianism does not work when we must decide whether a person should be brought into existence. Utilitarianism must be supplemented by further axioms. Those proposed lead to the consequence that as far as the potential child's utility is concerned, it is morally preferable not to produce children at all. This consequence is accepted. It is still recommended when parents? utility is taken into account.

According to the person-affecting view, the ethics of welfare should be cashed out in terms of how the individuals are affected. While the narrow version fails to solve the non-identity problem, the wide version is subject to the repugnant conclusion. A middle view promises to do better – the Interpersonal Comparative View of Welfare (ICV). It modifies the narrow view by abstracting away from individuals’ identities to account for interpersonal gains and losses. The paper assesses ICV’s merits and flaws. ICV (...) solves the non-identity problem, avoids the repugnant conclusion, and seems to accommodate the person-affecting intuition. But it cuts too many things along the way: ICV obstructs the advantage of the wide view to account for all future individuals’ welfare, abandons the intuitions that underlie the narrow view, and even violates its own presuppositions by turning out to be merely pseudo person-affecting. (shrink)

Two related asymmetries have been discussed in relation to the ethics of creating new lives: First, we seem to have strong moral reason to avoid creating lives that are not worth living, but no moral reason to create lives that are worth living. Second, we seem to have strong moral reason to improve the wellbeing of existing lives, but, again, no moral reason to create lives that are worth living. Both asymmetries have proven very difficult to account for in any (...) coherent moral framework. I propose an impersonal population axiology to underpin the asymmetries, which sidesteps the problematic issue of whether or not people can be harmed or benefited by creation or non-creation. This axiology yields perfect asymmetry from a deliberative perspective, in terms of expected value. The axiology also yields substantial asymmetry for large and realistic populations in terms of their actual value, beyond deliberative relevance. (shrink)

The moral status of future persons is problematic. It is often claimed that we should take the interests of the indefinite unborn very seriously, because they have a right to a decent life. It is also claimed (often by the same people) that we should allow unrestricted access to abortion, because the indefinite unborn have no rights. In this paper I argue that these intuitions are not in fact inconsistent. The aim is to provide an account of trans-temporal concern which (...) resolves the prima facie inconsistency between commonly held intuitions about our obligations to future persons. I argue that our intuitions can be reconciled provided that we explicate obligations to the future in terms of impersonal principles subject to retroactive person-affecting constraints. (shrink)

According to the Welfare Diffusion Objection, we should reject Prioritarianism because it implies the ‘desirability of welfare diffusion’: the claim that it can be better for there to be less total wellbeing spread thinly between a larger total number of people, rather than for there to be more total wellbeing, spread more generously between a smaller total number of people. I argue that while Prioritarianism does not directly imply the desirability of welfare diffusion, Prioritarians are nevertheless implicitly committed to certain (...) principles for comparing different-number populations which, together with the Prioritarian same-person axiology, imply the desirability of welfare diffusion. (shrink)

This paper explores what could be wrong with the fact of human extinction. I first present four reasons why we might consider human extinction to be wrong: it would prevent millions of people from being born; it would mean the loss of rational life and civilization; it would cause existing people to suffer pain or death; it would involve various psychological traumas. I argue that looking at the question from a contractualist perspective, only reasons and are admissible. I then consider (...) what implications this limitation on reasons has for the wrongfulness of various forms of human extinction. (shrink)

In this article I make two main critiques of Kaczmarek and Beard's article ‘Human Extinction and Our Obligations to the Past’. First, I argue that there is an ambiguity in what it means to realise the benefits of a sacrifice and that this ambiguity affects the persuasiveness of the authors’ arguments and responses to various objections to their view. Second, I argue that their core argument against human extinction depends on an unsupported assumption about the existence and importance of existential (...) benefits. (shrink)

A major focus of ethical argumentation is determining the relative merits of proposed ethical systems. Nevertheless, even the demonstration that a given ethical system was the one most likely to be correct would not establish that an agent should act in accord with that system. Consider, for example, a situation in which the ethical system most likely to be valid is modestly supportive of a certain action, whereas a less plausible system strongly condemns the same action. Should the agent perform (...) the action, arguing that the most plausible system supports doing so, or avoid the action, being conservative about the strong condemnation of it from a less plausible system? I argue that, in general, different ethical frameworks see the ethical world in fundamentally different ways, rendering the comparison of degrees of support and opposition of actions between systems intrinsically invalid. One should indeed choose to act in accord with the most defensible system. I believe that this important topic needs more attention than it has gotten to date. (shrink)

The Procreation Asymmetry holds that we have strong moral reasons not to create miserable people for their own sakes, but no moral reasons to create happy people for their own sakes. To defend this conjunction against an argument that it leads to inconsistency, I show how recognizing ‘creation’ as a temporally extended process allows us to revise the conjuncts in a way that preserves their intuitive force. This defense of the Procreation Asymmetry is preferable to others because it does not (...) require us to take on controversial metaphysical or metaethical commitments – in other words, it has the theoretical virtue of portability. (shrink)

Human civilisation faces a range of existential risks, including nuclear war, runaway climate change and superintelligent artificial intelligence run amok. As we show here with calculations for the New Zealand setting, large numbers of currently living and, especially, future people are potentially threatened by existential risks. A just process for resource allocation demands that we consider future generations but also account for solidarity with the present. Here we consider the various ethical and policy issues involved and make a case for (...) further engagement with the New Zealand public to determine societal values towards future lives and their protection. (shrink)

In Derek Parfit's original formulation the Repugnant Conclusion is characterized as follows: “For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better even though its members have lives that are barely worth living” (Parfit 1984). The Repugnant Conclusion highlights a problem in an area of ethics which has become known as population ethics . The (...) last three decades have witnessed an increasing philosophical interest in questions such as “Is it possible to make the world a better place by creating additional happy creatures?” and “Is there a moral obligation to have children?” The main problem has been to find an adequate theory about the moral value of states of affairs where the number of people, the quality of their lives, and their identities may vary. Since, arguably, any reasonable moral theory has to take these aspects of possible states of affairs into account when determining the normative status of actions, the study of population ethics is of general import for moral theory. As the name indicates, Parfit finds the Repugnant Conclusion unacceptable and many philosophers agree. However, it has been surprisingly difficult to find a theory that avoids the Repugnant Conclusion without implying other equally counterintuitive conclusions. Thus, the question as to how the Repugnant Conclusion should be dealt with and, more generally, what it shows about the nature of ethics has turned the conclusion into one of the cardinal challenges of modern ethics. (shrink)

A set of arguments shows that either the Repugnant Conclusion and its variants are true or the better-than relation isn't transitive. Which is it? This is the most important question in population ethics. The answer will point the way to Parfit's elusive Theory X.

Metaphysicians often distinguish between joints and basic ways. Joints are the unified and joint-carving properties that trace the structure of the world. They are theorized under the ideology of structural, perfectly natural, or sparse properties. Basic ways are the ultimate and independent properties that give rise to all others. They are theorized under the ideology of grounding, where the ungrounded properties are the basic ways. While these notions are often seen as rivals, I argue that we need both, because the (...) joints and the basic ways crosscut. For the sake being exhaustive and ecumenical, I distinguish between natural and normative sorts of joints and basic ways. I argue that, for either sort, if there is such a sort of joint and basic way, then there are joints that are not basic ways and there are basic ways that are not joints. (shrink)

Welfarism is a theory of value (or the good) simpliciter. Theories of value are fundamentally concerned with explaining what makes some possible worlds better than others. Welfarism is the view according to which the relative value of possible worlds is fully determined by how individuals are faring—or, in other words, by the facts about well-being that obtain—in these worlds. This entry begins by distinguishing between various forms of welfarism (pure vs. impure welfarism, and then narrow vs. wide welfarism). It then (...) outlines some of the key attractions of welfarism. Finally, it surveys some of the most serious objections to welfarism (including malicious pleasure, the well-being of the wicked, great works of art, the non-identity problem, human extinction, transitivity of betterness, and distribution). (shrink)

A number of thinkers have been wondering about the moral obligations humans have, or will have, to intelligent technologies. An underlying assumption is that “moral machines” are decades in the offing, and thus we have no pressing obligations now. But, in the context of technology, we are yet to consider that we might owe moral consideration to something that is not a member of the moral community but eventually will be as an outcome of human action. Do we have current (...) actual obligations to technologies that do not currently exist? If there are obligations to currently non-existing technologies, we must confront what might be called the Non-Identical Machines Problem. Can we harm or benefit an entity by making it one way rather than another? This paper presents the problem and argues that it is more challenging than the standard Non-Identity Problem. (shrink)

According to the procreation asymmetry there is no moral reason to create a new and foreseeably happy person just because this person will be happy, but there is however a moral reason against creating a new and foreseeably unhappy person just because this person will be unhappy. A common way to defend this conjunction of claims is by employing a so-called existence-requirement, according to which the happiness of a given person p in a world w depends on it being possible (...) to understand p as an existing person in w. The aim of this paper is to consider whether this existence-requirement strategy is compatible with other intuitions and convictions held in normative moral theory and populations ethics. This aim will be achieved by considering whether the existence-requirement strategy is compatible with three plausible desiderata for a solution to the procreation asymmetry. Although some solutions to some potential incompatibilities are suggested, the thesis that will be argued for is that every instance of the existence-requirement strategy is incompatible with at least one of the relevant desiderata. Where the common denominating incompatibility for all instances of the existence-requirement strategy is to be found in an inability to be sufficiently action-guiding. (shrink)

This thesis in an invistigation into the concept of "harm" and its moral relevance. A common view is that an analysis of harm should include a counterfactual condition: an act harms a person iff it makes that person worse off. A common objection to the moral relevance of harm, thus understood, is the non-identity problem. -/- This thesis criticises the counterfactual condition, argues for an alternative analysis and that harm plays two important normative roles. -/- The main ground for rejecting (...) the counterfactual condition is that it has unacceptable consequences in cases of overdetermination and pre-emption. Several modifications to the condition are considered but all fail to solve this problem. -/- According to the alternative analysis to do harm is to perform an act which is responsible for the obtaining of a state of affairs which makes a person’s life go worse. It is argued that should be understood in terms of counterfactual dependence. This claim is defended against counterexamples based on redundant causation. An analysis of is also provided using the notion of a well-being function. It is argued that by introducing this notion it is possible to analyse contributive value without making use of counterfactual comparisons and to solve the non-identity problem. -/- Regarding the normative importance of harm, a popular intuition is that there is an asymmetry in our obligations to future people: that a person would have a life worth living were she to exist is not a reason in favour of creating that person while that a person would have a life not worth living is a reason against creating that person. It is argued that the asymmetry can be classified as a moral option grounded in autonomy. Central to this defence is the suggestion that harm is relevant to understanding autonomy. Autonomy involves partly the freedom to pursue one’s own aims as long as one does no harm. (shrink)

This is the fourth chapter of my dissertation, Hedonic Value (Director: Jonathan Bennett), Syracuse University, August, 1998. It is an unpublished revision of my "Is It Good to Make Happy People?" Bioethics 12 (April 1998), pp. 93-110. I systematically lay out and assess all the main arguments on each side and conclude that, Yes, it is good to add individuals to the population who would have lives worth living.

This paper aims to state the obvious – the commonsense, rational approach to child-producing. We have no general obligation to promote either the “general happiness” or the equalization of this and that. We have children if we want them, if their life prospects are decent – and if we can afford them, which is a considerable part of their life prospects being OK – and provided that in doing so we do not inflict injury on others. It’s extremely difficult to (...) do this latter, but affording them, in rich countries, is another matter. With that qualification, by and large people should just go ahead and have (or not have) children – as many as they think they want and can handle – as it suits them. (shrink)