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The non-identity problem

Ethics 96 (4):804-831 (1986)

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  1. All you need is [somebody’s] love “third-party reproduction” and the existential density of biological affinity.Diogo Morais Sarmento Madureira - 2024 - Monash Bioethics Review 42 (2):234-259.
    What is the true significance of biological kinship? During the last decades, it seemed to be uncontroversial that abandoned and even adopted people feel the negative impact of biological parents’ absence throughout life in several ways (Miller et al. 2000; Keyes, Margaret A., Anu Sharma, Irene J Elkins, and William G. Iacono, Matt McGue. 2008. The Mental Health of US Adolescents Adopted in Infancy. Archive Pediatric Adolescense Medicine 162(5): 419–425.). However, in the case of people conceived via “third-party reproduction”, especially (...)
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  • A Non-Identity Dilemma for Person-Affecting Views.Elliott Thornley - manuscript
    Person-affecting views state that (in cases where all else is equal) we’re permitted but not required to create people who would enjoy good lives. In this paper, I present an argument against every possible variety of person-affecting view. The argument is a dilemma over trilemmas. Narrow person-affecting views imply a trilemma in a case that I call ‘Expanded Non-Identity.’ Wide person-affecting views imply a trilemma in a case that I call ‘Two-Shot Non-Identity.’ One plausible practical upshot of my argument is (...)
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  • Kantian Ethics and the Attention Economy.Timothy Aylsworth & Clinton Castro - 2024 - Palgrave Macmillan.
    In this open access book, Timothy Aylsworth and Clinton Castro draw on the deep well of Kantian ethics to argue that we have moral duties, both to ourselves and to others, to protect our autonomy from the threat posed by the problematic use of technology. The problematic use of technologies like smartphones threatens our autonomy in a variety of ways, and critics have only begun to appreciate the vast scope of this problem. In the last decade, we have seen a (...)
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  • Doing Less Than Best.Emma J. Curran - 2023 - Dissertation, University of Cambridge
    This thesis is about the moral reasons we have to do less than best. It consists of six chapters. Part I of the thesis proposes, extends, and defends reasons to do less than best. In Chapter One (“The Conditional Obligation”) I outline and reject two recent arguments from Joe Horton and Theron Pummer for the claim that we have a conditional obligation to bring about the most good. In Chapter Two (“Agglomeration and Agent-Relative Costs”) I argue that agent-relative costs can (...)
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  • The Nature of Harm: A Wine-Dark Sea.Eli G. Schantz & Mark D. Fox - 2022 - American Journal of Bioethics 22 (10):63-65.
    In “Harmful Choices, the Case of C, and Decision-Making Competence,” Pickering and colleagues advance an argument in favor of externalism, a view in which the competence of a decision maker is judged relative to factors external to their cognition. In advancing this argument, Pickering and colleagues focus on the external factor of harm: In their view, it is the harmfulness of a considered or chosen action that provides evidence against the competence of the decision maker. However, the proper identification of (...)
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  • On environmental justice, Part I: an intuitive conservation dilemma.Joseph Mazor - 2023 - Economics and Philosophy 39 (2):230-255.
    This article introduces an intuitive conservation dilemma called the Canyon Dilemma: Is it possible to condemn the mining of the Grand Canyon, even by a poor generation, while also permitting this generation’s mining of an unremarkable small canyon? It then argues that not one of several prominent theories of environmental justice, including various forms of egalitarianism, welfarism, deep-ecological theories, communitarianism and free-market environmentalism, can navigate this dilemma. The article concludes by highlighting the dilemma-navigating potential of the equal-claims idea – the (...)
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  • Conventionalism about Persons and the Nonidentity Problem.Michael Tze-Sung Longenecker - 2023 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (4):954-967.
    ABSTRACT I motivate ‘Origin Conventionalism’—the view that which facts about one’s origins are essential to one’s existence depends partly on our person-directed attitudes. One important upshot is that the view offers a novel and attractive solution to the Nonidentity Problem. That problem typically assumes that the sperm-egg pair from which a person originates is essential to that person’s existence; in which case, for many future persons that come into existence under adverse conditions, had those conditions not been realized, the individuals (...)
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  • Discrimination as an Individual Wrong.Michael P. Foran - 2019 - Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 39 (4):901-929.
    This article argues that anti-discrimination rights are individual rights to be free from wrongful treatment and do not directly advance group-based interests or prohibit group-based harm. In light of this, a number of recurring accounts of the wrong of discrimination, particularly the wrong of indirect discrimination, are unsustainable. Claims that indirect discrimination is concerned with harm that is done to social groups or that laws prohibiting indirect discrimination seek to reduce or eliminate advantage gaps between social groups must be rejected (...)
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  • The Rights of Future Persons under Attack: Correlativity in the Non-Identity Problem.Andre Santos Campos - 2019 - Philosophia 47 (3):625-648.
    This paper aims at answering some of the objections to the NIP’s criticism of the idea of rights of future persons. Those objections usually adopt different perspectives depending on how they understand differently the nature of the correlativity between rights and duties – some adopt a present-rights-of-future-persons view, others a future-rights-of-future-persons view, others a transitive present-rights-of-present-persons view, and others still an eternalist view of rights and persons. The paper will try to show that only a non-transitive present-rights-of-present-persons view can survive (...)
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  • Marginal participation, complicity, and agnotology: What climate change can teach us about individual and collective responsibility.Säde Hormio - 2017 - Dissertation, University of Helsinki
    The topic of my thesis is individual and collective responsibility for collectively caused systemic harms, with climate change as the case study. Can an individual be responsible for these harms, and if so, how? Furthermore, what does it mean to say that a collective is responsible? A related question, and the second main theme, is how ignorance and knowledge affect our responsibility. -/- My aim is to show that despite the various complexities involved, an individual can have responsibility to address (...)
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  • Whose Problem Is Non-Identity?Paul Hurley & Rivka Weinberg - 2014 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 12 (6):699-730.
    Teleological theories of reason and value, upon which all reasons are fundamentally reasons to realize states of affairs that are in some respect best, cannot account for the intuition that victims in non-identity cases have been wronged. Many philosophers, however, reject such theories in favor of alternatives that recognize fundamentally non-teleological reasons, second-personal reasons that reflect a moral significance each person has that is not grounded in the teleologist’s appeal to outcomes. Such deontological accounts appear to be better positioned to (...)
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  • Daño al futuro: ¿Puede el no comparativismo resolver el problema de la no-identidad?Santiago Truccone Borgogno - 2017 - Daimon: Revista Internacional de Filosofía 70:83-96.
    la tesis clásica del daño afirma que un sujeto daña a otro cuando lo coloca en una peor situación de la que podría estar de otro modo. Sin embargo, algunas acciones causan consecuencias malas en determinados sujetos pero no los colocan en una condición peor de la que podrían estar de otro modo. En tales casos el no-comparativismo parece poder aportar la solución correcta desde que, para tales tesis dañar a otro es colocar a un sujeto en una condición mala. (...)
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  • When Good Things Happen to Harmed People.Molly Gardner - 2019 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 22 (4):893-908.
    The problem of justified harm is the problem of explaining why it is permissible to inflict harm for the sake of future benefits in some cases but not in others. In this paper I first motivate the problem by comparing a case in which a lifeguard breaks a swimmer’s arm in order to save her life to a case in which Nazis imprison a man who later grows wiser as a result of the experience. I consider other philosophers’ attempts to (...)
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  • The Claims of Future Persons.Kirsten Meyer - 2018 - Erkenntnis 83 (1):43-59.
    This paper defends a deontological egalitarianism in the ethics of future generations. Concerns about the non-identity problem have been taken as a reason to develop sufficientarian approaches to intergenerational justice. This paper argues for a solution to the non-identity problem that refers to the claims of future persons. In principle, the content of these claims could be spelled out with a sufficientarian and an egalitarian approach. What speaks against sufficientarianism, however, is that the sufficiency threshold, unless it is set very (...)
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  • Retrospection.Kieran Setiya - 2016 - Philosophers' Imprint 16.
    Argues from the rationality of nostalgia, affirmation, and regret to a principle of ‘specificity’: it can be rational to respond more strongly to facts that provide us with reasons than to the fact that such reasons exist.
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  • Can We Harm Future People?Alan Carter - 2001 - Environmental Values 10 (4):429-454.
    It appears to have been established that it is not possible for us to harm distant future generations by failing to adopt long-range welfare policies which would conserve resources or limit pollution. By exploring a number of possible worlds, the present article shows, first, that the argument appears to be at least as telling against Aristotelian, rights-based and Rawlsian approaches as it seems to be against utilitarianism, but second, and most importantly, that it only holds if we fail to view (...)
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  • Harm, Benefit, and Non-Identity.Per Algander - 2013 - Dissertation, Uppsala University
    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 (...)
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  • Ethical Theory and Population Problems.Kevin Espen Moon - 2001 - Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst
    Ethical theory faces a group of difficult puzzles concerning populations. Here is one: would it be right to maximize utility by causing the number of people existing in the further future to be very, very large, even if this means that each of their lives is barely worth living? Derek Parfit concludes that standard utilitarianism yields the result that it would be right to create such a world. He calls this conclusion "repugnant." I begin with an examination of the objection, (...)
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  • Would Human Extinction Be Morally Wrong?Franco Palazzi - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (4):1063-1084.
    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 (...)
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  • Behavioural Genetics: Why Eugenic Selection is Preferable to Enhancement.Julian Savulescu, Melanie Hemsley, Ainsley Newson & Bennett Foddy - 2006 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 23 (2):157-171.
    Criminal behaviour is but one behavioural tendency for which a genetic influence has been suggested. Whilst this research certainly raises difficult ethical questions and is subject to scientific criticism, one recent research project suggests that for some families, criminal tendency might be predicted by genetics. In this paper, supposing this research is valid, we consider whether intervening in the criminal tendency of future children is ethically justifiable. We argue that, if avoidance of harm is a paramount consideration, such an intervention (...)
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  • Purebred Dogs and Canine Wellbeing.Sofia Jeppsson - 2014 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 27 (3):417-430.
    Breeders of purebred dogs usually have several goals they want to accomplish, of which canine wellbeing is one. The purpose of this article is to investigate what we ought to do given this goal. Breeders typically think that they fulfil their wellbeing-related duties by doing the best they can within their breed of choice. However, it is true of most breeders that they could produce physically and mentally healthier dogs if they switched to a healthier breed. There are a few (...)
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  • Wrongful Harm to Future Generations: The Case of Climate Change.Marc D. Davidson - 2008 - Environmental Values 17 (4):471 - 488.
    In this article I argue that governments are justified in addressing the potential for human induced climate damages on the basis of future generations' rights to bodily integrity and personal property. First, although future generations' entitlements to property originate in our present entitlements, the principle of self-ownership requires us to take 'reasonable care' of the products of future labour. Second, while Parfit's non-identity problem has as yet no satisfactory solution, the present absence of an equilibrium between theory and intuitions justifies (...)
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  • Justice and Climate Change: Toward a Libertarian Analysis.Dan C. Shahar - 2009 - The Independent Review 14 (2):219-237.
    Global climate change is one of the most widely discussed problems of our time. However, many libertarian thinkers have not participated in the ethical dimensions of this discussion due to a narrow focus on the scientific basis for concern about climate change. In this paper, I reject this approach and explore the kind of response libertarians should be offering instead. I frame the climate change problem as one which concerns potential rights-infringements and explore different ways in which climate change might (...)
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  • A Defence of the Asymmetry in Population Ethics.Per Algander - 2012 - Res Publica 18 (2):145-157.
    A common intuition is that there is a moral difference between ‘making people happy’ and ‘making happy people.’ This intuition, often referred to as ‘the Asymmetry,’ has, however, been criticized on the grounds that it is incoherent. Why is there, for instance, not a corresponding difference between ‘making people unhappy’ and ‘making unhappy people’? I argue that the intuition faces several difficulties but that these can be met by introducing a certain kind of reason that is favouring but non-requiring. It (...)
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  • Harm to Future Persons: Non-Identity Problems and Counterpart Solutions.Anthony Wrigley - 2012 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 15 (2):175-190.
    Non-Identity arguments have a pervasive but sometimes counter-intuitive grip on certain key areas in ethics. As a result, there has been limited success in supporting the alternative view that our choices concerning future generations can be considered harmful on any sort of person-affecting principle. However, as the Non-Identity Problem relies overtly on certain metaphysical assumptions, plausible alternatives to these foundations can substantially undermine the Non-Identity argument itself. In this paper, I show how the pervasive force and nature of Non-Identity arguments (...)
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  • (1 other version)On Future Generations’ Future Rights.Gosseries Axel - 2008 - Journal of Political Philosophy 16 (4):446-474.
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  • Reproduction, partiality, and the non-identity problem.Hillvard Lillehammer - 2009 - In David Wasserman & Melinda Roberts (eds.), Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics and the Nonidentity Problem. Springer. pp. 231--248.
    Much work in contemporary bioethics defends a broadly liberal view of human reproduction. I shall take this view to comprise (but not to be exhausted by) the following four claims.1 First, it is permissible both to reproduce and not to reproduce, either by traditional means or by means of assisted reproductive techniques such as IVF and genetic screening. Second, it is permissible either to reproduce or to adopt or otherwise foster an existing child to which one is not biologically related. (...)
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  • A theory of intergenerational justice.Jörg Tremmel - 2009 - London: Earthscan.
    Ultimately this book provides a theory of intergenerational justice that is both intellectually robust and practical with wide applicability to law and policy.
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  • Harming as causing harm.Elizabeth Harman - 2009 - In David Wasserman & Melinda Roberts (eds.), Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics and the Nonidentity Problem. Springer. pp. 137--154.
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  • The apology paradox and the non-identity problem.Neil Levy - 2002 - Philosophical Quarterly 52 (208):358-368.
    Janna Thompson has outlined ‘the apology paradox’, which arises whenever people apologize for an action or event upon which their existence is causally dependent. She argues that a sincere apology seems to entail a wish that the action or event had not occurred, but that we cannot sincerely wish that events upon which our existence depends had not occurred. I argue that Thompson’s paradox is a backward-looking version of Parfit’s (forward-looking) ‘non-identity problem’, where backward- and forward-looking refer to the perspective (...)
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  • Can we harm and benefit in creating?Elizabeth Harman - 2004 - Philosophical Perspectives 18 (1):89–113.
    The non-identity problem concerns actions that affect who exists in the future. If such an action is performed, certain people will exist in the future who would not otherwise have existed: they are not identical to any of the people who would have existed if the action had not been performed. Some of these actions seem to be wrong, and they seem to be wrong in virtue of harming the very future individuals whose existence is dependent on their having been (...)
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  • The non-identity problem and genetic Harms – the case of wrongful handicaps.Dan W. Brock - 1995 - Bioethics 9 (3):269–275.
    The Human Genome Project will produce information permitting increasing opportunities to prevent genetically transmitted harms, most of which will be compatible with a life worth living, through avoiding conception or terminating a pregnancy. Failure to prevent these harms when it is possible for parents to do so without substantial burdens or costs to themselves or others are what J call “wrongful handicaps”. Derek Parfit has developed a systematic difficulty for any such cases being wrongs — when the harm could be (...)
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  • Two asymmetries in population and general normative ethics.Mat Rozas - 2021 - Etikk I Praksis - Nordic Journal of Applied Ethics 1:41-49.
    This paper examines a dilemma in reproductive and population ethics that can illuminate broader questions in axiology and normative ethics. This dilemma emerges because most people have conflicting intuitions concerning whether the interests of non-existent beings can outweigh the interests of existing beings when those merely potential beings are expected to have overall net-good or overall net-bad lives. The paper claims that the standard approach to this issue, in terms of exemplifying the conflict between Narrow Person-Affecting Views and Impersonal Views, (...)
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  • Against parental licensing.Christopher Freiman - 2022 - Journal of Social Philosophy 53 (1):113-126.
    Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 53, Issue 1, Page 113-126, Spring 2022.
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  • The Non-Identity Objection to Intergenerational Harm: A Critical Re-Examination.Fausto Corvino - 2019 - International Journal of Applied Philosophy 33 (2):165-185.
    In this article I analyse those that I consider the most powerful counterarguments that have been advanced against the non-identity objection to the idea of intergenerational harm, according to which an action cannot cause harm to a given agent if her biological identity does actually depend—in a partial but still determinant way—on the performance of this action. In doing this, I firstly go through the deontological criticisms to the person-affecting view of harm, before moving on to sufficientarian and communitarian accounts (...)
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  • Liberal Neutrality and the Nonidentity Problem: The Right to Procreate Deaf Children.Cristian Puga-Gonzalez - 2019 - Journal of Social Philosophy 50 (3):363-381.
    Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.
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  • (1 other version)Fact-insensitive thought experiments in climate ethics – Exemplified by Parfit’s non-identity problem.Jörg Tremmel - 2018 - In Tahseen Jafry (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Climate Justice. Routledge. pp. 42-56.
    Abstract More than some other fields of ethics, climate ethics is related to pressing real-world problems. Climate ethicists have a responsibility to be precise about the status of the problems they discuss. The non-identity problem (NIP) plays are a prominent role in the climate ethics literature. In a widely discussed statement, Derek Parfit claimed that a risky climate policy is not harmful for (distant) future people. But this ignores the “insignificant-causal-factors rejoinder”. The Parfitian assertion is still treated as serious problem (...)
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  • The Rights of Future Persons and the Ontology of Time.Aaron M. Griffith - 2017 - Journal of Social Philosophy 48 (1):58-70.
    Many are committed to the idea that the present generation has obligations to future generations, for example, obligations to preserve the environment and certain natural resources for those generations. However, some philosophers want to explain why we have these obligations in terms of correlative rights that future persons have against persons in the present. Attributing such rights to future persons is controversial, for there seem to be compelling arguments against the position. According to the “nonexistence” argument, future persons cannot have (...)
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  • Contractualism and the Non-Identity Problem.Elizabeth Finneron-Burns - 2016 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (5):1151-1163.
    This paper argues that T.M. Scanlon’s contractualism can provide a solution to the non-identity problem. It first argues that there is no reason not to include future people in the realm of those to whom we owe justification, but that merely possible people are not included. It then goes on to argue that a person could reasonably reject a principle that left them with a barely worth living life even though that principle caused them to exist, and that current people (...)
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  • The Claims and Duties of Socioeconomic Human Rights.Stephanie Collins - 2016 - Philosophical Quarterly 66 (265):701-722.
    A standard objection to socioeconomic human rights is that they are not claimable as human rights: their correlative duties are not owed to each human, independently of specific institutional arrangements, in an enforceable manner. I consider recent responses to this ‘claimability objection,’ and argue that none succeeds. There are no human rights to socioeconomic goods. But all is not lost: there are, I suggest, human rights to ‘socioeconomic consideration’. I propose a detailed structure for these rights and their correlative duties, (...)
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  • Is Equality Essentially Comparative?Michael Weber - 2007 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 10 (2):209-226.
    Larry Temkin has shown that Derek Parfit’s well-known Mere Addition Paradox suggests a powerful argument for the intransitivity of the relation “better than.” The crux of the argument is the view that equality is essentially comparative, according to which the same inequality can be evaluated differently depending on what it is being compared to. The comparative view of equality should be rejected, I argue, and hence so too this argument for intransitivity.
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  • On the Value of Intimacy in Procreation.Luara Ferracioli - 2014 - Journal of Value Inquiry 48 (3):349-369.
    What is wrong with anonymous surrogacy and gamete donation? Many feminists have argued that these practices are inherently exploitative or alienating. Yet, one can easily conceive of a world where donating a sperm or egg, and getting pregnant on behalf of someone else are considered highly valuable professional services, which are highly-paid and part of well regulated industries. In this ideal world, no one becomes a gamete donor or a surrogate out of economic necessity or desperation, but because there is (...)
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  • Lamentable Necessities.George Tsai - 2013 - Review of Metaphysics 66 (4):775-808.
    Slavery in Ancient Greece, Absolutist Monarchy in pre-modern Europe, and the European conquest of the New World strike us, from our contemporary perspective, as injustices on a massive scale. But given the impact of these large-scale historical activities on the particular course taken by Western history, they almost undeniably played an important role in the evolution of modern liberalism. Bernard Williams suggests a startling claim—that liberal universalists cannot condemn past injustices, because those injustices were necessary conditions of the development of (...)
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  • Doing Away with Harm.Ben Bradley - 2012 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85 (2):390-412.
    I argue that extant accounts of harm all fail to account for important desiderata, and that we should therefore jettison the concept when doing moral philosophy.
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  • The nonidentity problem.Melinda Roberts - 2010 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • (1 other version)On future generations' future rights.Axel Gosseries - 2008 - Journal of Political Philosophy 16 (4):446-474.
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  • The Non-Identity Fallacy: Harm, Probability and Another Look at Parfit’s Depletion Example.Melinda A. Roberts - 2007 - Utilitas 19 (3):267-311.
    The non-identity problem is really a collection of problems having distinct logical features. For that reason, non-identity problems can be typed. This article focuses on just one type of non-identity problem, the problem, which includes Derek Parfit's depletion example and many others. The can't-expect-better problem uses an assessment about the low probability of any particular person's coming into existence to reason that an earlier wrong act does not harm that person. This article argues that that line of reasoning is unusually (...)
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  • (3 other versions)The repugnant conclusion.Jesper Ryberg - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    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 (...)
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  • Intergenerational justice.Lukas Meyer - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Is it fair to leave the next generation a public debt? Is it defensible to impose legal rules on them through constitutional constraints? From combating climate change to ensuring proper funding for future pensions, concerns about ethics between generations are everywhere. In this volume sixteen philosophers explore intergenerational justice. Part One examines the ways in which various theories of justice look at the matter. These include libertarian, Rawlsian, sufficientarian, contractarian, communitarian, Marxian and reciprocity-based approaches. In Part Two, the authors look (...)
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  • Rights, indirect Harms and the non-identity problem.Justin Patrick Mcbrayer - 2008 - Bioethics 22 (6):299–306.
    The non-identity problem is the problem of grounding moral wrongdoing in cases in which an action affects who will exist in the future. Consider a woman who intentionally conceives while on medication that is harmful for a fetus. If the resulting child is disabled as a result of the medication, what makes the woman's action morally wrong? I argue that an explanation in terms of harmful rights violations fails, and I focus on Peter Markie's recent rights-based defense. Markie's analysis rests (...)
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