Voices from another world: Must we respect the interests of people who do not, and will never, exist?

Ethics

Volumn 117, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 498-522

  Hare, Caspar ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 34250330834     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/512172     Document Type: Review

References (34)

1. Jan Narveson first drew attention to cases like this. See Jan Narveson, "Utilitarianism and New Generations," Mind 76 (1967): 62-72.
2. Derek Parfit first drew attention to cases like these. See Derek Parfit, "Rights, Interests and Possible People," in Moral Problems in Medicine, ed. Samuel Gorovitz (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1976), 369-75, and Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1983), chap. 16.
3. See Josh Parsons, "Axiological Actualism," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 80 (2002): 137-47.
4. See, e.g., James Woodward, "The Non-Identity Problem," Ethics 96 (1986): 804-31.
5. See, e.g., Melinda Roberts, Child versus Childmaker: Future Persons and Present Duties in Ethics and the Law (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998) - a dogged and impressive effort to encourage us to reshape our intuitions about nonidentity cases in line with actualism.
6. One should be wary, in this context, of talking about which outcomes are better for a group of people, since advocates of the person-affecting approach traditionally do not believe that conflicting interests can be aggregated in a straightforward way (see, e.g., chap. 3 of Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia [New York: Basic, 1974]). If, for example, one outcome is slightly better for Hillary and Chelsea and another is much better for Bill, it may be that there is no morally relevant sense in which one or the other is better for the Clinton family. So please take "better for members of S®" as shorthand for "better for actual person 1, better for actual person 2, better for actual person 3, etc."
7. A sentence such as "I care about how things would have been for actual people if the agent had behaved differently" supports two readings. To use the idiom of worlds: on one reading, we take the term 'actual people' to pick out those people who exist in the speaker's world (this is what David Lewis called "the primary sense of 'actual'"). On another, we go to the world in which the agent behaved differently and then take the term 'actual people' to pick out the people who exist in that world (this is what Lewis called "the secondary sense of 'actual'"). As actualism makes clear, the actualist's claim that the moral status of an act is determined, in part, by how things would have been for actual people if the agent had behaved differently should be read the first way. Read the second way, the theory would be devoid of content - compatible with straightforward act utilitarianism, for example.
8. i but not Oa@ Versions of actualism may (for all we have said so far) attribute significance to whether actual people deserve what they get, to equality among actual people, and to whether the rights of actual people are violated in the various accessible worlds.
9. j." For economy's sake, I will use the shorthand here.
10. The oracle tells me that I will kill my grandfather whatever I do. No matterwhether I join the army or the priesthood, stay at home or go into exile, all of the branching paths before me lead to his death at my hands. Knowing the oracle to be right, I find myself in the grip of strong fate.
11. Standard consequentialism, whether expressed as a maximizing or satisficing theory, has it that at least one of the actions available to an agent (assuming there are finite number of them) is not wrong - one whose outcome is at least as good as any of the alternatives. For an extended discussion of this, see Alistair Norcross, "Utilitarianism and Moral Dilemmas," Philosophical Studies 79 (1995): 59-83, and sec. 2.4 of Eric Carlson, Consequentialism Reconsidered (Norwell, MA: Kluwer, 1995).
12. The oracle tells me that although, if I were to make the right choices, I would not end up killing my grandfather, it is a sad matter of fact that I actually will end up killing my grandfather. I am capable of taking any of the branching paths before me, only one of which leads to his death at my hands, but that is the one I will actually take. Knowing the oracle to be right, I find myself in the grip of weak fate. Weak fate figures prominently in Newcomb cases. On the standard reading of the classic Newcomb case, I know that I am capable either of two-boxing and walking away with $1,000,100 or oneboxing and walking away with nothing. But I also know that I won't actually do either of these things. I will actually either two-box and walk away with $100 or one-box and walk away with $1 million. If strong actualism is correct, the negatively symmetrical case is closely analogous to a symmetrical Newcomb-esque case: I get to pick one of opaque boxes A and B. If the predicting machine predicts that I will pick box A then it puts $100 in box B and nothing in box A. If it predicts that I will pick box B then it puts $100 in box A and nothing in box B. Facing the boxes, after the machine has made its prediction, I know that I am capable of choosing the box that I ought to choose, but that I actually will not.
13. A similar observation was made by Jeff McMahan in his review of David Heyd's Genethics: Moral Issues in the Creation of People in the Philosophical Review (103 [1994] : 557-59). Thanks to him for bringing this to my attention.
14. This is analogous to the difference between the symmetrical Newcomb-esque case (if the machine predicts I will pick box A then it puts $100 in box B; if it predicts I will pick box B then it puts $100 in box A) and an asymmetrical variant: if the machine predicts I will take box B then it puts $100 in box A; if it predicts I will take box A then it puts $110 in box A. Suppose I actually take box B in both cases. There is a sense in which, in both cases, I ought not to have done what I did: in both cases I would have been $100 richer if I had taken box A. But there is a further sense in which I made a mistake in the asymmetrical case: in that case, deliberatively relevant considerations weighed in favor of my taking box A.
15. Many writers have considered or discussed it (see Parfit, Reasons and Persons, app. G, for example), but fewer have endorsed it. John Broome is one - see sec. 14.3 of John Broome, Ethics out of Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). An interesting response is in Parsons, "Axiological Actualism."
16. Some philosophers who are sympathetic to actualism seem to leave this possibility open. They express the central actualist insight as "an act is wrong only if there is some actual person for whom it is bad." This does not entail that an act is wrong whenever there is some actual person for whom it is bad and no actual person for whom it is good. See Larry Temkin, "Intransitivity and the Mere Addition Paradox," Philosophy & Public Affairs 16 (1987): 138-87, sec. IIIA, for a clear distinction between the two components of the view.
17. See Peter Singer, "A Utilitarian Population Principle," in Ethics and Population, ed. Michael Bayles (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1976). Thanks to him for bringing this response to my attention.
18. See David Benatar, "Why It Is Better Never to Come into Existence," American Philosophical Quarterly 34 (1997); 345-55.
19. You can adopt this line if you reject the view that Mariette was essentially born when she was born (or thereabouts) and essentially possesses the genes she possesses (or thereabouts). This is not quite as weird as it sounds. Lewisian counterpart theorists think that whether or not a sentence like "if Mary had waited, Mariette would not have had a heart condition" is true depends upon which entities in nearby possible worlds are to be considered counterparts of Mariette, and that whether or not entities are to be considered counterparts is a context-sensitive matter. Such theorists are free to say that when we ask "would Mariette have been born if Mary had waited?" the context induces a very loose counterpart relation, making "yes" the appropriate answer.
20. See Seana Schiffrin, "Wrongful Life, Procreative Responsibility, and the Significance of Harm," Legal Theory 5 (1999): 117-48; and Bonnie Steinbock and Ron McClamrock, "When Is Birth Unfair to the Child?" Hastings Center Report 24 (1994): 15-21.
21. See Woodward, "The Non-Identity Problem."
22. See John Harris, "Rights and Reproductive Choice," in The Future of Human Reproduction: Ethics, Choice and Regulation, ed. John Harris and Soren Holm (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998): 5-37.
23. See Michael Freeman, The Moral Status of Children: Essays on the Rights of Children (The Hague: Kluwer, 1997).
24. One way of putting the point in terms that some readers will find familiar is to say that the terms 'de re' and 'de dicto' modify the reading of the definite description. On the de dicto reading, we treat it as nonrigid and assess whether- is better off than - would have been. On the de re reading we treat it as rigid and do the same.
25. Parfit, Reasons and Persons, sec. 122, 359-60.
26. Ibid., 360.
27. Take the sentence schema "I have made things de dicto worse for - ." In any world in which there are two people, one healthy, one unhealthy, we can insert in place of the " - " a definite description that picks out an unhealthy person but would have picked out a healthy person if I had acted differently, and the resulting sentence will come out true.
28. Thanks to Mark Johnston for this example.
29. The idea is that some people who get cancer are strongly disposed to do so (for genetic or environmental reasons) but others are just unlucky. For one of the unlucky people it will be true that (e.g.) if he hadn't taken a walk at precisely such and such a time and raised his neck to the sun at precisely such and such an angle, then most likely he would not have gotten cancer. And for any piece of technology that has had a major impact upon the lives of many people it will be true that if the technology had not been invented then most likely he would not have taken a walk at precisely such and such a time and raised his neck to the sun at precisely such and such an angle. You may not accept this, but for dialectical purposes that doesn't really matter. The point is that we would not think worse of Simon and his invention if it turned out to be true - though it would then be the case that Simon's invention has been de re bad for many cancer patients.
30. The precise nature of this concern is controversial. Am I required to desire that things be better, in every way, for my children? One might think not. While I am obliged to make sacrifices to ensure my child can walk, I am not obliged to make sacrifices so as to send her to an excellent private school when there are good public schools in our neighborhood. What is required of me (at least) is a narrower concern for my child's health. Am I required to desire that my child be as healthy as possible? One might think not. 1 am not obliged to feed her supplements that will turn her into an Olympian. What is required of me (at least) is a narrower concern that she be healthier in certain particular ways.
31. Contrast Mary's case with an adoption case - Sarah makes things de dicto worse for the health of her child by adopting a blind child, Jeff, when there were sighted children at the orphanage. In Sarah's case, though de re concern for her child can play no role in guiding the particular decision about which child to adopt (assuming Sarah would substantially benefit any of the children by adopting them), it is not true that de re concern for the health of her child cannot play a role in guiding at least some of the choices she makes prior to the adoption. This is because not all of the significant things we do before adopting a child affect the identity of the child we adopt. Sarah could have made things de re worse for Jeff by giving away her family fortune before adopting him, by saying something cruel to him before adopting him, etc. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this example.
32. This point (that "same-number nonidentity cases" are likely to be very rare indeed) is made by Jeff McMahan in his "Preventing the Existence of People with Disabilities," in Quality of Life and Human Difference, ed. David Wasserman, Robert Wachbroit, and Jerome Bickenbach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Thanks to him for bringing it to my attention.
33. Whether or not we are entitled to make assumptions of this kind is a controversial matter - see James Lenman, "Consequentialism and Cluelessness," Philosophy & Public Affairs 29 (2000): 342-70.
34. This is not to say that he has no options. For example, he could argue that fairness explains the difference between the Pete/Michael cases and the Mary/June cases. Pete behaves fairly. If he had chosen Alexis on the grounds that she would suffer one hour less pain this would have been unfair to her. But Mary does not behave fairly. If she had chosen to wait on the grounds that she would then conceive a healthier child, this would not have been unfair to Mariette (Mariette would not have existed). But this turns on controversial ideas about fairness, ideas that someone sympathetic to the view that we do wrong by making the world worse simpliciter is unlikely to accept. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this observation.