Toward a rights-based solution to the non-identity problem

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 194-208

  Smolkin, Doran ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 73849089860     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/0047-2786.t01-1-00012     Document Type: Article

References (13)

1. The example is Derek Parfit's. See his Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 358.
2. James Woodward, "The Non-Identity Problem," Ethics, July 1986, p. 813.
3. The case of "The Risky Energy Policy" is in Parfit's Reasons and Persons, pp. 371-72, and is discussed below.
4. See David Heyd, Genethics: Moral Issues in the Creation of People (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992), chap. 1.
5. Thomas Schwartz, "Obligations to Posterity," in Obligations to Future Generations, eds. R. I. Sikora and Brian Barry (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978), pp. 3-13.
6. More recently, David Heyd argues in great detail for a position similar to Schwartz's. See his Genethics: Moral Issues in the Creation of People. For a critical assessment of Heyd's position, see my review of his book in Ethics, vol. 104, no. 3, April 1994, pp. 629-31.
7. See Gregory Kavka, "The Paradox of Future Individuals," Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 2, no. 2, 1981, pp. 100-103. The belief that a future person whose life is, on balance, worth living may still have a legitimate complaint that some act necessary for her coming into being wronged her is defended not only by Kavka, but by Annette Baier and James Woodward as well.
8. See Annette Baier, "For the Sake of Future Generations," in Earthbound: Introductory Essays in Environmental Ethics, ed. Tom Regan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), pp. 214-46
9. Joel Feinberg, "Wrongful Life and the Counterfactual Element in Harming," in Freedom and Fulfillment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 31.
10. Doran Smolkin, "The Non-Identity Problem and the Appeal to Future People's Rights," The Southern Journal of Philosophy, vol. 32, no. 3, Fall 1994, pp. 315-29.
11. Perhaps a thought experiment will help convince that the special power of being able to determine who will come into being generates a duty to one's creation that she be able to have a life that is better than one that is only barely worth living: "Imagine a scientist who is attempting to create a human being by artificial means. Surely, in such a case, we think that the scientist has a greater responsibility than just making sure that the creation's life can be expected to be not worse than nothing. Intuitively, at least, we [or at least, I] think that the scientist's awesome power to create a human life gives her the responsibility to make sure that the creation's life can be expected to be (in some sense of the word) a good one, and that if she fails in that responsibility then it is the creation who has been wronged." Smolkin, "The Non-Identity Problem and the Appeal to Future People's Rights," The Southern Journal of Philosophy, vol. 32, no. 3, Fall 1994, p. 326.
12. James Griffin, Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement and Moral Importance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), part 1.
13. To what extent "flourishing" is best thought of as a relative or an absolute notion is explored in my unpublished manuscript, "A Mixed View of Flourishing."