“Failing to bring in existence” seems an odd way of putting it. I would rephrase as “preventing from coming into existence,” and I think that makes a big difference.
E.g., choosing not to have a child (or choosing not to help someone else have one) is not a crime, but any action that deliberately caused an unwanted miscarriage would be.
Beyond that, I think there is plenty of room (if one wants) to define the relationship between past and future selves as “something special”—such that it is a special kind of tragedy when someone loses their opportunity to have future selves, even exactly on par with how tragic we normally think of murder as being—without giving up the benefits of the view I outlined.
I think it is tragic for someone’s life projects and relationships to be forcibly cut off—even when we imagine this as “cut off via the prevention of their future selves coming into existence to continue these projects and relationships”—in a way that “a life not coming into existence” isn’t. (I am pretty lukewarm on the total view; people who are more into that view might just say these are equally tragic.) In addition to how tragic it is, it seems like a quite different situation w/r/t whether blame and punishment are called for.
“Failing to bring in existence” seems an odd way of putting it. I would rephrase as “preventing from coming into existence,” and I think that makes a big difference.
E.g., choosing not to have a child (or choosing not to help someone else have one) is not a crime, but any action that deliberately caused an unwanted miscarriage would be.
Beyond that, I think there is plenty of room (if one wants) to define the relationship between past and future selves as “something special”—such that it is a special kind of tragedy when someone loses their opportunity to have future selves, even exactly on par with how tragic we normally think of murder as being—without giving up the benefits of the view I outlined.
I think it is tragic for someone’s life projects and relationships to be forcibly cut off—even when we imagine this as “cut off via the prevention of their future selves coming into existence to continue these projects and relationships”—in a way that “a life not coming into existence” isn’t. (I am pretty lukewarm on the total view; people who are more into that view might just say these are equally tragic.) In addition to how tragic it is, it seems like a quite different situation w/r/t whether blame and punishment are called for.