There’s a small, new literature analysing the subset of nonexistence I think you mean, under the name “impossible worlds”. (The authors have no moral or meta-ethical aims.) It might help to use their typology of impossible situations: Impossible Ways vs Logic Violators vs Classical Logic Violators vs Contradiction-Realizers.
To avoid confusion, consider ‘necessarily-nonexistent’ or ‘impossible moral patients’ or some new coinage like that, instead of just ‘nonexistent beings’ otherwise people will think you’re talking about the old Nonidentity Problem.
I think you’ll struggle to make progress, because the intuition that only possible people can be moral patients is so strong, stronger than the one about electrons or microbial life and so on. In the absence of positive reasons (rather than just speculative caution), the project can be expected to move attention away from moral patients to nonpatients—at least, your attention.
Meta: If you don’t want to edit out the thirteen paragraphs of preamble, maybe add a biggish summary paragraph at the top; the first time I read it (skimming, but still) I couldn’t find the proposition.
There’s a small, new literature analysing the subset of nonexistence I think you mean, under the name “impossible worlds”. (The authors have no moral or meta-ethical aims.) It might help to use their typology of impossible situations: Impossible Ways vs Logic Violators vs Classical Logic Violators vs Contradiction-Realizers.
To avoid confusion, consider ‘necessarily-nonexistent’ or ‘impossible moral patients’ or some new coinage like that, instead of just ‘nonexistent beings’ otherwise people will think you’re talking about the old Nonidentity Problem.
I think you’ll struggle to make progress, because the intuition that only possible people can be moral patients is so strong, stronger than the one about electrons or microbial life and so on. In the absence of positive reasons (rather than just speculative caution), the project can be expected to move attention away from moral patients to nonpatients—at least, your attention.
Meta: If you don’t want to edit out the thirteen paragraphs of preamble, maybe add a biggish summary paragraph at the top; the first time I read it (skimming, but still) I couldn’t find the proposition.
I’ve taken your advice and added a summary. Thanks for the information, it’s a very insightful comment!