This paper was published as a GPI working paper in March 2024.
Abstract
Person-affecting views in population ethics 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 takes the form of a dilemma. Narrow person-affecting views must embrace at least one of three implausible verdicts in a case that I call ‘Expanded NonIdentity.’ Wide person-affecting views run into trouble in a case that I call ‘Two-Shot Non-Identity.’ One plausible practical upshot of my argument is as follows: we individuals and our governments should be doing more to reduce the risk of human extinction this century.
Introduction
My subject is person-affecting views in population ethics. As is custom, I begin with:
Narveson’s Slogan
We are in favor of making people happy, but neutral about making happy people. (Narveson 1973, 80)
I’ll take a sharpened version of the latter clause to define ‘person-affecting views.’ Person-affecting views are those views that imply the:
Deontic Principle of Neutrality
In cases where all else is equal, we’re permitted but not required to create people who would enjoy good lives.[1]
Intuitions about person-affecting views run both ways. These views seem less appealing when we note that future good lives could contain all the things that make our own lives valuable: joy, knowledge, achievement, loving relationships, and so on (Kavka 1978, 195–96). But person-affecting views seem more appealing when we instead note the following: if we decline to create a person who would enjoy a good life (in cases where all else is equal), then no existing person is worse off (Govier 1979, 111; Hare 2007, 498). From this perspective, declining to create a person looks like a victimless crime, which may lead us to believe that it is no crime at all.
Many of us feel the force of both of these intuitions. Other philosophers find one intuition compelling and the other unconvincing. Unfortunately, these other philosophers disagree about which intuition is which. Since these initial intuitions are a wash, we have to look at the arguments.
In this paper, I argue against person-affecting views. Arguments against these views have been given before, but most are tailored to the details of specific theories.[2] New variants of person-affecting views emerge unscathed. Other arguments employ premises that advocates of person-affecting views have proven happy to reject. The most famous argument against person-affecting views is a case in point. It begins with two claims common to such views:
Existence Anticomparativism
Existing can’t be better for a person than not existing.
The Person-Affecting Restriction
An outcome can’t be better than another unless it’s better for some person.
These claims together imply that creating a person with a wonderful life is no better than creating a different person with a barely good life. It is not better for the person with the wonderful life (by Existence Anticomparativism) nor is it better for anyone else, and so it is not better simpliciter (by the Person-Affecting Restriction). That suggests (counterintuitively to many) that we are permitted to create a person with a barely good life rather than a different person with a wonderful life.
This non-identity problem (Parfit 1984, chap. 16) has long been considered the most serious objection to person-affecting views, but two developments cast doubt on its significance. The first is the growing number of philosophers who accept narrow person-affecting views’ supposedly-unacceptable verdict that creating the person with the barely good life is permissible (Heyd 2009; Roberts 2011b; Boonin 2014; McDermott 2019; Mogensen 2019; Horton 2021; Podgorski 2021; Spencer 2021). The second is the construction of wide person-affecting views which avoid the verdict (Hare 2007; Meacham 2012; Parfit 2017; Frick 2020).
In response to these developments, I present a dilemma for personaffecting views that builds on the non-identity problem. The first horn of this dilemma is a trilemma for narrow views. They must embrace at least one of three implausible verdicts in a case that I call ‘Expanded Non-Identity.’ The second horn of the dilemma is a sequential choice problem for wide views. A case that I call ‘Two-Shot Non-Identity’ reveals that these views make permissibility depend on factors that seem morally irrelevant: factors like whether we could have had a happier child many years earlier, or whether we carry out our choices by pulling two levers or one.
The premises of my argument are (I think) harder to reject than the premises of the original argument based on the non-identity problem. And my conclusion is that the Deontic Principle of Neutrality is false: in cases where all else is equal, we are required to create people who would enjoy good lives. My argument thus presents a challenge to all possible person-affecting views.
Now for one plausible practical upshot of my argument. There’s a risk that humanity goes extinct this century, and it’s widely agreed that the interests of existing people give us some reason to reduce this risk (Shulman and Thornley forthcoming). But if person-affecting views are false, then some non-person-affecting view in population ethics must be true, and many of these latter views imply that the prospect of happy future generations gives us additional reason to reduce the risk of human extinction this century (see, for example, Greaves 2017; Greaves and Ord 2017, sec. 4.4; Mogensen 2021, sec. 2). And since there could well be a lot of future generations enjoying very good lives, many of these views imply that this additional reason is strong (Tarsney and Thomas 2020; Greaves and MacAskill 2021). That in turn suggests that we individuals and our governments should be doing more to reduce the risk of human extinction this century.
Read the rest of the paper
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This principle is one half of the famous Procreation Asymmetry in population ethics (for which see McMahan 1981, 100; Holtug 2004; Roberts 2011a; 2011b; Chappell 2017; Frick 2017; 2020; Bader 2022; Thomas 2023; Thornley 2023; Francis, n.d.). The other half of the Procreation Asymmetry states that, in cases where all else is equal, we’re required not to create people who would suffer bad lives.
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See, for example, Beckstead 2013, chap. 4; Ross 2015; Greaves 2017; Thomas 2023; Horton 2021; Arrhenius forthcoming, chap. 10; Thornley 2023.
I find this topic quite interesting. One objection I have is that the reasoning here seems to treat hypothetical people as if they already exist. For example, at one point the PAV is presented with a choice between.
But “Amy” and “Bobby” are, at the moment purely hypothetical, and should not be talked about as if their identity already exists. I think this undermines most of the arguments here. To me, it seems like the actual options are:
In this case, the addition of option 3 adds nothing to the dilemna: allowing people to choose option 2 over option 1 is already the bullet that narrow PAV’s have bitten.
I think this also beats the sequential argument, by accepting that there is a meaningful difference between the sequential and the non sequential cases, and also in whether you know there will be one or two shots. In one shot non identity, we have choices
In this case, no matter what happens, someone will come into existence, so it’s better that the one person have higher welfare.
In two shot non-identity where you know in advance what happens, you now have four options:
So in a two shot non-identity where you know in advance what happens, then all options are permissible except option 1, because you had an option with the same number of people but better welfare.
In the case where you don’t know in advance that there will be a two-shot process, then yeah, you can end up in option 1). But I would just call this bad luck.
Imagine if a man was considering whether to have kids, but only had two batches of fertile sperm left, enough for one kid each. however, batch A is defective, and will certainly make the kids blind in one eye, while batch B will create a fully seeing person (ignore how biology actually works here). If he decided to have one kid, then using batch A instead of batch B seems immoral and senseless.
But if he was initially thought that batch B was lost and batch A was all that he had, then I don’t see anything wrong with having the half-blind kid. And if after he had the kid they tell him there was an error at the lab, and they actually found batch B after all, it’s also fine for him to shrug and say he’s happy with having one kid already. It’s bad luck, sure, but there’s no moral contradiction here.
I think my objections still work if we ‘go anonymous’ and remove direct information about personal identity across different options. We just need to add some extra detail. Let the new version of One-Shot Non-Identity be as follows. You have a choice between: (1) combining some pair of gametes A, which will eventually result in the existence of a person with welfare 1, and (2) combining some other pair of gametes B, which will eventually result in the existence of a person with welfare 100.
The new version of Expanded Non-Identity is then the same as the above, except it also has available option (3): combine the pair of gametes A and the pair of gametes B, which will eventually result in the existence of two people each with welfare 10.
Narrow views claim that each option is permissible in One-Shot Non-Identity. What should they say about Expanded Non-Identity? The same trilemma applies. It seems implausible to say that (1) is permissible, because (3) looks better. It seems implausible to say that (3) is permissible, because (2) looks better. And if only (2) is permissible, then narrow views imply the implausible-seeming Losers Can Dislodge Winners.
Now consider wide views and Two-Shot Non-Identity, again redescribed in terms of combining pairs of gametes A and B. You first choose whether to combine pair A (which would eventually result in the existence of a person with welfare 1), and then later choose whether to combine pair B (which would eventually result in the existence of a person with welfare 100). Suppose that you know your predicament in advance, and suppose that you choose to combine pair A. Then (your view implies) you’re required to combine pair B, even if that choice occurs many decades later, and even though you wouldn’t be required to combine pair B if you hadn’t (many decades earlier) chose to combine pair A. Now consider a slightly different case: you first choose whether to combine pair C (which would eventually result in the existence of a person with welfare 101), then later choose whether to combine pair B. Suppose that you know your predicament in advance, and suppose that you decline to combine pair C. Many decades later, you face the choice of whether to combine pair B. Your view seems to imply that you’re not permitted to do so. There are thus cases where (all else being equal) you’re not even permitted to create a person who would enjoy a wonderful life.
There’s another writeup of (some of?) these issues by the author here and some discussion/responses in the comments of that other post.