If it is permissible for her to have no child instead of the gloriously happy child, and permissible for her to have a mildly happy child instead of no child, how could it be impermissible for her to have the mildly happy child instead of the gloriously happy child?
Epistemic status: quite uncertain, I’m not a Kantian scholar, not even a deontologist.
I think it might be interesting to distinguish between a rights-based and a duty-based deontologist. Then, we could draw here an analogy with Kantian imperfect duties. One might have an imperfect duty to help a person A, but this obligation can be deflected if it’s too costly—in a vocabulary more up to date, this is a non-conclusive reason to help A. That is, I think, like the permission to have no child at all, instead of a mildly happy child.
However, if a Kantian agent is able to either increase the welfare of invidual A a bit, or to make the life of individual B life a paradise, all else standing equal, they would have an imperfect duty to choose B. This applies even if you don’t know the identity of A or B. Since Kantian duties are (prima facie) independent of corresponding rights, I don’t think the non-identity problem would affect this reasoning (if it’s sound) - and I assume that this reasoning would extrapolate to the case where A or B will only exist in the future. So, at least in Kantian framework, one would have a prima facie reason to improve the average well-being of the far future, even without improving the welfare of any particular person. Of course, this says nothing about the objection Mogensen presents against the Stakes principle.
(P.S.: As I understand it, that’s basically the objection Parfit raises against Scanlon in OWM II: you need deontic impersonal reasons precisely to avoid the absurd conclusion that, from the non-identity problem, you wouldn’t have a duty to improve the prospects of future generations)
Epistemic status: quite uncertain, I’m not a Kantian scholar, not even a deontologist.
I think it might be interesting to distinguish between a rights-based and a duty-based deontologist. Then, we could draw here an analogy with Kantian imperfect duties. One might have an imperfect duty to help a person A, but this obligation can be deflected if it’s too costly—in a vocabulary more up to date, this is a non-conclusive reason to help A. That is, I think, like the permission to have no child at all, instead of a mildly happy child.
However, if a Kantian agent is able to either increase the welfare of invidual A a bit, or to make the life of individual B life a paradise, all else standing equal, they would have an imperfect duty to choose B. This applies even if you don’t know the identity of A or B. Since Kantian duties are (prima facie) independent of corresponding rights, I don’t think the non-identity problem would affect this reasoning (if it’s sound) - and I assume that this reasoning would extrapolate to the case where A or B will only exist in the future. So, at least in Kantian framework, one would have a prima facie reason to improve the average well-being of the far future, even without improving the welfare of any particular person.
Of course, this says nothing about the objection Mogensen presents against the Stakes principle.
(P.S.: As I understand it, that’s basically the objection Parfit raises against Scanlon in OWM II: you need deontic impersonal reasons precisely to avoid the absurd conclusion that, from the non-identity problem, you wouldn’t have a duty to improve the prospects of future generations)