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Nonidentity Problem
Melinda A. Roberts
The International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Edited by Hugh LaFollette, print pages 36343641.
2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ 9781444367072.wbiee314
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increasingly over time be true that people married different people. And, even in
the same marriages, the children would increasingly over time be conceived at different
times. Since the choice between our two policies would affect the timing of later
conceptions, some of the people who are later born would owe their existence to
ourchoice. And the proportion of those later born who owe their existence to our
choice would, like ripples in a pool, steadily grow. (1987: 361)
In other words: the effect for Harry of conservation in place of depletion would not
have been a better existence but rather no existence at all. Or, at least, very probably,
the effect for Harry of conservation in place of depletion would have been no existence at all. Of course, any alternate person brought into existence in place of Harry
may well be better off than Harry in fact is. After all, that person will inhabit a world
where clean water is abundant. However, bringing any better-off but nonidentical
person into existence in place of Harry does Harry no good at all.
It then begins to look like the choice of depletion is, all things considered, not the
choice that makes things worse for Harry the choice that harms Harry in a morally
relevant sense but rather, if anything, the choice that benefits Harry. Depletion has
brought him into an existence worth having when he otherwise would at least very
probably never have existed at all.
Yet, we continue to think that the choice of depletion is wrong, depending on
details of the case (which details may include, e.g., that relatively few existing people
are benefited by depletion, while many future people are made to suffer). The upshot
is that, according to the nonidentity problem, we must reject the person-affecting
intuition. We must instead understand that some bad acts are bad for no one at
all. However, we do not thereby solve the problem since as Parfit argues we now
face a further challenge: the challenge of providing a plausible account of why the act
that will predictably make things worse for no one is nonetheless wrong.
Many other instances of the nonidentity problem seem to work in the same general
way as the depletion case does. These include Parfits risky policy case (1987: 3714),
Kavkas slave child and pleasure pill cases (1981: 93112), and the Acme chemical
company case (Woodward 1986: 81314; Smolkin 1999: 195; see climate change).
The person-affecting intuition is sometimes formulated in a way that focuses, not
on the evaluation of acts for their permissibility (Parfit 1987: 363), but rather the
evaluation of outcomes, or possible futures or worlds, in terms of their overall betterness (Parfit 1987: 370). On that alternate formulation, we would say that a world X is
morally worse than Y only if X makes things worse for some person who does or will
exist in X than Y (or we might instead want to say: than some Z) makes things for
that person. Whether we are interested in the deontic or the telic version of the
intuition, however, the choice of X is not to be judged wrong or, alternately, X is
not to be judged worse than Y in the case where the only (arguably) bad thing
about the choice of X or X itself is that it leaves a well-off person out of existence
altogether. For in that case X harms that is, makes things worse for at most a
person who is merely possible relative to X and not for any person who does or will
exist in X.
The details of formulation are critical. If, for example, the person-affecting
intuition is rewritten as a sufficient condition on when the choice of X is wrong or
when X is worse than Y then the resulting principle may well (depending on how
that work is done) seem implausible. For example, the principle that an act is wrong
if it is worse for a person who does or will exist under that act and better for no person who does or will exist under that act seems clearly unacceptable (Parfit 1987:
3956; Hare 2007: 50111; Roberts 2010: 6474; Roberts 2011; see population).
For different reasons, so is the principle which asserts that bringing an additional
well-off person into existence cannot make things either better or worse (Broome
2004: 1438; 2009). However, even the most cautious formulation of the personaffecting intuition leaves the intuition vulnerable to the nonidentity problem.
own lead to a full understanding of how the choice to bring a person into a burdened
existence is to be evaluated.
See also: climate change; cloning; consequentialism; population; reproductive
technology; repugnant conclusion
REFERENCES
Adams, Robert M. 1979. Existence, Self-Interest, and the Problem of Evil, Nos, vol. 13,
pp. 5365.
Benatar, David 2006. Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Boonin, David 2008. How to Solve the Non-Identity Problem, Public Affairs Quarterly,
vol. 22, pp. 12757.
Broome, John 2004. Weighing Lives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Broome, John 2009. Reply to Vallentyne, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,
vol. 78, pp. 74752.
Feldman, Fred 1995. Justice, Desert, and the Repugnant Conclusion, Utilitas, vol. 7, pp. 189206.
Hanser, Matthew 1990. Harming Future People, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 19, pp.4770.
Hanser, Matthew 2009. Harming and Procreating, in Melinda A. Roberts and David
T. Wasserman (eds.), Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics and the Nonidentity
Problem, Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 179200.
Hare, Caspar 2007. Voices from Another World: Must We Respect the Interests of People
Who Do Not, and Will Never, Exist? Ethics, vol. 117, pp. 498523.
Harman, Elizabeth 2004. Can We Harm and Benefit in Creating? Philosophical Perspectives,
vol. 18, pp. 89113.
Harman, Elizabeth 2009. Harming as Causing Harm, in Melinda A. Roberts and David
T. Wasserman (eds.), Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics and the Nonidentity
Problem. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 13754.
Heyd, David 1992. Genethics: Moral Issues in the Creation of People. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Heyd, David 2009. The Intractability of the Nonidentity Problem, in Melinda A. Roberts
and David T. Wasserman (eds.), Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics and the
Nonidentity Problem. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 325.
Holtug, Nils 2009. Who Cares About Identity, in Melinda A. Roberts and David
T. Wasserman (eds.), Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics and the Nonidentity
Problem. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 7192.
Kavka, Gregory 1981. The Paradox of Future Individuals, Philosophy and Public Affairs,
vol. 11, pp. 93112.
McMahan, Jeff 2002. The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life. New York: Oxford
University Press.
McMahan, Jeff 2009. Asymmetries in the Morality of Causing People to Exist, in Melinda
A. Roberts and David T. Wasserman (eds.), Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics
and the Nonidentity Problem. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 4968.
Narveson, Jan 1976. Moral Problems of Population, in Michael D. Bayles (ed.), Ethics and
Population. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Co., pp. 5980.
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Parfit, Derek 1976. On Doing the Best for Our Children, in Michael D. Bayles (ed.), Ethics
and Population. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Co., pp. 10015.
Parfit, Derek 1987 [1984]. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Persson, Ingmar 2009. Rights and the Asymmetry between Creating Good and Bad Lives,
in Melinda A. Roberts and David T. Wasserman (eds.), Harming Future Persons: Ethics,
Genetics and the Nonidentity Problem. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 2947.
Reiman, Jeffrey 2007. Being Fair to Future People: The Non-Identity Problem in the Original
Position, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 35, pp. 7192.
Roberts, Melinda A. 2007. The Nonidentity Fallacy: Harm, Probability and Another Look at
Parfits Depletion Example, Utilitas, vol. 9, pp. 267311.
Roberts, Melinda A. 2009a. The Non-Identity Problem and the Two-Envelope Problem:
When Is One Act Better for a Person than Another? in Melinda A. Roberts and David
T. Wasserman (eds.), Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics and the Non-Identity
Problem. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 20128.
Roberts, Melinda A. 2009b. What Is the Wrong of Wrongful Disability? From Chance to
Choice to Harm to Persons, Law and Philosophy, vol. 28, pp. 157.
Roberts, Melinda A. 2010. Abortion and the Moral Significance of Merely Possible People:
Finding Middle Ground in Hard Cases. Dordrecht: Springer.
Roberts, Melinda A. 2011. The Asymmetry: A Solution, Theoria, vol. 77, pp. 33367.
Ryberg, Jesper 2004. The Repugnant Conclusion and Worthwhile Living, in Jesper Ryberg
and Torbjrn Tnnsj (eds.), The Repugnant Conclusion: Essays on Population Ethics.
Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 23955.
Schwartz, Thomas 1978. Obligations to Posterity, in Richard Sikora and Brian Barry (eds.),
Obligations to Future Generations. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. 313.
Smolkin, Doran 1999. Toward a Rights-Based Solution to the Non-Identity Problem,
Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 30, pp. 194208.
Steinbock, Bonnie 2009. Wrongful Life and Procreative Decisions, in Melinda A. Roberts
and David T. Wasserman (eds.), Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics and the
Nonidentity Problem. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 15578.
Tnnsj, Torbjrn 2004. Why We Ought to Accept the Repugnant Conclusion, in Jesper
Ryberg and Torbjrn Tnnsj (eds.), The Repugnant Conclusion: Essays on Population
Ethics. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 21937.
Temkin, Larry 1993. Inequality. New York: Oxford University Press.
Temkin, Larry 2012. Rethinking the Good: Moral Ideals and the Nature of Practical Reasoning.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Velleman, David 2008. Persons in Prospect, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 36, pp. 221322.
Wasserman, David T. 2009. Harms to Future People and Procreative Intentions, in Melinda
A. Roberts and David T. Wasserman (eds.), Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics
and the Nonidentity Problem. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 26585.
Woodward, James 1986. The Non-Identity Problem, Ethics, vol. 96, pp. 80431.
FURTHER READINGS
Cohen, Cynthia 1996. Give Me Children or I Shall Die! New Reproductive Technologies
and Harm to Children, Hastings Center Report, vol. 26, pp. 1927.
Holtug, Nils 2010. Persons, Interests, and Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Kumar, Rahul 2003. Who Can Be Wronged? Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 31,
pp. 99118.
Rivera-Lopez, Eduardo 2009. Individual Procreative Responsibility and the Non-Identity
Problem, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 90, pp. 33663.
Robertson, John 1994. Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Sher, George 2005. Transgenerational Compensation, Philosophy and Affairs, vol. 33,
pp. 185200.
Shiffrin, Seana 1999. Wrongful Life, Procreative Responsibility, and the Significance of
Harm, Legal Theory, vol. 5, pp. 11748.
Shiffrin, Seana 2009. Reparations for U.S. Slavery and Justice Over Time, in Melinda
A. Roberts and David T. Wasserman (eds.), Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics
and the Nonidentity Problem. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 3329.
Weinberg, Rivka 2008. Identifying and Dissolving the Non-Identity Problem, Philosophical
Studies, vol. 137, pp. 318.