HANSER. Harming Future People

Harming Future PeopleAuthor(s): Matthew HanserReviewed work(s):Source: Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Winter, 1990), pp. 47-70Published by: Wiley-BlackwellStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265362 .

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MATTHEW HANSER Harm ing Future People

I

Most biologically informed people would agree that I would never have come into existence had the particular sperm and egg cells from which I developed not been united. But had my parents not had intercourse exactly when they did, those particular cells would most likely not have been united, and so I would never have existed. And had my parents not done some of the other things they did on that fateful day, they probably would not have had intercourse at that exact moment, and so I would never have existed. Indeed, had Hitler, Churchill, and Roosevelt not done many of the things they did, my parents would never have met, and so I would never have existed.

Following Derek Parfit, let us say that these actions affected the identities of future people. To say that an action affects the identities of future people is to say that as a result of that action either (a) there exist people who would not have existed had the action not been performed; or (b) there do not exist people who would have existed had the action not been performed; or both.I Hitler's decision to invade Poland presumably affected the identities of future people in both ways. And my open- ing observations about my own coming into being suggest that many more actions affect the identities of future people than-one might at first have thought.

Parfit is struck by the fact that acts that are not themselves reproduc-

I would like to thank Keith DeRose and the Editors of Philosophy & Public Affairs for their helpful suggestions.

i. The apparent reference to identifiable possible people in the gecond clause can be eliminated by means of a more cumbersome locution: An action affects the identities of future people in the second way just in case, had the action not been performed, there would have come to exist people distinct from anyone who in fact ever lives.



48 Philosophy & Public Affairs

tive can nonetheless predictably affect the identities of future people, and in Reasons and Persons2 he argues that this fact has unexpected and important consequences for ethical theory. I shall argue that this fact does not have the significance that Parfit attributes to it.

Parfit distinguishes three kinds of choice: Same People Choices, which do not affect the identities of future people; Same Number Choices, which affect the identities but not the number of future people (the number of people gained balances the number lost, so to speak); and Different Number Choices, which affect the number, and hence also the identities, of future people (p. 356). Parfit takes both Same Number Choices and Different Number Choices to raise difficulties for ethical theory. I shall focus upon the difficulties thought to be raised by Same Number Choices.

The problem, according to Parfit, is that although Same Number Choices can be just as objectionable, morally speaking, as Same People Choices, it is often very difficult to explain what the objection to a Same Number Choice is. To bring out the difficulty, Parfit asks us to consider a number of puzzling cases. His primary examples are these:3

(i) The 14-Year-Old Girl. A 14-year-old girl chooses to have a child. Because she is so young, she gives her child a bad start in life. Although this has bad effects throughout the child's life, that life is, predictably, worth living. If the girl had waited longer before having a child, she would have had a different child, to whom she would have given a better start in life. (p. 358)

A variant of this case involves a woman who knows that she has a particular disease, that any child she conceives while she has the disease will be mildly handicapped, and that she will shortly be cured, but who nonetheless chooses to have a child before being cured (p. 367).

(2) Depletion. As a community we must choose whether to deplete or conserve certain natural resources. If we choose Depletion, the quality of life over the next three centuries will be slightly higher

2. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, I984). All page references in the body of this article are to this book. Some of Parfit's arguments appeared in his earlier paper "Future Generations: Further Problems," Philosophy & Public Affairs i I, no. 2 (Spring I 982).

3. These are not quotations, but I follow Parfit fairly closely. The page references following the examples are to the passages in which the examples are introduced.



49 Harming Future People

than if we choose Conservation, as people will not have to tighten their belts. But there will not be enough time to develop alterna- tive resources, and so the quality of life after three centuries will be much worse than if we choose Conservation. We choose Deple- tion. The future people who experience the lower quality of life have lives worth living-their quality of life is no lower than ours presently is-and would not have existed had we chosen Conser- vation, since differences in the quality of people's lives affect, in purely accidental ways, who has sex with whom, and when. (p. 362)

(3) The Risky Policy. As a community we must choose between two energy policies. Both are completely safe for at least three centuries, but one, requiring the burial of nuclear waste in areas that may become earthquake-prone in the distant future, involves longer-term risk. If we choose the Risky Policy, the standard of living will be somewhat higher over the next century. We choose the Risky Policy. As a result, there is a catastrophe many centuries later: an earthquake releases radiation that kills thousands of people. The people who will be killed in this catastrophe have lives worth living, and would not have existed had we chosen the other policy. (pp. 37 I-72)4

All three choices are morally objectionable-but why? If they had been Same People Choices, thinks Parfit, the answer might have been that they are against the interests of, or harm, in the morally relevant sense, future people.5 But Parfit argues that this cannot explain why the choices described in his examples are objectionable, since the people they cause to be badly off (a) have lives worth living and (b) would not have existed had the choices not been made (pp. 359, 363, 372).6 The

4. I have simplified this example a bit; my simplified version is essentially the version Parfit discusses in "Future Generations: Further Problems" (there introduced on p. II 4).

I shall discuss the complications introduced in Reasons and Persons in Section IV of this article.

5. It is not clear to me whether there is supposed to be a difference between acting against someone's interests and harming him in the morally relevant sense. I discuss harming in this essay, but much of what I say should hold true for acting against people's interests as well, even if these are not the same thing.

6. In saying that the choices cause people to be "badly off" I mean only that their effects on people are such that the choices would have been against people's interests, or harmed them in the morally relevant sense, if they had been Same People Choices.




choices do not make them worse off than they would have been had the choices not been made. Quite the reverse: the choices result in their having something good-lives worth living-that they would not have had had the choices not been made. Nor can the objection to the choices be that they violate people's rights. Parfit admits that some of them may do this, but he argues that this could not account for the entire objection to such a choice (pp. 365-66, 375-76). Finally, Parfit argues that the objection to the choices cannot be a consequentialist one, if the relevant consequentialist principles are stated in "person-affecting" terms-that is, if they presuppose that a choice has a bad effect only if it has a bad effect on some person (pp. 370-71). What, then, is the moral objection to a choice that causes someone to be badly off, if that person (a) has a life worth living and (b) would not have existed had the choice not been made? Parfit calls this the "Non-Identity Problem" (p. 359). He offers only a partial solution: If the choice is a Same Number Choice, the objection to it is that its outcome is worse than the outcome that some other available choice would have had, where the following principle provides a sufficient condition for one outcome's being worse than another:

The Same Number Quality Claim, or Q: If in either of two outcomes the same number of people would ever live, it would be worse if those who live are worse off, or have a lower quality of life, than those who would have lived. (p. 360)7

Although this answer is only partial (it does not cover Different Num- ber Choices, which, as I noted earlier, raise their own difficulties), Parfit goes on to derive some rather strong consequences from it. He argues that if an objectionable Same People Choice and a Same Number Choice with analogous effects are equally objectionable (and he is inclined to think that they are), and if by causing someone to exist with a life worth living one does not thereby benefit him, then the fact that a Same People Choice is against someone's interests, or harms him, is just a red her- ring; the real objection to such a choice is that it too runs afoul of Q (pp. 370, 378). Given these assumptions, harm (in the morally relevant sense) to an individual is just a special case of someone in one state of affairs being worse off than someone in another-the fact that an action

7. As emended in the I986 paperback edition; in the original, the first occurrence of "worse" read "bad."




harms someone has no independent moral significance. Parfit's reasoning is presumably that if harming did have independent moral significance, a Same People Choice and a Same Number Choice with comparable effects would not be equally morally objectionable: the latter would violate Q, but the former would violate Q and harm someone. The Same People Choice would consequently be more objectionable.8

Parfit's solution to the Non-Identity Problem is a consequentialist one, for it works only given the assumption that other things being equal, an action is morally objectionable if the outcome of some other available action would have been better. If Parfit is right that his solution is forced upon us, he has dealt quite a blow to nonconsequentialist ethical theo- ries.9 And if he is right that we must also appeal to Q in order to account for cases that are not instances of the Non-Identity Problem, the blow is even greater. But even consequentialists should find Parfit's conclusions disturbing, if they believe that we should maximize the good effects, and minimize the bad effects, that our actions have on people.

I shall argue that the "Non-Identity Problem" is not a problem, and that consequently no solution to it is forced upon us. Parfit gives two arguments that the objection to a choice causing people to be badly off cannot be that it harms them, in the morally relevant sense, if they (a) have lives worth living and (b) would not have existed had the choice not been made. He argues first that choices satisfying these conditions do not harm people in the morally relevant sense at all, and second that if a certain further assumption is made, it follows that the choices actually benefit the people they cause to be badly off. I shall argue that neither argument is sound, and that many choices satisfying Parfit's conditions are objectionable precisely because they harm people in the morally relevant sense. But other choices (e.g., to perform what I shall call acts of "wrongful procreation") do pose a genuine problem; I shall close with a few remarks about these choices.

8. 1 am skeptical of this manner of reasoning-it does not seem to me that moral objections need "add up" in this way-but I shall not question it here.

9. Parfit does not argue that nonconsequentialist considerations never enter into explanations of the goodness or badness of actions satisfying the conditions of the Non-Identity Problem, but if his arguments are sound, such considerations have much less application than most nonconsequentialists think. A number of writers, including Gregory Kavka (in "The Paradox of Future Individuals," Philosophy & Public Affairs i i, no. 2 [Spring i9821) and James Woodward (in "The Non-Identity Problem," Ethics 96 [i9861), have argued that the Non-Identity Problem does not force consequentialist principles upon us. I shall argue the same thing, but along somewhat different lines.




II

Parfit's first argument is presented three times in chapter i6 of Reasons and Persons: once in his discussion of The 14-Year-Old Girl (p. 359), once in his discussion of Depletion (p. 363), and once in his discussion of The Risky Policy (p. 372). The argument goes like this:

(i) The people these choices cause to be badly off have lives worth living (by stipulation).

(2) If someone has a life worth living, having that life is not worse for him than having no life at all (Parfit apparently takes this to follow from the meaning of "life worth living").10

(3) The people these choices cause to be badly off would not have existed had the choices not been made (again, by stipulation).

Therefore,

(4) The choices do not make these people worse off than they would have been had the choices not been made (or, as Parfit more often puts it, "the choices are not worse for them").

(5) A choice does not harm someone in the morally relevant sense unless it makes him worse off than he would have been had the choice not been made."

Therefore,

(6) In the morally relevant sense, these choices harm no one.

The crucial premise of the argument is clearly (5); I shall argue that this premise is false. Parfit says that he defends (5) in section 25 of Rea- sons and Persons (p. 374), so I shall begin by examining the argument that he gives there.

io. But the argument does not require this claim about the meaning of "life worth living"-it is enough that the relevant people's lives are in fact not worse for them than having no lives at all.

i I. Premise (5) is not explicitly stated in the passages from which (i )-(4) are extracted, but the argument clearly requires it. And Parfit endorses (5) later on, when he writes that "if what we are doing will not be worse for some other person, or wil even be better for this person, we are not, in a morally relevant sense, harming this person" (Reasons and Persons, p. 374). (Remember that for Parfit, to say that an action is not worse for someone is just to say that it does not make him worse off than he would have been had the action not been performed.)




Parfit does not argue directly for (5) in section 25; rather, he argues for a more general principle covering both harmning and benefiting, which he names "(C6)":

(C6) An act benefits someone if its consequence is that someone is benefited more. An act harms someone if its consequence is that someone is harmed more. (p. 69)

About this principle he writes:

(C6) revises the ordinary use of the words 'benefit' and 'harm'. When I claim to have benefited someone, I am usually taken to mean that some act of mine was the chief or immediate cause of some benefit received by this person. According to (C6), I benefit someone even when my act is a remote part of the cause of the receiving of this benefit. All that needs to be true is that, if I had acted otherwise, this person would not have received this benefit. Similar claims apply to 'harm'. (p. 69)

Parfit seems to be reasoning as follows. According to ordinary usage, an act benefits someone when it is the chief or immediate cause of his receiving a benefit, and harms him when it is the chief or immediate cause of his suffering a harm. But an act can be praiseworthy owing to its role in bringing someone a benefit when it is not the chief or immediate cause of his receiving that benefit, and can fail to be even prima facie praiseworthy when it is the chief or immediate cause of someone's receiving a benefit; similarly for harms and harming. It would thus be useful, for the purpose of moral theorizing, to introduce a sense of the verb "to benefit" encompassing all and only acts (and omissions) that are at least prima facie praiseworthy owing to their role in bringing benefits to people, and a corresponding sense of the verb "to harm" encompassing all and only acts (and omissions) that are at least prima facie objectionable owing to their role in bringing harms to people.12 Or, equivalently, we should introduce senses of these expressions encompassing

I2. I say "prima facie objectionable" because Parfit readily admits that an action can harm someone in the morally relevant sense and yet be morally permissible. Parfit seems to have in mind cases in which the harm an action does is simply outweighed by the good it does, but we might just as well add that an action that harms someone in the morally relevant sense can be justified by an application of some such principle as the doctrine of double effect. The important point is that an action that harms someone in the morally relevant sense stands in need of moral justification.




all and only acts (and omissions) the performance of which makes their agents at least partially responsible for people's receiving benefits or suffering harms.

So although (C6) does not contain the phrase "in the morally relevant sense," I think that it is meant to explain the new, morally relevant senses of the active constructions "X benefits Y" and "X harms Y" in terms of the ordinary, unexplained senses of the passive constructions "Y is benefited" and "Y is harmed." (C6) states that an act benefits someone in the morally relevant sense if, as a consequence of the act, that person is benefited in the ordinary sense more than he would have been had the act not been performed'3-or, equivalently, if he receives a greater amount of some benefit than he would have received had the act not been performed. Similarly, an act harms someone in the morally relevant sense if, as a consequence of the act, that person is harmed in the ordinary sense more than he would have been had the act not been performed-or, equivalently, if he suffers a greater amount of some harm than he would have suffered had the act not been performed. So understood, (C6) is an attempt to spell out the morally relevant relation holding between an act and the event of someone's receiving a benefit or suffering a harm when the act brings upon its agent at least partial responsibility for the person's receiving a benefit or suffering a harm.

One last difficulty of interpretation remains. Read literally, (C6) states only sufficient conditions for an act's benefiting or harming someone in the morally relevant sense, whereas in his first argument Parfit appeals to a necessary condition for an act's harming someone in the morally relevant sense. But I do not think this is much of a problem. Parfit's defense of (C6) supports the converses of the statements in (C6) just as strongly as it supports the statements themselves. (C6) should consequently be taken to assert both necessary and sufficient conditions. Par- fit's defense of (C6) is that it best explains our intuitions about a certain pair of examples. In both, I can either join with some others to save one hundred people, or go off by myself to save a smaller number of people (pp. 67-69). In the first example, only I can save the smaller number, while the hundred can be saved without my help; obviously, I should go save the smaller number. But in the second example the hundred cannot be saved without my help; this time Parfit thinks I should leave the

13. Note the passive-someone may be benefited, or receive a benefit, even though no one's action benefits him in the ordinary sense. The same is true for harmns.




smaller number to die.'4 (C6) explains why I should help save the hundred in the second example: by doing so I would benefit one hundred people, in the morally relevant sense, since they would die if I were to act otherwise. I would benefit fewer people if I were to save the smaller number. But (C6) does not (by itself) explain why I should save the smaller number in the first example. Parfit's explanation is that by saving the smaller number I would benefit that number of people, in the morally relevant sense, whereas I would benefit no one in the morally relevant sense if I were to help save the hundred, since all hundred would be saved anyway. But it does not follow from (C6) that I would benefit no one by joining in saving the hundred; this follows from (C6)'s converse. So what Parfit's argument really supports is

(C6') An act benefits someone in the morally relevant sense just in case its consequence is that that person is benefited more than he would have been had the act not been performed. An act harms someone in the morally relevant sense just in case its consequence is that that person is harmed more than he would have been had the act not been performed.

Let us now return to Parfit's argument that an action harms no one, in the morally relevant sense, if the people it causes to be badly off (a) have lives worth living and (b) would not have existed had the action not been performed. The crucial premise of the argument is:

(5) A choice does not harm someone in the morally relevant sense unless it makes him worse off than he would have been had the choice not been made.

But although (C6') implies a necessary condition for an act's harming someone in the morally relevant sense, it does not imply (5). Rather, it implies

(5') An act does not harm someone in the morally relevant sense unless its consequence is that that person is harmed more than he would have been had the act not been performed.

The conditions stated in (5) and in (5') are not the same. (5') says that in order for an action to harm someone in the morally relevant sense, it

14. If the arguments of John Taurek are correct (see "Should the Numbers Count?" Philosophy & Public Affairs 6, no. 4 [Summer 19771), Parfit may be mistaken about this; but let us assume that Parfit is right.




must result in the person's being harmed more than he would have been had the act not been performed. It leaves the notion of someone's being harmed unexplained. Premise (5) says something quite different: it says that in order for an action to harm someone in the morally relevant sense, it must cause him to be worse off than he would otherwise have been. It says nothing about whether or not he must suffer a harm, in the ordinary sense. To see that the two conditions are not equivalent, consider Parfit's example of the Risky Policy. We choose the Risky Policy, and three centuries later a catastrophe occurs in which thousands of people are killed by leaked radiation. There is no doubt that these people suffer harms: had the radiation not leaked, they would have gone on living happy lives. And they would not have suffered these harms had we chosen another policy, for then they would not have existed and so would never have been harmed at all. It is thus a consequence of our choosing the Risky Policy that people end up being harmed more than they would have been had we chosen differently. So the necessary condition stated in (5') is satisfied by our choice of the Risky Policy. Worse, according to (C6'), satisfaction of this condition is also sufficient for an action's harming someone in the morally relevant sense. So (C6') implies, contra Par- fit, that our choice of the Risky Policy does harm people in the morally relevant sense.

But our choice does not satisfy the necessary condition stated in (5). The people who die in the catastrophe would not have existed had we chosen a different policy, and since their lives are worth living, it follows that our choice does not cause them to be worse off than they would have been had we chosen differently. One is better off having a life worth living, even if its ending is premature, than having no life at all. So it follows from (5) that our choice of the Risky Policy does not harm people in the morally relevant sense.

Despite their lack of equivalence, the argument Parfit gives in section 25 of Reasons and Persons supports (5) and (5') equally well. (C6') was put forward to explain why I should go save a small number of people by myself when my help is not needed to save a larger number, and why I should not go save a smaller number of people by myself when my help is needed to save a larger number. But we can explain why I should not help save the larger number in the former case either by saying that an act does not benefit someone, in the morally relevant sense, unless it results in his receiving a benefit he would not otherwise receive, or by




saying that an act does not benefit someone, in the morally relevant sense, unless it results in his being made better off than he would otherwise be. Premise (5) is analogous to the latter claim about benefiting and (5') is analogous to the former claim; consequently, Parfit's argument supports the two principles equally well.

But since Parfit's argument supports both principles equally well, it provides no grounds for preferring one of them to the other. And since (5) and (5') support opposite moral conclusions regarding our choice of the Risky Policy, Parfit's argument provides no grounds for drawing one of these conclusions rather than the other.'5

As it happens, I think that both (5') and its converse are false. That does not mean, however, that we should accept (5). For although (5') and its converse are in my view false, they at least are in the appropriate form to state necessary and sufficient conditions for harming people in the morally relevant sense. They attempt to describe the morally relevant relation that holds between an action, on the one hand, and the event of someone's suffering a harm, on the other, just in case the action is at least prima facie objectionable owing to its role in bringing harm upon that person. The only problem is that they do not, in my view, describe that relation correctly. The fact that someone would not have suffered a harm had I not performed a certain action is neither necessary nor sufficient for my being even partially responsible for his suffering that harm.

Premise (5), however, is not in the appropriate form to state a necessary condition for an action's harming someone in the morally relevant sense: it does not purport to say how an action must be related to the event of someone's suffering a harm in order for it to be at least prima facie objectionable owing to its role in bringing harm upon him. I think

I5. In fact I do not think that the argument in sec. 25 supports even the disjunction of (5) and (5'). The explanations they provide for our judgments about Parfit's examples are forced upon us only if we assume that the better action in such a situation must always be the one in which the agent himself benefits the greater number of people, in the morally relevant sense. But why should we assume this? One might have thought that the real moral of Parfit's first example was precisely that sometimes it is best not to maximize the number of people that you personally benefit. If there are several in need of aid and several capable of giving it, and if I have no special obligation to any of those in need, the thing for me to do is to coordinate my actions with the actions of others so as to ensure that as many as possible are benefited. It is only the idea that the correct action to perform must be the one that has me personally benefiting the greater number that puts pressure on us to revise the use of the word "benefit" to fit this case.




that (5) is best seen as a cross between an account of what it is for an act to harm someone in the morally relevant sense and an account of what it is for someone to suffer a harm as a result of something that happens to him. It is plausible (although in my view false) to say that in order for an act to harm someone in the morally relevant sense, it must result in his suffering a harm that he would not otherwise suffer; and it is also plausible to say that in order for someone to suffer a harm, something that happens to him must make him worse off than he would otherwise be. I think that most of (5)'s plausibility derives from its resem- blance to this latter principle.

In any case, I think we can show that (5) is false. For we can show that choosing the Risky Policy harms people in the morally relevant sense; and if choosing the Risky Policy harms people in the morally relevant sense, (5) is false. Now Parfit would admit that a Same People Choice analogue of the Risky Policy that resulted in a similar catastrophe would harm people in the morally relevant sense. And it seems that the proper account of this would be as follows. First, the people who would die in the catastrophe would suffer harms. Many would be in the prime of life; death, then, would surely come to them as the greatest of evils. Second, we would be responsible for their deaths, since we would be responsible for the presence of the radioactive material, and we would have known when choosing the analogue of Parfit's Risky Policy both that there was a risk that radiation would leak and kill thousands of people, and that the advantages of the policy were insufficient to justify the risk. But both parts of this explanation hold for our choice of Parfit's Risky Policy as well: nothing in the explanation turns on whether or not the people who would die in the catastrophe would have existed had another policy been chosen instead. The people who die in the catastrophe resulting from Parfit's Risky Policy thus suffer genuine harms for which we are morally accountable.

I conclude that (5) is false, and that Parfit's first argument is unsound. Furthermore, the Risky Policy functions as a counterexample to any principle capable of supporting the inference from (4) to (6) in Parfit's argument. The only way to render the argument sound would be to in- terpret (5) as simply stipulating (part of) what Parfit means when he says that an action harms someone in the morally relevant sense. If this is all that (5) is designed to do, it does indeed follow that an action resulting in someone's suffering a harm does not harm him "in the morally




relevant sense" if he (a) has a life worth living and (b) would not have existed had the action not been performed. But it does not follow that we can give no "person-affecting" explanation why the act is objectionable. That an agent is morally accountable for someone's suffering a harm, by virtue of having performed a certain action, seems a perfectly intelligible "person-affecting" explanation why his action is objectionable. It is thus unimportant whether we are allowed to describe an act as harming someone "in the morally relevant sense" when conditions (a) and (b) are satisfied. The important thing is that we may well be able to explain why such an act is objectionable without appealing to a "non-person-affecting" consequentialist principle like Parfit's Q.

III

I now turn to Parfit's second argument. This argument is also presented three times in chapter i6 of Reasons and Persons: once in Parfit's discussion of The 14-Year-Old Girl (p. 359), once in his discussion of Deple- tion (p. 363), and once in his discussion of The Risky Policy (p. 372). It goes like this:

(i) The people these choices cause to be badly off still have lives worth living (by stipulation).

(2) These people would not have existed had the choices that caused them to be badly off not been made (also by stipulation).

(3) A choice benefits someone, in the morally relevant sense, if its consequence is that that person receives a benefit that he would not have received had the choice not been made.

Therefore,

(4) If by causing someone to exist with a life worth living (e.g., by conceiving him) one thereby benefits him, the choices we have been considering actually benefit, in the morally relevant sense, the people they cause to be badly off (for existence is a benefit they would not have received had we chosen differently).i6

i6. Line (4) takes the form of a conditional because Parfit does not wish to commit himself to either the truth or the falsity of the antecedent. But he argues that the antecedent is arguably true; see Reasons and Persons, p. 358 and appendix G.



6o Philosophy & Public Affairs

This is as far as Parfit goes with the argument, but there are clearly a few more steps to be taken. Parfit is trying to show that the objection to a choice that causes people to be badly off cannot be that it harms them, in the morally relevant sense, if they (a) have lives worth living and (b) would not have existed had the choice not been made. So the argument must continue thus:

(5) The benefit of existence, if it is a benefit, is greater than the harm these choices bring to the people they cause to be badly off, if they do bring them harms.

(6) If a choice benefits someone (in the morally relevant sense) more than it harms him (in the morally relevant sense), the choice is not objectionable owing to the harm it does him.

Therefore,

(7) If by causing someone to exist with a life worth living one thereby benefits him, the choices we have been considering are not objectionable owing to whatever harm they may bring to the people they cause to be badly off.

I have my doubts about premise (6)-it is not at all clear to me that, other things being equal, the fact that an action benefits someone more than it harms him justifies its performance. But I think that premise (3)-the claim that a choice benefits someone in the morally relevant sense if its consequence is that that person receives a benefit he would not have received had the choice not been made-is even more du- bious.17 I shall confine myself to arguing that premise (3) is false. '8

Consider the following example. Scrooge keeps his employee Bob Cratchet late on Christmas Eve. Scrooge knows that Cratchet will give money to the first needy person he sees on his way home. Scrooge also knows that if Cratchet goes home late, the needy person he sees first will

17. The wording of (3) differs only slightly from that of the sufficient condition for benefiting someone in the morally relevant sense entailed by Parfit's (C6'), and Parfit's gloss on (C6') makes it clear that he means for the two to be equivalent (see Reasons and Per- sons, p. 69). I argued in note i 5, however, that Parfit's defense of (C6') in sec. 25 of Rea- sons and Persons is inadequate. So the argument from sec. 25 cannot be used in support of(3).

i8. I think my objection here is essentially the same as Woodward's. See "The Non- Identity Problem," p. 809.



6i Harming Future People

almost certainly not be the needy person he would have seen first had he gone home on time. Cratchet ends up giving money to Jones. It follows from (3), as Parfit interprets it, that Scrooge benefits Jones in the morally relevant sense. But this cannot be right. The credit for this good deed belongs solely to Cratchet; it is a mere accident, morally speaking, that that particular good deed would not have been performed had it not been for something that Scrooge did. Of course, if Jones were to learn what had happened, he might say to himself, "Thank goodness Scrooge kept his employee late" (although this would betray a distressing lack of sympathy for poor Cratchet), but in saying this he would be congratulat- ing himself on his good luck, not praising Scrooge as his benefactor. I conclude that (3) is false, and that Parfit's second argument is unsound. I9

Furthermore, I think it is easy to see that no true principle can support Parfit's conclusion that an action satisfying the conditions of the Non- Identity Problem automatically benefits the people it causes to be badly off (if it turns out that causing someone to exist with a life worth living benefits him). Most such actions affect the identities of future people only because they accidentally (even if predictably) affect who has sex with whom and when-just as Scrooge's actions only accidentally affected whom Cratchet gave money to. Now if Scrooge had kept Cratchet late in order to ensure Cratchet's giving the money to Jones, he (Scrooge) would indeed have been partially responsible for Jones's receiving a benefit. But the agents of actions only accidentally affecting the identities of future people cannot plausibly be taken to act in order to ensure one group of people's coming into existence rather than another's. We are in any case presently concerned only with Same Number Choices; and since prior to the people's actual conception there can be no foreknowledge of who will come into existence if one policy is adopted and who will come into existence if another is adopted, no agent could possibly make a particular Same Number Choice in order to ensure one

i9. In fact, I think that Cratchet 's gift to Jones is not a consequence of Scrooge's action at all. And if it is not, Scrooge's action is not a counterexample to (3) after all. But the example still undermines Parfit's inference to (4). For as Parfit understands the notion of a consequence, any event that would not have occurred had a particular action not been performed is a consequence of that action (see Reasons and Persons, p. 69). And Parfit's appeal to (3) in his second argument presupposes that he is right about this: it presupposes that future conceptions that would not otherwise occur are consequences of, for example, our choosing the Risky Policy.




group of people's coming into existence rather than another's. Again, if it had been Scrooge's duty to prevent Cratchet from benefiting Jones, then his having done what he knew would enable Cratchet to give Jones money arguably would have made him at least partially responsible for Jones's receiving that benefit. But for the same reason that no one can make a Same Number Choice in order to ensure some particular group of people's coming into existence, neither can anyone, in such a situation, have a duty to prevent some particular group of people's coming into existence. When the choice between two policies is a Same Number Choice, that choice cannot be based on the policies' respective effects on the identities of future people.

Nor is the mere fact that it is foreseeable that choosing a particular policy will affect the identities of future people in accidental ways enough to make us responsible for the existence of the people who in fact come to exist, if our choice is a Same Number Choice. If I must choose between two highway plans, and it is predictable that there will be more accidents if plan A is adopted than if plan B is adopted, then perhaps I am responsible for there being more accidents if I choose plan A. But if there will be the same number of accidents either way, and I have to choose some highway plan, then the fact that it is predictable that the accidents resulting from each plan would involve different sets of people does not make me responsible for the accidents that in fact occur once I have made my choice. The same is true in the case of choosing the Risky Policy. This was by stipulation a Same Number Choice; the same number of people will live whether I choose the policy or not. The mere fact that I can predict that people will exist if I choose this policy who would not exist if I were to choose a different policy will not make me responsible for their existence. If the responsibility will belong to anyone, it will belong, presumably, to their parents.

IV

I have argued that from the fact that the person a choice causes to be badly off (a) still has a life worth living and (b) would not have existed had the choice not been made, it follows neither that the choice does not harm him in the morally relevant sense nor that it benefits him if it turns out that causing someone to exist with a life worth living benefits that person. If my arguments are sound, there is no such thing as the Non-




Identity Problem as Parfit understands it. No action poses a special problem for ethical theory simply by virtue of satisfying Parfit's conditions. Parfit has thus established no general need to appeal to "non-person- affecting" consequentialist principles like Q in order to explain the objections to such acts.

This is not to say, however, that every choice satisfying Parfit's conditions does objectionably harm someone, nor is it to say that no choice satisfying his conditions poses a problem for ethical theory not also posed by its Same People Choice analogues. I shall now discuss the examples presented in Section I of this article, and argue that only one of them is of a sort that raises special difficulties. I shall consider the examples in reverse order.

I think that the Risky Policy is one of the nonpuzzling cases. I argued in Section II that if our choice of the Risky Policy results in a catastrophe, we will be responsible for people suffering genuine harms, and so we will have harmed people in the morally relevant sense. In this re- spect, choosing the Risky Policy is just like choosing one of its Same People Choice analogues. So if we need a special explanation why choosing Parfit's Risky Policy is objectionable, it must be because we are prima facie justified in risking harming people in the morally relevant sense when we know that they would not exist if we were to act differently, but not prima facie justified in risking harming them when we know that they would still exist if we were to act differently. I argued in Section III, however, that choosing the Risky Policy does not make us responsible for the existence of future people; since there is no other benefit that we can plausibly claim to bestow upon the victims of the Risky Policy, it follows that our prima facie justification cannot be that we benefit the people we risk harming. But I do not see what other prima facie justification there could be. I conclude that no special explanation is needed why choosing Parfit's Risky Policy is objectionable. The fact that it is a Same Number Choice, and not a Same People Choice, is irrelevant.

Before moving on to Depletion, I would like to consider another risky policy-I will call it "Risky Policy II."20 Risky Policy II also involves the burial of dangerous radioactive waste, but radiation from this sort of waste does not kill people. Instead, it causes their future offspring to be

20. Risky Policy II is the risky policy that Parfit discusses in Reasons and Persons (pp. 371-72); remember that up until now I have been discussing the risky policy that Parfit discusses in "Future Generations: Further Problems" (see note 4).




born with a disease that causes premature death around the age of forty. Suppose we choose this policy, a catastrophe occurs, and thousands are subsequently born with the disease. Because of the policy's effects on the timing of future conceptions, neither the diseased children nor their parents would have existed had we chosen a different policy.

It is clear that people exposed to this sort of radiation are harmed by the experience, despite the fact that they are neither maimed nor killed. The radiation destroys their capacity to have healthy offspring, and this is clearly a harm. And since as choosers of Risky Policy II we are responsible for people suffering this harm, we harm these people in the morally relevant sense. The more difficult question is whether we harm their children. It is arguable that we do not, on the grounds that they do not suffer harms. They undergo no change from a normal to a diseased state, since they have the disease from the moment they come into existence; and one might think that undergoing such a change is a necessary condition for suffering a harm. Moreover, it might be that the children's having the disease is essential to them, that if the embryos from which they developed had not been diseased, it would not have been they who developed. It could also be argued on these grounds that the children are not harmed by whatever accounts for their having the disease.21

Perhaps these arguments show that the children suffer no harms- this is debatable-but they do not show that only a "non-person-affecting" version of consequentialism can account for the objection to choosing Risky Policy II. Risky Policy II is objectionable because there is too great a chance that it will result in a massive radiation leak. We have already seen part of what makes the risk unacceptable: a radiation leak would harm people in the morally relevant sense, by depriving them of

2I. It is important to distinguish the sense in which it may have been impossible for these children to exist without having the disease from the sense in which it may have been impossible for their parents to exist without experiencing the catastrophe. If it was causally determined that a catastrophe would result from choosing Risky Policy II, and that it would occur at that particular moment, it may also have been determined that the children's parents would experience that catastrophe, if they did not die first. But this would not mean that living in a world in which a catastrophe would soon occur was in any sense "constitutive of their very identities," nor that they could not have existed without that catastrophe's occurring. Parfit's claim was that, as a matter of fact, they would not have existed had we chosen a different policy, not that they could not have existed. But it is arguable that the children's having the disease is in some sense "constitutive of their very identities," and that they could not have existed without having it. The argument imagined in the text would have to involve claims of these latter, stronger sorts.




their ability to produce healthy children. And if the harmed people were to go on and have diseased children, we would be partially responsible for the children's having the disease, since their having it would be attributable to the harms suffered by their parents. Since having a disease that causes premature death is bad for the person who has it, even if he has it from conception, and even if there is never a time at which it is possible for him not to have it, it follows that we would be responsible for people having a disease that it is bad for them to have. So when we choose Risky Policy II, we risk becoming responsible both for people suffering harms and for people having a disease that it is bad for them to have. I think that either risk is sufficient to provide a recognizably "person-affecting" objection to our choice. But notice further that it is only because having a fatal disease is bad for the person who has it that causing someone's future offspring to be born with a fatal disease is a way of harming him. (I do not harm someone if I give him a treatment that will cause him to produce perfectly healthy offspring.) The badness of having a fatal disease (for the person who has it) is thus the ultimate source of both objections to choosing Risky Policy JJ.22 I conclude that even if there is some difficulty in saying that the children of people we expose to radiation suffer harms for which we are responsible, we do not have to appeal to a "non-person-affecting" consequentialist principle like Par- fit's Q in order to explain how the fact that our choice will predictably result in people being born with a fatal disease figures into the account of the objection to our choice.23

I now turn to Parfit's second main example, in which we choose to deplete rather than conserve certain scarce natural resources. This choice shares with the choice of the Risky Policy the feature of only accidentally affecting the identities of future people; we consequently cannot justify our choice by pointing to the existence we confer upon people

22. Our choice does not, of course, "turn out" to be wrong only if it actually results in children being born with a fatal disease. It is wrong even if the people exposed to the radiation never try to have children, and even if a catastrophe never occurs. If a catastrophe does occur, and the people exposed to radiation do go on to have diseased children, this may add to the magnitude of our guilt, but it does not make our original action any more objectionable.

23. Note finally that if difficulties do arise regarding Risky Policy II's effects on children born with the disease, they are not due to the fact that choosing Risky Policy II affects the identities of future people. The very same difficulties would arise, for example, regarding birth defects resulting from the secret dumping of industrial waste near people's homes, and dumping need not affect the identities of future people.




who would not otherwise exist. The "bad effect" of our choice is that it results in the standard of living being lower in the farther future than it would otherwise be. But there need be no sudden crash in the standard of living. Parfit stipulates that Depletion will not cause the standard of living to drop below its current level, and he allows that it might even continue to rise, but at a slower rate (in the farther future) than if we were to choose Conservation.24 And that is the difficulty with this case: it is not clear that our choice results in people suffering harms, or coming to exist in a state that it is bad for them to be in. This is not because the people would not exist if we were to choose Conservation. Suppose we make an analogous Same People Choice. This time the people who endure the lower standard of living would have existed, and would have enjoyed a higher standard of living, if we had made a different choice; but I do not think that these people suffer harms either (nor do I think that they come to exist in a state that it is bad for them to be in). Being made "worse off" in this way lacks the moral significance of true harming.25

Thus, although there may be something to be said against choosing a policy that sacrifices future welfare for immediate gain, the objection cannot, I think, be that the choice harms future people, or puts them into a state that it is bad for them to be in. And if the future people enjoy a standard of living at least as high as our own, the policy might not violate any principles of intergenerational justice, either. It would admit- tedly be unjust to impoverish people; but if we did that, people would end up suffering clearly identifiable harms-starvation, sickness, and so on-for which we would be responsible. If depleting our resources would

24. Parfit makes these stipulations because he is worried that if the standard of living drops, and especially if it drops below our current level, questions of distributive justice may arise. And he acknowledges that the moral force of rights may be unaffected by the Non-Identity Problem. See Reasons and Persons, pp. 365-66 and 375-76.

25. This is not to say that one cannot suffer a harm by being caused to receive less of a benefit than one would otherwise receive. If the executor of a will keeps some of a beneficiary's inheritance for himself, it would be quite natural to describe the beneficiary as suffering a harm. But this is surely (in part) because the executor's action deprives the beneficiary of something that is rightfully his, of something that he has a legitimate claim to. If the present generation squanders its natural resources without attempting to develop alter- natives for future generations, it arguably deprives members of future generations of something that they have a legitimate claim to, and so it arguably causes them to suffer harms. But I do not think that it is plausible to say that we can cause future people to suffer harms simply by failing to do what would make their standard of living higher than it would otherwise be.




impoverish people, the objection to Depletion would be the same as the objection to the Risky Policy.

So I am not sure what the objection to a choice that merely affects the future standard of living for the worse is. Perhaps it is that the choice violates a principle of beneficence according to which, other things being equal, it is better to make a choice that results in a higher future standard of living. If so, Parfit is right to conclude that not all moral principles can be stated in person-affecting terms (pp. 370-7I): an action can be objectionable even if it has no bad effect on anyone who ever lives. But I do not think that admitting this concedes much to Parfit. First, the difficulty in saying that Depletion harms future people has nothing to do with the Non-Identity Problem. We must appeal to a "non-person-affecting" principle of beneficence to explain the objection to choosing Deple- tion only if we must also do so to explain the objections to similar choices not affecting the identities of future people. Parfit's example thus raises no special difficulties having to do with people who "owe their existence" to our actions. And second, I do not think that this "non-person-affecting" principle of beneficence can be used to explain what is objectionable about choices that do harm people in the morally relevant sense; admitting this principle into our moral theory consequently does not un- dermine the force of genuinely "person-affecting" moral principles. Sup- pose that choosing a third risky policy-let us call it "Risky Policy III"- would cause people in the distant future to be on the whole marginally better off than people in the future would be if we were to choose a different policy. Unfortunately, choosing this policy would also bring about a nuclear catastrophe that would kill a significant number of people. I think that it would clearly be wrong to choose this policy, and that it would be wrong for the same reason it would be wrong to choose Parfit's original Risky Policy. But this means that an action can harm someone in the morally relevant sense-and be morally objectionable because of it-even though it maximizes overall future well-being; and so harming someone in the morally relevant sense cannot be just a special case of failing to maximize overall well-being, as Parfit seems to suggest (pp. 370, 378). The fact that an action harms someone in the morally relevant sense has independent moral relevance.

Now for Parfit's first sort of example. I shall consider the case of the woman who conceives a child knowing that it will be handicapped, and knowing that she could have had a normal child if she had waited, rather




than the case of the 14-year-old girl who conceives a child knowing that she is too young to give it a good start in life, because the former example more clearly raises the difficulty that I wish to discuss.26

It will be useful to compare this woman's choice with a comparable Same People Choice. Consider the following example: A mother is one month pregnant when it is discovered that unless she takes some fairly expensive (but certainly affordable) drug, her child will be born handicapped. Becoming handicapped will not, however, affect the identity of the child. She chooses not to take the drug, and her child is indeed bom handicapped.27 Now either her child acquired the handicap because of something that happened to him (or the fetus that he was) after her condition was detected, or he was by then already defective. Suppose the former is the case. The woman knew that the handicapping event would occur, or at least that there was a very good chance of its occurring, and that there was something she could do to prevent its occurring. She can thus be held responsible for the harm her child suffered in the womb. Now suppose that the fetus was already defective. In this case the effect of the drug would have been to remove the defect. This is surely a benefit that the woman owed to her unborn child, so by refraining from giving him this benefit she wronged him. Once again, she can be held responsible for her child's handicap.

Let us return to the Non-Identity case. Is the mother who conceives, knowing that the resulting child will be handicapped, likewise responsible for her child's handicap? I argued previously that if the choice of Risky Policy II were to result in future people's children being born with a strange disease, we would be at least partially responsible for their having the disease. We would be responsible because their having the disease would be attributable to harms suffered by their parents, and we would be responsible for those harms. Now the woman in the present example will give birth to a defective child because she is suffering from a strange disease. Her child's handicap will thus be attributable to the fact that she is suffering from that disease. If someone deliberately gave her the disease, with the knowledge that the disease causes birth defects, that person is at least partially responsible for the child's defect. But by stipulation it is not the mother's fault that she has the disease.

26. Woodward gives a good nonconsequentialist account of the objection to the 14-year- old girl's choice in "The Non-Identity Problem," p. 8I5.

27. This example derives from an example of Parfit's. See Reasons and Persons, p. 367.




She is responsible not for the defect-producing circumstances of her pregnancy, but for the pregnancy itself. Her objectionable act is conceiving a child, so what she is responsible for is the existence of a child to be affected by her disease. And although I think that her knowledge of the likely consequences of conceiving makes her responsible for its being a defective child that she gives birth to, it is not clear that it also makes her responsible for her child's defect. (Perhaps her responsibility for the former entails her responsibility for the latter, but it is at least arguable that it does not.)

Furthermore, in the present case, but not in its Same People Choice analogue, the performance of the objectionable act makes the woman responsible for the existence of her defective child. The objectionable act is one whose purpose is to bring a human being into existence; it is no accident that it results in the existence of someone who would not have existed had the act not been performed. So there is room to say that the woman benefits her child by performing the objectionable act.

The mother's act, which we may describe as an act of wrongful procreation, is consequently entirely different from our choice of the Risky Policy. I have argued that choosing the Risky Policy makes us responsible for the harms suffered by future people, but not for their existence. In cases of wrongful procreation the reverse might be true. A woman's choice to conceive does make her responsible for the resulting child's existence, but it is not clear that it makes her responsible for the child's foreseen defects. Acts of wrongful procreation thus strike me as the truly interesting and difficult cases. But the difficulty is not that their victims would not exist if the actions were not performed. Acts of wrongful procreation are difficult (at least in part) because of features they possess by virtue of being intrinsically reproductive acts. There is a problem ex- plaining what is objectionable about acts of wrongful procreation, but it is not Parfit's "Non-Identity Problem."

I shall not attempt a positive account of what is objectionable about such acts, but I do not think that a "non-person-affecting" principle of beneficence can provide the answer. If a woman can have a normal child now or a normal child later, and she is already well enough off to provide for and care for a child, I do not think that the fact that a child born later would be much better off (because of the immense wealth she will by then have accumulated) provides her with much of a reason for waiting. But if a child born now would be defective, and a child born later would




be perfectly healthy, she would have a good reason for waiting. Conceiv- ing a child thus becomes morally problematic when the child predictably will exist in a state that it is bad for him to be in. Since the badness in question here cannot be understood as the "comparative badness" of someone in one state of affairs being worse off than someone in another, it seems to me that the proper account of the objection to the woman's choice will have to be a "person-affecting" one.



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HANSER. Harming Future People