The Non-Identity Problem, lecture 4, Mich2012
Claire Benn
cmab3@cam.ac.uk
The Non-Identity Problem – Alternative Solutions
Recap
The Significant Moral Difference View:
1) The Time Dependence Claim
2) The No Worse Off Argument
3) The Person-Affecting Principle
a. An action is wrong only if it harms
b. An action harms only if it brings about a state of affairs that makes someone
worse off
Parfit’s strategy: Reject the Person-Affecting Principle; adopt Principle Q and try and find
Theory X
Diffuse the Non-Identity Problem
Strategy 1: Heyd Bites the Bullet
There is a conflict of intuitions: the person-affecting intuition and the no significant moral
difference intuition. Parfit asks us to prefer the latter. Heyd says we should prefer the former.
Thus, according to Heyd, future people, whose existence depends on a given act has “no
moral status of any kind, not even a weak one” relative to that act. We cannot genuinely harm
people who depend on our choices for their very existence.
PROBLEM: why accept the person-affecting intuition? As Roberts puts it “it seems
implausible that whatever we do is automatically made morally permissible so long as more
benign alternatives very probably would have led to variations in the timing and manner of
conception and thus have changed the identities of future persons.”1
Strategy 2: Benatar Rejects the No Worse Off Argument
The No Worse Off Argument is based on the premise that ‘if being brought into existence is
either a benefit or neither a benefit nor a harm, then someone is not made worse off by being
brought into existence when the alternative is never to have been born at all’.
Benatar accepts this but rejects the antecedent of this conditional. His anti-natalism position
is follows from the following observations:
 The presence of pain is bad
 The presence of pleasure is good
 The absence of pain is good
 The absence of pleasure is not bad2
Existers experience pleasure but only existers suffer (and all existers suffer some time). Thus,
there is a negative aspect to existing. On the other hand, non-existence entails the absence of
pleasure, which is not bad, and the absence of pain, which is good. Thus non-existence is
overall a good thing whereas existence involves a bad thing: pain and suffering.
1
2
Roberts. ‘The Non-Identity Problem’, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
Benatar, Better Never to Have Been, p30
1.
The Non-Identity Problem, lecture 4, Mich2012
Claire Benn
cmab3@cam.ac.uk
Conclusion: we always harm someone by bringing them into existence.
PROBLEM: this means that it is always impermissible to have children.
Separating Wronging and Harming
Attack the Person-Affecting Principle premise (a) and distinguish wronging from harming.
Strategy 3: Kumar and Mutual Respect
“The kinds of considerations that are relevant for determining whether or not a person has
been harmed have primarily to do with the state of the person who claims to have been
harmed. Whether or not another has wronged one, on the other hand, has primarily to do with
facts concerning the character of the wrongdoer’s regulation of her conduct with respect to
how she has related to the wronged.”3
Consequentialism: does not explain how anyone in particular is a victim of wrongdoing.
The Person-Affecting Principle is part of the ‘outcome approach’ to understanding
wrongdoing: still, mistakenly, thinks that outcomes determine whether wrongdoing has
occurred.
The Drunk Driver. “Consider, for example, the case of a drunk driver who comes swerving
along the street where you happen to be taking a late evening stroll, thereby momentarily
imperiling your life. Luckily, nothing happens to you; the whole incident takes place so
quickly, you don’t even have time to be frightened. You are not, therefore, in any way worseoff as a result of your life having been put at risk. As the risk did not in fact blossom into an
actual harm, or end up setting back one’s interests in any way, any talk of one having been
left worse-off as a result of the drunk driver’s conduct would be, in this case, misplaced.”4
The Non-Consequentialist Conviction. “that what one does has an intrinsic significance in
moral reasoning that is independent of what happens as a result of what one does.”5
The Legitimate Expectations Account of Wrongdoing.6 “One person wronging another,
then, requires that the wrongdoer has, without adequate excuse or justification, violated
certain legitimate expectations with which the wronged party was entitled, in virtue of her
value as a person, to have expected her to comply.”7
Failing to comply with certain legitimate expectations is, as Kumar says, “not just a matter of
having failed to conduct oneself in a certain way. It can also be understood as a failure to
have been responsive to certain considerations that it was legitimate to expect one to have
3
Kumar, 'Who Can be Wronged', p100
Kumar, 'Who Can be Wronged', p103
5
Kumar, 'Who Can be Wronged', p105
6
This is my name for this position.
7
Kumar, 'Who Can be Wronged', p107
4
2.
The Non-Identity Problem, lecture 4, Mich2012
Claire Benn
cmab3@cam.ac.uk
been response, or to have taken into account considerations that it was reasonable to have
expected one to have disregarded as irrelevant for one's deliberations at that time.”8
Significance of Types rather than Tokens. “For the purposes of thinking about what one is
entitled to expect of another, however, knowledge of the particular identity of the other is not
essential. What is essential is that one has reason to take the other to be of a certain type.”9
PROBLEM: Parfit considers this solution.
Before birth “we can use the phrase ‘her child’ and the pronoun ‘he’ to cover any child that
she might have. These words need not refer to one particular child. We can truly claim: ‘If
this girl does not have her child now, but waits and has him later, he will not be the same
particular child. If she has him later, he will be a different child.’ By using these words in this
way, we can explain why it would be better if this girl waits. We can claim: The objection to
this girl’s decision is that it will probably be worse for her child. If she waited, she would
probably give him a better start in life.”10
However, after the girl has her child then the phrase ‘her child’ now naturally refers to this
particular child. And this girl’s decision is not worse for this child. So, the child is a particular
person who should be thought of as an individual rather than just an interchangeable token of
a type.
Strategy 4: Woodward and Specific Interests and Rights
Specific Interests. People have “relatively specific interests (e.g., in having promises kept, in
avoiding bodily injury, in getting their fair share) that are not simply reducible to some
general interest in maintaining a high overall level of well-being and that many moral
requirements function so as to protect against violations of such specific interests.”11
Promise Making and Promise Keeping. I am contemplating promising you that I will do
something. What I am contemplating promising is helping you study for a test and returning
your books to the library. If I don’t promise then I know I won’t do either of these things
which would be helpful to you. However, I also know that if I do promise then I will take
your books back to the library but that by taking them back I won’t be able to help you study
for the test. Now taking the library books back and not helping you study leaves you better
off than if I don’t take the library books back and still don’t help you study.12
The Racist Ticket Seller. “Suppose that Smith, who is black, attempts to buy a ticket on a
certain airline flight and that the airline refuses to sell it to him because it discriminates
racially. Shortly after, that very flight crashes, killing all aboard. There is a clear sense in
8
Kumar, 'Who Can be Wronged', p107
Kumar, ‘Who Can be Wronged’, p112
10
Parfit, Reasons and Persons, p359
11
Woodward, ‘The Non-Identity Problem’, p809
12
Adapted from Woodward, ‘The Non-Identity Problem’, p810
9
3.
The Non-Identity Problem, lecture 4, Mich2012
Claire Benn
cmab3@cam.ac.uk
which the airline’s action has the result that Smith is better off than he otherwise would be,
and if selling or not selling Smith the ticket are the only relevant actions which the airline can
perform, not selling leaves him better off than any other possible action the airline might have
performed.”13
Personal, not Impersonal, Complaint. “Presumably what the nuclear people will complain
about is the fact that many of their number have been killed, injured, poisoned, and so forth.
Presumably they will not say, ‘We recognize that nothing wrong has been done to us. What
awakens our indignation is rather that even better off people would have been produced if the
alternative energy policy had been chosen.’”14
PROBLEM: Parfit also considers this strategy and rejects it.
Newspaper Protester. A man writes to a newspaper to protest about a politician who
welcomed a decrease in teenage pregnancies. The man says that his mother was only 14 when
she had him and that because of her youth his early years were hard on both of them.
However, the man argues that his life is now well worth living. He argued that it was
outrageous to suppose that it would have been better if he had never been born. He argues
that he is glad that he was brought into existence and that he does not regret the choice his
mother made.
Parfit argues that in the Non-Identity Cases, when people realise that the alternative is not to
have been born at all, as long as their lives are worth living, they will be glad that we chose as
we did. Their lack of regret over our choices is an implicit waiving of their rights. Thus there
is no rights based objection to be had.
13
14
Woodward, ‘The Non-Identity Problem’, p810
Woodward, ‘The Non-Identity Problem’, p817
4.