Abstract
This paper argues that causing beings to exist can benefit them. It is sketched how this view avoids Derek Parfit’s repugnant conclusion by rejecting the transitivity of the relation better/worse than. It handles Jeff McMahan’s asymmetry consisting in that reasons against letting beings with bad lives exist are significantly stronger than reasons for letting beings with good lives exist by putting it down to the conditions making lives bad being more potent than those making them good. The latter asymmetry is reflected in negative feelings being stronger than positive, including compassion being stronger than positive sympathy. Compassion is a chief source of benevolence. Neither the absence of consciousness nor the physical non-existence of possible beings hinders compassion for them. What hinders it is the same as what hinders compassion for existing beings unknown to us: lack of the detailed information about what their lives would be like which facilitates empathy.
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Notes
Something, e.g., a life, is overall intrinsically good for a being just in case it contains more of what is intrinsically good than what is intrinsically bad for it. Consequently, it is here assumed that amounts of intrinsic goodness and intrinsic badness are at least roughly comparable. Notice also that what is of interest here is solely what is intrinsically good or bad for the being whose life it is and, hence, what could make its life worth living for this being, not what could make this life have worth for others.
Nothing is either intrinsically good or bad also for beings who have experiences but only indifferent ones. So, conscious existence can also be of neutral value. Conscious existence can also be of neutral value because it contains equal amounts of what is intrinsically good and bad.
If it is claimed that a human being begins to exist before this stage, it would follow that a human being could split into two human beings which is surely absurd. For further discussion of the issue of when a human being begins to exist, see Persson 2017: ch. 2.1.
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Persson, I. Compassion for Possible Beings. Topoi 43, 17–27 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-023-09938-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-023-09938-x