Abstract
Most people are skeptical of the claim that the expectation that a person would have a life that would be well worth living provides a reason to cause that person to exist. In this essay I argue that to cause such a person to exist would be to confer a benefit of a noncomparative kind and that there is a moral reason to bestow benefits of this kind. But this conclusion raises many problems, among which is that it must be determined how the benefits conferred on people by causing them to exist weigh against comparable benefits conferred on existing people. In particular, might the reason to cause people to exist ever outweigh the reason to save the lives of existing people?
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Notes
I have argued elsewhere that in practice it is unlikely that there are any Same Number Choices (bearing in mind that this category does not include Same People Choices). But we can ignore this here, for when one knows that one’s choice will ultimately affect the number of people who will exist but not whether it will increase or decrease that number, that choice may in practice be treated as a Same Number Choice (see McMahan 2005, p. 146).
Compare McMahan (1981, p. 105). Also on page 105 I consider, but reject, the suggestion that although it makes no sense to say of a person who never exists that never existing is worse for him, it does make sense to say of an existing person that never existing would have been worse for him.
For accounts of intrinsic or noncomparative ordinary benefits and harms, see Shiffrin (1999, especially pp. 123–126), Harman (2004), and Harman (2009, pp 139–140). Although I cannot argue for this here, I suspect that a pluralist or disjunctive account of harm, which includes both comparative and noncomparative dimensions, is unavoidable.
Shiffrin would say that an amputation is a harm that it is permissible to inflict because it is necessary to prevent a greater harm to the same person (Shiffrin 1999, p. 126). In Parfit (1984, pp. 69–70), Parfit uses “benefit” in a way that implies that a life-saving amputation is not a harm. But as his text suggests, and as he has confirmed in conversation, he does not deny that there are other senses of “benefit.” He means only that his suggested uses of “benefit” and “harm” are the only ones with practical and moral significance.
For example, see Hanser (1990, pp. 60–61).
Strictly speaking, the No-Difference View is the view that the Non-Identity Problem makes no moral difference.
I am grateful to Todd May for this observation. May thinks that it would be more important to save the existing person if he were on the verge of death at the time one had to choose between B and C. I am skeptical of this.
Indeed, when I asked him about this, Parfit confirmed on 20 March 2012 that in devising the Medical Programs Case, he recognized that it would be intuitively more effective in supporting the No-Difference View if the children who would be affected by the cancellation of Pregnancy Testing were future children rather than presently existing children.
For instance, see Heyd (1992).
See, for example, Shiffrin (1999, pp. 119–135).
For an account of the distinction I draw here, see McMahan (2009).
Our intuitions about extinction include not only beliefs about the importance of the quantity and quality of human life but also beliefs about the importance of life persisting over time (see McMahan 1982).
D. Parfit, “Towards Theory X: Part One,” unpublished manuscript.
In conversation on 20 March 2012, Parfit has said that he expects that Theory X will not imply that it is as good to enable a person to have 60 years of good life by causing him to exist as it is to enable a person to have 60 more years of good life by saving him. What he denies is that this can be explained by the idea that benefits have greater weight if their absence would be worse for someone.
In his comments on this essay in 20 March 2012.
For an extended, closely argued discussion of these and related issues, see Roberts (2010).
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Acknowledgments
I am extremely grateful to Todd May, Melinda Roberts, Yu-Ting Su, Victor Tadros, and Rivka Weinberg for generous written comments on an earlier draft of this essay. I owe an even greater debt to Derek Parfit, who not only gave me two sets of detailed and illuminating written comments but also discussed them with me at length.
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McMahan, J. Causing People to Exist and Saving People’s Lives. J Ethics 17, 5–35 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-012-9139-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-012-9139-1