Hi Richard, thanks for the excellent article. Having read it though, I'm not sure I understand your basis for "failing to create is importantly morally different from killing"? I think this could be rephrased as asking you to expand on "person-directed reasons explain this common-sense distinction: we have especially strong reasons not t…
Hi Richard, thanks for the excellent article. Having read it though, I'm not sure I understand your basis for "failing to create is importantly morally different from killing"? I think this could be rephrased as asking you to expand on "person-directed reasons explain this common-sense distinction: we have especially strong reasons not to harm or wrong particular individuals."
I believe we are, by construction, ignoring the additional harm that killing a particular individual would cause their friends & family which would not occur with failing to create a new individual, but correct me if wrong?
Yes, just considering the directly affected individual: killing makes them worse off than they otherwise would be. Failing to create them does not make them worse off, because in that case there is no "them" that ever exists. The world has one less person than it might have had. But there is no particular person who might have existed but doesn't.
The key passage: "We have weak impersonal reasons to bring an extra life into existence, while we have both impersonal and person-directed reasons to aid an existing individual."
Understood. That still leaves me with the question of what the basis for valuing the moral worth of the already-here is more than the could-be-here ie what actually are the person-directed reasons and why might the impersonal reasons be stronger? Let me know if you’ve answered this best in a previous article or I missed something in this article?
It's not that there are two particular individuals, and you should care about one of them more than the other. Rather, the worry is that mere possibilia are not existing entities at all, so there is no-one there to care about. See: https://www.philosophyetc.net/2009/01/reifying-possibilia.html
Now, we've some ("impersonal") reason to care about the world in general, and want it to go better, such as by having more wonderful future lives in it. For those who end up existing with positive lives, it is good for them to exist, and we can rightly be moved by the anticipation of their being happy to have been brought into existence. But if we fail to act on this reason, there is no-one with a complaint against us, in the way that there is basis for complaint when we make an existing person worse off. And I think that plausibly makes *some* difference. All else equal, it is worse to wrong someone than to simply fail to make the world better. That's the rough thought, anyway.
Appreciate the responses Richard. I think I would be wrong to interpret complaint literally (and it would open us up to counter-arguments e.g. mute babies). That being said, if complaint is non-literal, I see no reason why future people (even if their existence is not realised or probabilistic) can't complain.
Also, to the extent we are not talking about existence, but instead welfare, if I emit a load of emissions today, future people will (in the literal sense) complain about me if their quality of life is lower as a result, even though they have no existence today.
I know nothing about the philosophy of the self, but I also wonder whether there are good arguments for saying that future people don't exist in the same way that my future self (or any future selves of existing people) don't exist?
I think a religious philosophy (e.g. existing people have the soul of God in them) would be a coherent reason for weighting the moral value of existing people more than future people (or possibilia), but I'm struggling to get at a good secular & consequentialist reason.
Hi Richard, thanks for the excellent article. Having read it though, I'm not sure I understand your basis for "failing to create is importantly morally different from killing"? I think this could be rephrased as asking you to expand on "person-directed reasons explain this common-sense distinction: we have especially strong reasons not to harm or wrong particular individuals."
I believe we are, by construction, ignoring the additional harm that killing a particular individual would cause their friends & family which would not occur with failing to create a new individual, but correct me if wrong?
Thanks!
Yes, just considering the directly affected individual: killing makes them worse off than they otherwise would be. Failing to create them does not make them worse off, because in that case there is no "them" that ever exists. The world has one less person than it might have had. But there is no particular person who might have existed but doesn't.
The key passage: "We have weak impersonal reasons to bring an extra life into existence, while we have both impersonal and person-directed reasons to aid an existing individual."
Understood. That still leaves me with the question of what the basis for valuing the moral worth of the already-here is more than the could-be-here ie what actually are the person-directed reasons and why might the impersonal reasons be stronger? Let me know if you’ve answered this best in a previous article or I missed something in this article?
It's not that there are two particular individuals, and you should care about one of them more than the other. Rather, the worry is that mere possibilia are not existing entities at all, so there is no-one there to care about. See: https://www.philosophyetc.net/2009/01/reifying-possibilia.html
Now, we've some ("impersonal") reason to care about the world in general, and want it to go better, such as by having more wonderful future lives in it. For those who end up existing with positive lives, it is good for them to exist, and we can rightly be moved by the anticipation of their being happy to have been brought into existence. But if we fail to act on this reason, there is no-one with a complaint against us, in the way that there is basis for complaint when we make an existing person worse off. And I think that plausibly makes *some* difference. All else equal, it is worse to wrong someone than to simply fail to make the world better. That's the rough thought, anyway.
Appreciate the responses Richard. I think I would be wrong to interpret complaint literally (and it would open us up to counter-arguments e.g. mute babies). That being said, if complaint is non-literal, I see no reason why future people (even if their existence is not realised or probabilistic) can't complain.
Also, to the extent we are not talking about existence, but instead welfare, if I emit a load of emissions today, future people will (in the literal sense) complain about me if their quality of life is lower as a result, even though they have no existence today.
I know nothing about the philosophy of the self, but I also wonder whether there are good arguments for saying that future people don't exist in the same way that my future self (or any future selves of existing people) don't exist?
I think a religious philosophy (e.g. existing people have the soul of God in them) would be a coherent reason for weighting the moral value of existing people more than future people (or possibilia), but I'm struggling to get at a good secular & consequentialist reason.