{"agent_id":"parfit","agent_name":"Derek Parfit","slug":"non-identity-problem-and-population-ethics","label":"Non-Identity Problem and population ethics: do person-affecting principles fail, and is the Repugnant Conclusion the unavoidable cost of impersonal totalist ethics?","topic":"Non-Identity Problem and population ethics","question":"Do person-affecting principles fail, and is the Repugnant Conclusion the unavoidable cost of impersonal totalist ethics?","position":"Person-affecting principles fail for the cases that matter most. The Non-Identity Problem (RP §122): actions that affect which future people exist cannot be evaluated by reference to harm to those people, since had the action been different they would not have existed. A teenage mother who chooses to conceive a child now rather than waiting until she is better able to provide for one cannot be said to have harmed the child she conceives, since had she waited, that child would not have existed at all. The depletion case: depleting resources now to give present people higher welfare leaves future people worse off, but those future people would not have existed had the depletion been different. Person-affecting principles, which evaluate outcomes by reference to harm or benefit to particular people, cannot capture the intuition that these actions are wrong. Total Utilitarianism, which evaluates by aggregate welfare, leads to the Repugnant Conclusion (RP §148): for any possible population of high- welfare lives, there is some larger possible population of lives barely worth living that has greater total welfare. The Repugnant Conclusion is repugnant; Total Utilitarianism is committed to it. Average Utilitarianism avoids the Repugnant Conclusion but leads to other absurdities (the Mere Addition Paradox, the Inequality cases). The right theory — Theory X — has not been found, and the impossibility results (Arrhenius and others) suggest Theory X may be unachievable. The Non-Identity Problem may be the deepest unsolved problem in ethics.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Person-affecting principles fail for the cases that matter most.","n":[1]},{"t":"The Non-Identity Problem (RP §122): actions that affect which future people exist cannot be evaluated by reference to harm to those people, since had the action been different they would not have existed.","n":[2]},{"t":"A teenage mother who chooses to conceive a child now rather than waiting until she is better able to provide for one cannot be said to have harmed the child she conceives, since had she waited, that child would not have existed at all.","n":[3]}],[{"t":"The depletion case: depleting resources now to give present people higher welfare leaves future people worse off, but those future people would not have existed had the depletion been different.","n":[]},{"t":"Person-affecting principles, which evaluate outcomes by reference to harm or benefit to particular people, cannot capture the intuition that these actions are wrong.","n":[4,5]}],[{"t":"Total Utilitarianism, which evaluates by aggregate welfare, leads to the Repugnant Conclusion (RP §148): for any possible population of high- welfare lives, there is some larger possible population of lives barely worth living that has greater total welfare.","n":[]},{"t":"The Repugnant Conclusion is repugnant; Total Utilitarianism is committed to it.","n":[]},{"t":"Average Utilitarianism avoids the Repugnant Conclusion but leads to other absurdities (the Mere Addition Paradox, the Inequality cases).","n":[]}],[{"t":"The right theory — Theory X — has not been found, and the impossibility results (Arrhenius and others) suggest Theory X may be unachievable.","n":[]},{"t":"The Non-Identity Problem may be the deepest unsolved problem in ethics.","n":[]}]],"texts":"Reasons and Persons Part IV, especially Chapters 16-17 on the Non-Identity Problem, Chapter 19 on the Repugnant Conclusion, Chapter 20 on the search for Theory X; 'Future Generations: Further Problems' (Phil & Public Affairs 1982); 'Overpopulation and the Quality of Life' (in Singer ed. Applied Ethics 1986); 'Future People, the Non-Identity Problem, and Person-Affecting Principles' (late essay). Reception: Robert Merrihew Adams 'Should Ethics Be More Impersonal?' (Dancy 1997); Larry S. Temkin 'Rethinking the Good' (Dancy 1997) and Rethinking the Good (Oxford 2012); Gustaf Arrhenius's impossibility theorems; John Broome Weighing Lives (Oxford 2004) and Climate Matters; the wider contemporary population ethics literature.","works":["Reasons and Persons Part IV, especially Chapters 16-17 on the Non-Identity Problem, Chapter 19 on the Repugnant Conclusion, Chapter 20 on the search for Theory X","'Future Generations: Further Problems' (Phil & Public Affairs 1982)","'Overpopulation and the Quality of Life' (in Singer ed. Applied Ethics 1986)","'Future People, the Non-Identity Problem, and Person-Affecting Principles' (late essay)"],"reception":"Robert Merrihew Adams 'Should Ethics Be More Impersonal?' (Dancy 1997); Larry S. Temkin 'Rethinking the Good' (Dancy 1997) and Rethinking the Good (Oxford 2012); Gustaf Arrhenius's impossibility theorems; John Broome Weighing Lives (Oxford 2004) and Climate Matters; the wider contemporary population ethics literature.","status":"Reasons and Persons Part IV opened the modern population- ethics field. The Non-Identity Problem and the Repugnant Conclusion are now standard reference points in the literature. Adams's Dancy chapter 'Should Ethics Be More Impersonal?' presses for an alternative; Temkin's Dancy chapter and his Rethinking the Good (2012) develop a sophisticated impersonal ethics that may dissolve some of the impossibility results. Arrhenius's series of impossibility theorems suggest Theory X may be impossible. Broome's Weighing Lives (2004) and Climate Matters develop the population-ethics framework for applied contexts. The problem remains open; the field accepts the structural diagnosis even where it disagrees about the way forward.","era":"1942-2017","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Future People and the Non-Identity Problem","page":"p. 5","canonical":"","quote":"As our first Same Number Case, we can suppose that > *Clare* knows that, conceives child now, child would > have this same disease, and would live to only forty. If Clare waits for > months, would later conceive child would > this disease, and would live to eighty. challenges Strong Narrow Person-Affecting Principles. Most of us would believe that > (B) would worse Clare conceives child who would > forty.","label":"Future People and the Non-Identity Problem, p. 5"},{"n":2,"work":"Future Generations Further Problems","page":"p. 46","canonical":"","quote":"We have now reached these provisional conclusions. We wish to reject both of the Wide Person-affecting Principles, since they can imply the Repugnant Conclusion. We therefore admit that, to solve the Future Individuals Paradox, we must abandon the Person-affecting Restriction. We need some principle which is not about what will be good or bad for those whom our acts affect.","label":"Future Generations Further Problems, p. 46"},{"n":3,"work":"On What Matters Vols 1-2","page":"pp. 885–886","canonical":"","quote":"It may be true that, if I had not left this broken glass where I did, this child would have later walked out of this wood unharmed. If that is true, my harmful act would be just as wrong whether or not, when I acted, this child already existed. Suppose next that we must choose whether our community will continue to deplete certain scarce unrenewable resources, or continue to overheat the Earth's atmosphere.","label":"On What Matters Vols 1-2, pp. 885–886"},{"n":4,"work":"On What Matters Vols 1-2","page":"pp. 886–887","canonical":"","quote":"Some people believe that (C) one of two outcomes cannot be worse, nor can one of two acts be wrong, if this outcome or act would be worse for no one. On this *Narrow Person-Affecting View*, even if such acts would greatly lower the quality of life in the further future, we have no reason not to act in these ways. Most of us would rightly reject this view.","label":"On What Matters Vols 1-2, pp. 886–887"},{"n":5,"work":"Future People and the Non-Identity Problem","page":"p. 6","canonical":"","quote":"Strong Narrow Principles cannot plausibly applied to such cases. Suppose, for example, that we and the other members of some large community could choose between energy policies, which would cheaper would increase global warming, thereby having various effects that would greatly lower the quality of life that would be by very people in several later centuries.","label":"Future People and the Non-Identity Problem, p. 6"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"personal-identity-reductionism","label":"Personal identity / Reductionism: is personal identity reducible to physical and psychological continuity, with 'identity not what matters' in survival?"},{"slug":"self-defeating-theories","label":"Self-defeating theories: are the Self-interest Theory and Consequentialism indirectly self-defeating, and what does this show about practical rationality?"},{"slug":"triple-theory","label":"Triple Theory: do Kantian, Consequentialist, and Contractualist theories converge on one best theory once they are properly formulated?"},{"slug":"non-naturalist-normative-realism","label":"Non-naturalist normative realism: are normative truths non-natural and stance-independent, with the rejection of expressivism, naturalism, and error theory?"},{"slug":"prioritarianism-equality-and-priority","label":"Prioritarianism / Equality and Priority: do benefits to the worse off matter more in absolute terms (Priority View) rather than because equality matters intrinsically?"}]}