Parfit: The Non-Identity Problem

Phil205: Bio-Medical Ethics

Feb. 10, 2022

1 Existence and Identity

Sometimes what we do make a difference for which persons will exist.

The Time-Dependence Claim: If any particular person had not been con-
ceived when s/he was in fact conceived, it is in fact true that s/he would
never have existed

Parfit admits this claim is controversial, but he means only that is controversial
in its details. To get the present investigation off the ground we need only
accept:

(TD2): If any particular person had not been conceived within a month of the
time when he was in fact conceived, he would in fact never have existed

And this claim is pretty obviously true.

1.1 Identity
What makes you you in the sense of which person you are (not in the sense of
what kind of person you are) is not the possession of distinctive properties.

ˆ What makes Kant Kant isn’t that he wrote the Critique of Pure Reason.

ˆ What makes you you isn’t your struggle, isn’t your intensity of feeling,
isn’t your personal commitments.

These things matter to us. But they could have turned out differently. They are
central to our practical identities. But that’s not what Parfit is talking about.
He is talking about our numerical identities.

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1.2 Choices
Some decisions we make affect which people will exist. In addition, some of
those choices will change how many people will exist.

These are both types of what he calls Different People Choices.

Parfit is drawing our attention to how many morally important choices are dif-
ferent people choices.

Parfit wants to say that morality is more impartial than we often think. The
interests of future persons (some of whom have existences that are contingent
on our choices) need to be accounted for somehow.

2 The Non-Identity Problem

Question: Do we harm someone who we couldn’t have brought into existence
without making them somewhat badly off to some degree?

Here’s a variation on an example from the philosopher Molly Gardener:

Consider Mother A. She is lab tech working in an in vitro fertilization

facility. She wants to have a child with a certain heritable disease.
So, she uses CRIPSR to genetically engineer an embryo (using her
own eggs and donor sperm) with the disease, implants it in herself,
carries the child to term, and gives birth. The child (Child A) has
the disease, but has a life worth living.

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Compare Mother A to Mother B:
Consider Mother B. She is also a lab tech working in an in vitro
fertilization facility who wants to have a child with a certain heritable
disease. But, instead of using CRISPR to engineer an embryo with
the disease, she just fertilizes as many of her own eggs as she can,
and screens them for the disease until she finds one with the disease.
She implants that embryo, carries the child to term, and gives birth.
The child (Child B) has the disease, but has a life worth living.
Mother A has harmed Child A. But has Mother B harmed Child B?

Mother A harms Child A because Child A would have been better off if Mother
A had not done what she did. But the same thing is not true of Child B. If
Mother B had not done what she did, Child B would not exist.

But, Mother B did something wrong, didn’t she? How can explain that if there
is no one she harmed? Child A is harmed because she if worse off than she other
would have been. But this is not true of Child B.

Conversely, do we benefit someone who we cause to exist (assuming they have

a life worth living)? Then, does Mother B benefit Child B? That can sound
counterintuitive.

Sometimes we act in such a way that causes some people to exist who wouldn’t
have existed otherwise. Those people might be worse off than the people who
would have existed if we had done otherwise.

But the people who we cause to exist can’t claim that we made them worse off
because if we had acted otherwise, they wouldn’t exist.

Further, if we assume that the people we cause to exist have lives worth living
they also can’t claim that we caused them to endure something they should not
have to.

If we caused people to exist who have lives that are so bad they are not worth
living, we might be able to explain what is wrong with what we have done. But
this won’t apply to the cases Parfit has in mind. (It doesn’t apply to Child B,
we have assumed.)

The Non-Identity Problem is the name for the problem of trying to explain how it
seems like we wrong people who we cause to be worse off than the people who
would have existed had we acted differently.

If harm is making someone worse off than they would have been, it seems hard to
claim that we harm anyone whose existence is contingent on making them

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worse off than the person who would have otherwise existed would have been
had we acted differently.

On the assumption that the lives we are talking about are worth living, existence
is preferable to non-existence, so the only alternative (for Child B, say) is worse.

Parfit wants to point out that a lot of our decisions have this structure:

The 14- Year-Old Girl:This girl chooses to have a child. Because

she is so young, she gives her child a bad start in life. Though
this will have bad effects throughout this child’s life, his life will,
predictably, be worth living. If this girl had waited for several years,
she would have had a different child, to whom she would have given
a better start in life.

As Parfit remarks, we can’t say it would be better for the child if the girl were
to wait. Still, if we think she should wait (and say similar things in analogous
situations) we have to explain why this is. This is the Non-Identity Problem.

(Notice that this isn’t question about whether we should criticize the girl or
force her to do otherwise. That’s a different issue.)

We could try to solve the problem by claiming:

The Same Number Quality Claim, or Q: If in either of two possible out-

comes the same number of people would ever live, it would be worse if
those who live are worse off, or have a lower quality of life, than those who
would have lived

We could then say that if the girl had waited, there would have been a different
person with a better life in existence and that this explains why she should have
waited. But this doesn’t work in cases that are Different Number Choices.

‘Suppose that we are choosing between two social or economic poli-

cies. And suppose that, on one of the two policies, the standard of
living would be slightly higher over the next century. . . the choice be-
tween our two policies would affect the timing of later conceptions,
[so] some of the people who are later born would owe their existence
to our choice of one of the two policies. If we had chosen the other
policy, these particular people would never have existed.’ (Parfit,
section 123)

‘Depletion. As a community, we must choose whether to deplete

or conserve certain kinds of resources. If we choose Depletion, the
quality of life over the next two centuries would be slightly higher

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 than it would have been if we had chosen Conservation. But it would
later, for many centuries, be much lower than it would have been if
we had chosen Conservation. This would be because, at the start of
this period, people would have to find alternatives for the resources
that we had depleted. It is worth distinguishing two versions of this
case. The effects of the different policies would be as shown below.’
(Parfit, section 123)

3 Solutions
Can we solve the problem? Possibilities:

1. Wronging without harming: Disrespect, rights violation etc.

2. Wrong without harm

3. Harming without making worse off

3.1 Wronging without harming

Can we say that Mother B wrongs Child B even though she doesn’t harm Child
B by claiming that she violates some right that the child has, or disrespects the
child somehow?

Parfit considers a strategy of this kind, but rejects it. What right does Child B
have that is violated? The right to a better life, full stop? No one has that right.
The right to a life worth living? Sure, but she has that life.

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Perhaps the problem is that Child B has a right to a good start in life. That
might sound plausible, but it isn’t a right that Child B could have fulfilled. And
because Child B’s existence is contingent on the impossibility of fulfilling such
a right, Child B, who has a life worth living, would waive the right.

Similarly in Depletion, there is a problem finding the appropriate right. The

future people can’t claim that they have a right to some greater share of the
resources than they are getting because resources as such don’t matter. If we
act in such a way that deprives them of resources but gives them greater op-
portunity, they would have no complaint, for example.

We could try, again, to say that we cause people to exist who necessarily have
unfulfilled rights. But, again, since they have lives worth living, and couldn’t
exist otherwise, they would waive any such right.

3.2 Wrong without harm

Could we say that Mother B does something wrong without harming anyone by
saying, e.g. that she fails to maximize goodness?

There is an opportunity for Mother B (or the 14 year old girl) to act in such a
way that would produce a life which is better overall. This is kind of like the
appeal to principle Q. So, it won’t work for Different Number choices.

But, further, it seems to lead to problems. It would seem to imply, for example,
that if we could produce a very large number of people with lives barely worth
living, we should opt for that over a smaller number of people with lives of very
high quality. (We will come back to this next time.)

3.3 Harming without making worse off

Could we say that Mother B harms Child B even though she doesn’t make Child
B worse off? Perhaps we can just reject the claim that there has to be some
available life where someone is better off than they are now in order for us to
be capable of harming them.

Suppose you are standing on the edge of a cliff. We are in a fight, and I hit
you over the head with a branch. Unbeknownst to me, had I not hit you, you
would have fallen off the cliff and suffered an injury very similar to, but perhaps
a little worse, than the one I would have caused you. I still harm you, don’t I?
Even though there is no opportunity for you to be better off?