Solving the Non-Identity Problem
[Full Text]
—Solving the Non-Identity Problem—
The Non-Identity Problem is a philosophical problem posited by the philosopher Derek Parfit.
A version of this argument goes as follows: Imagine a mother poisons her child, causing the child to live with a disability. This is clearly bad, harm has been caused to the child.
Now imagine instead, a mother poisons herself, and then decides to conceive a child. The child ends up living with a disability. This is what the mother intended.
This also is intuitively, clearly bad.
The question is, in the second example, was the child really wronged?
—The Problem—
Imagine a mother who has a strange condition where if she has a child the child will end up with a disability, having to spend their life in a wheelchair. Now say the condition is temporary, and if the mother waits a month, the condition will go away and she can safely conceive a child.
Imagine the mother is selfish and wants attention, and as such she wants a disabled child. She decides to go out of her way to conceive a child early, to guarantee disability.
Here, the child's life is still worth living, but they would never go back in time to stop their mother because that would make them never have existed. If the mother waited a month before conceiving, the child wouldn't end up without a disability, they simply would never have existed.
Thus, if the child hadn't been poisoned, the child would never have existed. Assuming the child's life after being born is worth living, the child would never wish this alternative upon them.
—What it Implies—
Therefore, how can we condemn the mother's actions against the child, if those actions are actually the thing that allowed the child themself to exist?
In a way, the child involved is better off than if the decision that caused them a disability was not made, because if that decision was not made, if the mother had not poisoned herself, the child wouldn't have ever existed.
So, how can we conclude the child was wronged?
1. If something is bad, it must be bad for someone.
2. Something cannot be bad for someone without making them worse off.
3. Cases like the mother's choice are bad.
These three statements cannot all be true at the same time, even though they all appear true.
—Ways of Looking at the Problem—
One can accept #1 as false, by arguing that people should choose the outcome of the highest overall quality of life. Thus, the mother's choice is bad, because it causes a worse outcome overall relative to quality of life.
Derek Parfit makes a claim using this called The Same Number Quality Claim:
"If in either of two possible outcomes 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."
There is a big problem with this though, it only really works in relation to creating new people if both outcomes create the same number of people.
For example imagine you plan to have children. You only have so many resources at your disposal, so if you have one or two children, they will have a very high quality of life on average.
If you instead choose to have six children, they won't have as high a quality of life. If we simply take an aggregate of "life quality" however that is measured though, it's reasonable that the six children overall represent more "life quality", or utility, than the two.
Thus.. you are obligated to have as many children as possible? This doesn't seem right. Should be maximize quality of life for individuals, or overall? If the latter, how does having kids not become an obligation onto itself?
—The Repugnant Conclusion—
This kind of thinking leads to another problem. Imagine two populations.
Society A, with 1 billion happy people. Now imagine Society B has 9 billion people who's lives are not very happy but instead worth living, but barely.
The conclusion is that Society B is better than Society A. If we reject this by arguing average well-being is what matters, then you're instead arguing that it is wrong to bring into being happy people, even when doing so hurts no-one, if you bring them into being in a society that's a bit happier than them.
That doesn't sound good either.
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—The Yoggist Solution—
If we apply Justification Ethics here, it solves the problem.
Let's look once more at these three statements:
1. If something is bad, it must be bad for someone.
2. Something cannot be bad for someone without making them worse off.
3. Cases like the mother's choice are bad.
As previously mentioned, one of these statements should be false.
Yoggism implies Statement 2 is wrong. This is for a simple reason, the mother giving birth to a child is an action, and if the mother poisons herself or chooses to conceive before some condition subsides, this action indisputably frustrates the child's inherent interests.
Harm does not require making someone comparatively worse off than some alternative possible life, harm consists in unjustifiably frustrating the interests of a person.
The child being disabled is a frustration against their interests, and the mother choosing to conceive early is an inherent frustration against these interests.
No discussion of whether that frustration is necessary for the specific child to exist, is necessary here. Justification Ethics is clear, the action cannot be justified.
The Repugnant Conclusion can be explained in a similar way. There is no absolute obligation to create new interests, Justification Ethics only implies an obligation to not frustrate interests. Taking an irrespective view of time, future interests only matter if they actually end up existing.
If the mother chose to wait a month before conceiving, it cannot be said that she frustrated the child's interests by not giving birth to them, because said interests would simply never exist.
If instead she decides to conceive early, she is retroactively frustrating interests that will exist in the future. Beings that never exist, cannot be harmed.
—Yoggism and the Repugnant Conclusion—
Yoggism distinguishes between creating interests and frustrating interests.
Failing to create a person does not frustrate anyone's interests, because no subject of those interests exists or will exist by definition.
Creating a person creates interests that subsequently deserve consideration.
Frustrating those interests requires justification.
This asymmetry prevents the Repugnant Conclusion, as there is no standing obligation to maximize the number of technically worthwhile lives, as interests that never exist possess no normative force.
—The Repugnant Omnipotent—
Imagine again two worlds, one with 9 billion people in extreme poverty, but their lives still have some value to them, and another with 1 billion in prosperity, who love their lives.
Now imagine you are forced to simply delete one of the worlds. Which one do you choose?
The obvious choice is to delete the world with the fewest people.
Justification Ethics implies this because destroying the second world is even more unjustifiable, as more individuals are having their inherent interests frustrated.
When looking at the Repugnant Conclusion, and the two worlds / societies, the question of which society is better, is ill-defined. As an individual, you want Society A. When it comes to which is worse to destroy, the answer is Society B.
The Repugnant Conclusion is more about the difference between existent interests vs. non-existent interests, than measurements of Utility. There is a difference between choosing to save one of two sets, one of which giving greater Utility, and choosing what to bring into existence.