Abstract
This paper questions the justification for the common view that there is a moral reason not to cause a person to exist if his life would be miserable, but no reason to cause a person to exist because his life would be worth living. It argues that this asymmetry presupposes an ad hoc claim about the different ways in which good and bad states in an individual’s life have value. The claim that there is a moral difference between harming and benefiting is more plausible but supports only a weaker asymmetry that concedes that there is a moral reason to create lives worth living.
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McMahan, J. (2009). Asymmetries in the Morality of Causing People to Exist. In: Roberts, M.A., Wasserman, D.T. (eds) Harming Future Persons. International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine, vol 35. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5697-0_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5697-0_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-5696-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-5697-0
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