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Shlomo Cohen, Harming and Wronging in Creating, The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine, Volume 46, Issue 4, August 2021, Pages 466–491, https://doi.org/10.1093/jmp/jhab009
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Abstract
The nonidentity problem (NIP) is a deep puzzle challenging the moral intuition that what is bad must be bad for someone. The first part of the paper constructs a new theory of harming, whereas the second part builds on the conclusions of the first to offer a new solution to the NIP. The first part discusses the neglected question of when a burden inflicted in the context of overall benefitting can be discretized as a separate entity—only when it can, is it possible to identify the burden as harm, and only then is it possible to harm in bringing into overall good existence. The second part explains how, in those cases where creating is indeed harming, we can use the logic of concept expansion to construct a concept of wronging that applies to creation cases.