Abstract
Consider a duty of beneficence towards a particular individual, S, and call a reason that is grounded in that duty a “beneficence reason towards S.” Call a person who will be brought into existence by an act of procreation the “resultant person.” Is there ever a beneficence reason towards the resultant person for an agent to procreate? In this paper, I argue for such a reason by appealing to two main premises. First, we owe a pro tanto duty of beneficence to future persons; and second, some of us can benefit some of those persons by procreating. In support of the first premise I reject the presentist account of time in favor of the view that future persons are just as real as presently existing persons. I then argue that future persons are like us in all the morally relevant ways, and since we owe duties of beneficence to each other, we also owe duties of beneficence to future persons. In support of the second premise I offer an account of benefiting according to which an individual can be benefited by an action even if it makes her no better off than she would have been, had the action not been performed. This account of benefiting solves what I call the “non-identity benefit problem.” Finally, I argue that having a life worth living is a benefit, and some of us can cause some persons that benefit by causing them to exist.
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Notes
Recall my earlier definition of a beneficence reason towards an individual. More generally, I define a reason towards an individual as a reason that is grounded in a duty towards that individual.
Although not everyone uses the same terminology, there is generally a contrast drawn between “direct duties towards” (or just “duties towards”) individuals and “indirect duties towards” or “duties regarding” individuals. Duties of the former kind ought to be carried out for the individual’s own sake, whereas duties of the latter kind might be owed to someone other than the beneficiary of the duty, as when I promise you that I will take your dog to the vet and thereby owe a duty regarding your dog to you. See Wellman (1999) for an overview, Regan (1983) for a discussion of direct duties towards nonhuman animals, and Kant (1989) and Korsgaard (2004) for discussions of what it means to have duties regarding (and not towards) nonhuman animals.
I am using the word “concrete individual” to refer to individuals that are located in time. Examples of concrete individuals are particular persons, particular actions, and particular tables and chairs. The contrasting term is “abstract entity,” which is often taken to refer to things like humanity in general, justice, the color blue, or the number three.
Some proponents of eternalism include Mellor (1998), Smart (1963), and Sider (2001). Notice that eternalism is not the same view as determinism. I take determinism to be the view that all propositions about the future are determined by propositions about the past together with the laws of nature. Eternalism also holds that propositions about the future are determinate—and thus, are determined by something—but eternalists need not hold that propositions about the past and the laws of nature are what determine all propositions about the future. They might instead hold, for example, that propositions about the future are determined by facts about the future.
One might also worry that, because the identities of future persons are contingent upon the choices that present people make, there are no facts about who will exist before those choices are made. However, the principle behind this objection is false: the fact that B is contingent upon A does not mean that B is indeterminate. My own existence was contingent on the actions of my parents, but my identity is determinate. More generally, if eternalism is true, then there are facts about what the outcomes of our choices will be even before we make those choices. I thank an anonymous reviewer for raising the objection that prompted this clarification.
Markosian (2013) also denies the truth of future-tense claims on the condition that the laws of nature are sufficiently indeterministic. However, he argues that if the laws are sufficiently deterministic, then true claims about the future can be grounded by relations between such laws and presently existing objects. For a critique of this kind of approach, see Sider (2001).
Many presentists are focused primarily on the task of explaining how claims about the past can be true or false. Nevertheless, if such presentists were amenable to the idea that some claims about the future were also true, then they would presumably endorse a semantics for future-tense claims similar to their preferred semantics for past-tense claims. For an overview and a critique of the various strategies that presentists have employed to try to vindicate the truth of general claims about the past, see Baron (2013).
I am assuming that the parents of the future preschoolers don't interact with the people who work at the chemical company. The parents will carry out their daily activities—including procreating at particular times—regardless of whether the company does or does not bury the waste beneath the school. This feature of the case helps us to avoid what is known as the “non-identity problem,” which I will discuss in the next section of the paper.
Certainly, the chemical company also owes a duty to the parents of the preschoolers not to harm their children. However, this is not the only duty that is breached; there is a duty to the preschoolers, themselves, not to cause them painful and debilitating organ damage.
Earl (2011) speculates that presentists or growing block theorists might take “future generations” to be “a collection of people potentially existing now,” “a collection of ontologically possibly existing people,” “a collection of imaginary people,” “a ‘useful fiction’,” or “a set, considered as an abstract entity, of ‘placeholders’ or ‘offices’ that are not filled by any presently existing people, but will be filled by some people at a future time” (pp. 63–63). He argues, correctly in my view, that if “future generations” refers to any of the above, then we have no moral duties to them.
Here my argument is similar to Earl’s (2011) argument for the claim that any dynamic theory of time is incompatible with our having obligations to future generations. However, Earl takes this incompatibility to show that we do not have obligations to future generations, whereas I take the incompatibility to show that presentism and growing block theory are false.
In saying this, I reject Kamm’s (1999) view that proximity in space affects the strength of our obligations to help strangers.
I owe this point to Ruth Weintraub (2003), who argues that “When does X cause Y?” is nonsensical, as are “When does X precede Y?” and “When does X last longer than Y?” (p. 181).
Proponents of the counterfactually worse-off condition on harming include Feinberg (1984), Boonin (2008), Heyd (2009), Schwartz (1978), and Thomson (2011). Those who reject the counterfactually worse-off condition on harming include Hanser (2008, 2009), Harman (2004; 2009), Klocksiem (2012), Shiffrin (1999), and Woollard (2012). I also argue against the counterfactually worse-off condition in Gardner (2013; forthcoming).
This case is modeled upon one that Woollard (2012) appeals to in her own argument against the counterfactually worse-off condition on harming.
This account of benefiting can also be modified to produce the following account of harming: (H1) A state of affairs, A, is a harm for an individual, S, just in case if it were true that both S existed and A did not obtain, then S would be better off in some respect; and (H2) An event, E, harms an individual, S, just in case E causes a state of affairs that is a harm for S. I argue for something like this account of harming in Gardner (2013, forthcoming).
For an argument that we ought to respect the interests of merely possible people, see Hare (2007).
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Acknowledgments
I thank audiences at the 2011 Russell VII conference, the 2012 meeting of the South Carolina Society for Philosophy, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Oklahoma State University for helpful feedback. I owe special thanks to participants in my metaphysics and ethics seminar at the University of Bayreuth and to Robert Streiffer, Justin Weinberg, Alastair Norcross, Michael Campbell, and an anonymous reviewer.
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Gardner, M. Beneficence and procreation. Philos Stud 173, 321–336 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0494-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0494-1