Philosophy & Public Affairs

Philosophy & Public Affairs 31.2 (2003) 99-118

Who Can Be Wronged?

Rahul Kumar

I. Introduction

Imagine that a child is born with severe restrictions on the quality of her life, and that her parents might have prevented such an outcome if they had taken certain precautions prior to conception. ¹ Depending on how certain other relevant considerations are filled out, such as how reasonable it was to have expected the child's parents to have taken the necessary pre-conception measures and what the circumstances were that resulted in their failure to do so, many are inclined to believe that it is at least arguable that the child has been wronged by her parents' failure. Those who are skeptical of this possibility, however, argue that the intuitive appeal of this line of thought is a result of overlooking a further relevant consideration: that taking the appropriate precautions would have significantly delayed conception. ² Drawing upon the lesson of what Derek Parfit has labeled the non-identity problem, they argue that the legitimacy of a person's claim to have been wronged requires that the psycho-physical identity of the wronged not be what it is because of the [End Page 99] wrongdoing. ³ On this view, a person can only claim to have been wronged by the conduct or decision of another if she has been harmed as a result of the relevant conduct or decision, and that a person is harmed if and only if she is left worse-off than she otherwise would have been. The very possibility of being left worse-off than one otherwise would have been requires that the psycho-physical identity of the person on whose behalf the claim is being made remain fixed between the world as it is and the counter-factual world to which it is to be compared. For this reason, it is argued, the fact that the taking of appropriate precautions would have significantly altered the timing of conception must be a morally relevant consideration, because the time of conception is an identity-fixing consideration.

In this discussion, I argue that the skeptical position about the possibility of wronging in such cases is not warranted. Whether or not the child has in fact been wronged requires the filling in of further facts concerning, e.g., the circumstances of the parents' failure to have taken appropriate precautions, and substantive moral argument to show the expectation that they take such precautions to have been a reasonable one. The matter cannot be settled by conceptual fiat.

For purposes of argument, I accept that the fact of the parents' failure to take appropriate pre-conception precautions is a consideration that is relevant for fixing the child's psycho-physical personal identity. What I take to be mistaken is the idea that the kinds of considerations identified by the non-identity problem, concerning the fixity of psycho-physical personal identity, are morally relevant for reasoning about whether or not one person has been wronged by another. The idea is mistaken, I suggest, irrespective of whether or not one also takes such considerations to be irrelevant for understanding what it is to have been harmed. Key to this argument is the distinction between the wronging and the harming of another. The kinds of considerations that are relevant for determining whether or not a person has been harmed have primarily to do with the state of the person who claims to have been harmed. Whether or not another has wronged one, on the other hand, has primarily to do with facts concerning the character of the wrongdoer's regulation of her conduct with respect to how she has related to the wronged. [End Page 100]

By accepting, for the sake of argument, the metaphysical presuppositions of the non-identity problem, I do not mean to suggest that they cannot be fruitfully challenged. Rather, what I will argue is that the moral relevance of the considerations to which the non-identity problem draws attention depends upon an understanding of wronging that incorporates certain ideas about moral reasoning that have a natural...