The Non-Identity Problem Part 1: Introduction to an Ethical Brain Teaser

Part 1 of my series on David Boonin's The Non-Identity Problem and the Ethics of Future Persons

I'll start by summarizing three thought experiments¹ from the last chapter of David Boonin's The Non-Identity Problem and the Ethics of Future Persons. After reading these stories, ask yourself if the parents in these stories have done anything unethical. To avoid future wordiness, thought experiments throughout this series will use the phrase “worthwhile life.” This refers to a life that one would prefer over never having been born.

1. Lisa has two children and two horses. She wants a new family member, but she’s not sure whether to conceive a human or breed a horse. If she opts for the human, her child will live a worthwhile life. If she breeds the horse, that horse will live a normal life that, presumably, other horses would consider a worthwhile life. Lisa values human lives over horse ones. Out of personal convenience, she selects the horse instead of the human child.

2. Aliens abduct William and place him in a room with two buttons. Button A rests within arm’s length, while Button B sits about 100 yards away. William won’t struggle to push Button B, but it would cause a bit of inconvenience. If he pushes Button B, the aliens will create a human child. William will raise this child, and the offspring will live a worthwhile life. If William opts for Button A, an adult named Temp will pop into existence on Earth. The aliens will implant Temp with fake memories, allowing him to act in a normal manner. Temp will live for only a couple of hours. During this short life, he will walk around a park, talk to a couple of strangers, and eat at a decent restaurant. After those hours expire, he will pop out of existence. Temp’s life will be a worthwhile one, but it will not be as good as Button B’s full life. William chooses Button A, preferring not to walk the extra 100 yards.

3. Jake sees a house burning down, and he knows the house contains a disabled orphan girl. If he saves the orphan, he will adopt her. Though her disability will make her remaining life worse than that of an able-bodied girl, she will still live a worthwhile life. Jake knows that saving the child will render him infertile, due to some unfortunately placed burns. Jake will have a child of his own if he chooses not to save the orphan. Jake’s potential biological child will not have this disability, so this kid will live a life better than the one that he could save from the burning building. Regardless, Jake decides to save the orphaned girl and suffer infertility.

No One Gets Hurt, You’ve Done Nothing Wrong

In an earlier piece, I discussed a board game controversy about Spanish Colonialism. The reviewer objected to a positive depiction of a conquistador, and she did so by noting the harm caused by colonialism. No, I won’t defend colonialism in this series, but these thoughts mix two distinct claims. The two claims look something like this:

1. The Spanish conquests hurt people at the time

2. The Spanish conquests hurt today’s people.

The first claim is trivial. For the second claim, I will accept the following assertion: people living in South America today are worse off than the hypothetical people who would exist in a non-colonized South America². Most people might think that claim two feels as obvious as claim one. Most people, though, aren’t philosophers. Let’s consider Juan, a hypothetical man in today’s South America. Juan’s life suffers from material deprivation, but he still considers it a worthwhile life. The material problems that plague his life stem from Spanish colonialism. It might seem reasonable, then, to say that Spanish colonialism made his life worse off. To see if this makes sense, let’s consider the two possible outcomes.

1. Spanish colonialism occurs

2. Spanish colonialism does not occur

Juan lives in the universe of option 1. His life contains problems, but he prefers this situation to not living at all. In option two’s alternative universe, Juan does not exist. If the Spanish did not colonize much of South America, different fathers would have met different mothers and given birth to different children. Juan would not exist. Since Juan prefers his current life to non-existence, Spanish colonialism made him better off since it allowed him to exist rather than not exist. Again, I’m not justifying Spanish colonialism! We condemn the slavery and murder that occurred at the time, but we can't easily connect these events to contemporary harms. Colonialism didn’t make Juan’s life worse; it made Juan’s life.

In recent years, I’ve read articles where young people fret about their ability to raise children. They worry about their debt and the suffering that future generations will face from climate change. Yet, I’ve never seen these articles argue that their kids won’t live worthwhile lives. I like bulleted lists (a life without them would not be worthwhile life), so let’s consider the two possibilities from the perspective of a potential child.

1. Not exist at all

2. Exist in a world where, despite some problems, it's better to exist than to not exist

Given those two options, it seems like you’re doing your kid a favor by giving birth to him or her in a flawed world. Or, maybe, you’re not.

Maybe Someone Gets Hurt, Maybe You’ve Done Something Wrong

Throughout The Non-identity Problem, Boonin focuses on the following thought experiment:

Wilma wants to have a child. After talking to a doctor, she learns that, without further precautions, her future child will be blind. She knows that all else equal, a blind child’s life will be worse than a sighted child’s life. She also knows that this blind child will still live a worthwhile life. Her doctor also says that she can conceive a sighted child by taking a pill. This pill causes no side effects, and Wilma does not struggle to swallow it. If she takes this pill for two months, she will give birth to a sighted child, and the sighted child will live a better life than the blind one. Boonin calls the potential blind child Pebbles and the potential sighted one Rocks. Wilma rejects the pills as a matter of convenience, giving birth to Pebbles.

Did Wilma do anything wrong?

When Boonin presents this case to a classroom, almost everyone agrees that Wilma did something wrong. I share this reaction. Yet, it’s not clear why we should condemn Wilma’s actions. Pebble doesn’t seem to be harmed in this story since, if Wilma took the pills, Pebbles would never have existed. Pebbles prefers existence to non-existence, so it seems Wilma improved Pebbles’ outcome. Rocks got a raw deal, sure, but Rocks will never exist. Non-existence may suck, but we don’t generally proffer rights to non-existent people. Many couples could bear more children, but we don’t consider it wrong when they decide not to do so.

Another thought experiment receives less attention in Boonin’s book, but I will discuss it here. A country faces a choice between the Risky Policy and the Safe Policy. If the voters select the Risky Policy, they will enjoy better economic growth during their lifetimes. This growth comes at a cost. In 500 years, the policy will cause a poison gas leak that infects everyone in the country. This leak will cap everyone’s lifespan at 40 years, killing those who have surpassed that age. Though these future people will die early, they will still live worthwhile lives. The country could also select the Safe Policy. This policy would avoid the gas leak, but it would lower short-term economic growth. The lower growth will cause different parents to conceive different children than they would have under the Risky Policy regime. As a result, the Safe Policy will, in 500 years, create a different cohort of people than the Risky Policy would. In other words, none of the people who would be hurt by the Risky Policy would even exist in the Safe Policy universe.

It seems like the country commits an immoral act if it chooses the Risky Policy over the safe one. Again, though, it’s not clear why. Everyone under the Risky Policy remains better off than they would have been if the country chose the Safe Policy.

The Argument

You probably remain unconvinced of Wilma’s innocence. Sure, this identity stuff is kinda wacky, but how could it be morally acceptable to bear a child that lives a worse life? How could it be acceptable to shorten the lifespan of future people? To answer those questions, I will present the book’s core argument.

Premise 1: Wilma’s choice to conceive Pebbles (the blind child) does not make Pebbles worse off

Wilma creates Pebbles rather than Rocks by declining the pills. Pebbles, as a result, gets to exist. Since Pebbles would not exist if Wilma had taken the pills, it does not seem like Pebbles has been made worse off.

Premise 2: For Person A to harm Person B, Person B must have been made worse off by Person A’s actions

This statement concerns general morality rather than the specifics of Wilma’s case. This makes intuitive sense. As Boonin notes, when we argue that actions don’t harm anyone, we usually argue that those actions don’t make someone worse off.

Premise 3: Wilma’s action doesn’t harm anyone other than Pebbles

Together with premise two, the premises state that no one has been harmed by Wilma’s choice to conceive Pebbles rather than Rocks.

One could imagine versions of Wilma’s case that do harm others, such as the blind child requiring extra public resources. Yet, no one reacts to the initial thought experiment by thinking “of course that’s wrong, she’s hurting the taxpayer!” Everyone who condemns Wilma, in Boonin’s experience, does so because they believe Wilma harmed her child. For the sake of argument, we’ll imagine a version where Wilma’s decision consumes no extra public resources.

Premise 4: If an action doesn’t harm anyone, then the action doesn’t wrong anyone

Boonin refers to this as the “no harm, no foul” principle. I can’t imagine how someone could be wronged without being harmed

Premise 5: If an action doesn’t harm anyone, then that action cannot be wrong

Like premises two and four, this sounds like standard morality. We hear this premise when people use phrases like “victimless crimes.” Liberalism requires this premise. As John Stuart Mill said, your right to swing your arm stops at his nose.

Together, these premises produce the following:

Conclusion: Wilma’s choice to conceive Pebbles rather than Rocks is not morally wrong.

Boonin dubs this conclusion the Implausible Conclusion, as nearly everyone instinctively rejects it. Hence, find ourselves faced with the titular non-identity problem: five plausible conclusions and one Implausible Conclusion. To reject the conclusion, we’d need to reject one of the premises. Yet, every premise seems reasonable.

My series of articles will follow Boonin’s book. This article discusses chapter one, the introduction to the problem. Chapters 2 through 6 discuss potential counterarguments to each premise, and the final chapter presents arguments for the conclusion. I will devote one article to each chapter, with a few exceptions. I find chapter 3 excruciating, so will discuss only part of it in that chapter’s corresponding article. If I feel up to it, I will return to some of that chapter’s ideas in a later piece. The fourth chapter contains too little content to merit its own article, so I will merge that with my discussion of the fifth chapter.

Further Considerations

Three Requirements for Counterargument

As Boonin addresses the counterarguments, he sets three requirements needed to refute one of the premises.

Independence. If one rejects a premise, one needs to do so independently of the non-identity problem. One must not say “I reject premise five because it implies the Implausible Conclusion” since doing so would re-state the problem rather than solve it. After all, one can craft these sorts of arguments to refute anything. I could reject heliocentrism, for instance, with the following claim: if a premise implies heliocentrism, that premise is wrong. A successful counterargument must present a theory that makes sense outside this problem’s context.

Robustness. A successful counterargument must address all versions of the non-identity problem. Imagine, somehow, that I present an argument showing that premise two doesn’t apply on Tuesdays. This would refuse the non-identity problem as stated in the previous section. However, I could easily append “on days other than Tuesday” to the argument, and we still find ourselves with the same quandary: five plausible premises and one implausible conclusion. A successful refutation must generalize to all situations where the non-identity problem occurs.

Modesty. We don’t want to replace the Implausible Conclusion with the Even Less Plausible Conclusion. Later chapters, for instance, will contain theories that imply an obligation toward producing all worthwhile lives. Yet, no one believes that parents must bear more children than they want to, so those ideas seem even more implausible than the Implausible Conclusion. If a theory replaces the non-identity problem with an even worse problem, then we must reject that theory.

Types of Cases

The previous section featured two examples of non-identity problems: the blind child and the Risky Policy. Boonin generalizes these thought experiments via three distinctions.

Same number vs. different number: Wilma chose between one blind child and one sighted, resulting in a “same number” case. One could also imagine a different number version, in which she chooses between a sighted child and blind twins. For the risky policy, we could consider cases where the policies altered future population counts.

Event vs condition: Wilma’s choice caused a bad condition, blindness, but we could also imagine a version where it caused a bad event. Maybe her failure to take the pills leads a demon to curse Pebbles with blindness on the child’s first birthday.

Indirect vs direct: Wilma’s decision directly impacts which child exists, while the risky policy indirectly leads to a different cohort of people.

Boonin mentions these three distinctions because some solutions may work best for a subset of problems. We might, for example, find a compelling rejection of premise one for “same number” cases. Due to the robustness requirement, though, a true solution must apply to all versions of the problem.

The Non-Identity Problem centers on Wilma’s case since that version (same number + condition + direct) receives the most attention in the philosophy literature.

Worseness and Wrongness

Worseness does not imply wrongness. Imagine I face a choice between donating $2k and $2.5k to the local food bank, and I opt for the former. Everyone would agree that I chose the worse option, but almost no one would think I did something wrong. Similarly, showing that Wilma made a worse decision does not prove that she made a wrong decision. A solution to the non-identity problem must show wrongness.

Common Sense

Lastly, why engage in the philosophical debate at all? Why not trust our intuition that Wilma committed an immoral act? In my view, we need rational moral discussions because our intuitions can lead us astray. Dozens of countries ban homosexuality, and those bans often seem normal to their residents. If we delegate morality to common sense, we must accept these citizens’ views on homosexuality. At home, people disagree about the morality of abortion, drug legalization, and prostitution. Resorting to personal intuition would leave us without a policy. We can’t craft laws where first-trimester abortion is half-permitted. Even in our own lives, most of us can recall changing our minds on an important issue after careful deliberation.

The next article in this series will discuss chapter 2: arguments against the first premise.

1. I will always credit Boonin when a thought experiment comes from him. If I’m paraphrasing from memory, though, I might not use the example same names as parameters as he does.

2. I understand some people reject this claim. If you do, replace it with a different historical event in your head. Maybe you think Soviet control of East Germany made today’s citizens of Dresden worse off.