Frick, Johann David
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'Making People Happy, Not Making Happy People': A Defense of the Asymmetry Intuition in Population Ethics The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Frick, Johann David. 2014. 'Making People Happy, Not Making Happy People': A Defense of the Asymmetry Intuition in Population Ethics. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:13064981 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA ʹMaking People Happy, Not Making Happy Peopleʹ: A Defense of the Asymmetry Intuition in Population Ethics A dissertation presented by Johann David Anand Frick to The Department of Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Philosophy Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts September 2014 © 2014 Johann Frick All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisors: Professor T.M. Scanlon Author: Johann Frick Professor Frances Kamm ʹMaking People Happy, Not Making Happy Peopleʹ: A Defense of the Asymmetry Intuition in Population Ethics Abstract This dissertation provides a defense of the normative intuition known as the Procreation Asymmetry, according to which there is a strong moral reason not to create a life that will foreseeably not be worth living, but there is no moral reason to create a life just because it would foreseeably be worth living. Chapter 1 investigates how to reconcile the Procreation Asymmetry with our intuitions about another recalcitrant problem case in population ethics: Derek Parfit’s Non‑Identity Problem. I show that what has prevented philosophers from developing a theory that gives a satisfactory account of both these problems is their tacit commitment to a teleological conception of well‑being, as something to be ‘promoted’. Replacing this picture with one according to which our reasons to confer well‑being on people are conditional on their existence allows me to do better. It also enables us to understand some of the deep structural parallels between seemingly disparate normative phenomena such as procreating and promising. Chapter 2 attempts to connect my defense of the Procreation Asymmetry to corresponding evaluative claims about the goodness of the outcomes produced by procreative decisions. I propose a view, the ‘biconditional buck‑passing view of outcome iii betterness’, according to which facts about the comparative goodness of outcomes are a function of our reasons for bringing about one outcome rather than another under certain conditions. This enables me to derive an Evaluative Procreation Asymmetry from the corresponding normative claims established in Chapter 1. The biconditional buck‑passing view also provides me with a principled basis for challenging a version of the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives Principle. This, in turn, permits me to provide a novel solution to another famous problem in population ethics: Parfit’s Mere Addition Paradox. Finally, in Chapter 3, I rebut some key objections to the Procreation Asymmetry by showing that upholding it does not commit us to anti‑natalism and that it is compatible with a moral concern for the long‑term survival of humanity. iv Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………………………………………vii CHAPTER 1: CONDITIONAL REASONS AND THE PROCREATION ASYMMETRY ................. 1 1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................................... 1 2. THE PROCREATION ASYMMETRY ............................................................................................................................ 2 3. THE ASYMMETRY VERSUS THE NON‐IDENTITY PROBLEM ................................................................................ 9 4. TELEOLOGY AND ITS DISCONTENTS ..................................................................................................................... 19 5. BEARER‐DEPENDENT REASONS AND THE SECOND CONJUNCT OF THE ASYMMETRY ................................ 24 6. EXPLAINING THE FIRST CONJUNCT: MORAL STANDARDS ............................................................................... 32 7. STANDARD‐REGARDING REASONS AS WIDE‐SCOPE CONDITIONAL REASONS ............................................... 38 8. THE SAME‐PERSON CASE AND THE MAXIMIZATION REQUIREMENT ............................................................ 45 9. SOLVING THE NON‐IDENTITY PROBLEM: THE SELECTION REQUIREMENT ................................................. 49 10. CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................................................................... 54 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER 1: ROBERTS’ VARIABILISM ............................................................................................. 56 CHAPTER 2: THE EVALUATIVE ASYMMETRY AND THE MERE ADDITION PARADOX .. 61 1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................................ 61 2. FROM THE NORMATIVE TO THE EVALUATIVE PROCREATION ASYMMETRY: THE CHALLENGE ................ 62 3. THE UNACCEPTABLE TETRAD .............................................................................................................................. 68 4. REJECTING THE EVALUATIVE ASYMMETRY: TOTALISM, AVERAGISM, AND CRITICAL LEVEL THEORIES 75 5. REJECTING COMPLETENESS: THE APPEAL TO DIFFERENT NUMBER‐BASED IMPRECISION ...................... 81 6. THE MERE ADDITION PARADOX .......................................................................................................................... 87 7. TAKING STOCK ......................................................................................................................................................... 93 v 8. THE BICONDITIONAL BUCK‐PASSING VIEW ...................................................................................................... 95 9. FROM THE NORMATIVE TO THE EVALUATIVE ASYMMETRY: THE SOLUTION ........................................... 106 10. SOLVING THE MERE ADDITION PARADOX .................................................................................................... 110 11. AGAINST THE INDEPENDENCE OF IRRELEVANT ALTERNATIVES PRINCIPLE ......................................... 116 12. CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................................................... 121 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER 2: TEMKIN’S VIEWS ON THE MERE ADDITION PARADOX ...................................... 122 CHAPTER 3: OBJECTIONS AND REPLIES .................................................................................... 129 1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................................... 129 2. INTRA‐PERSONAL OBJECTIONS TO PROCREATION ........................................................................................ 129 2.1 The Simple Intra‐Personal Argument .................................................................................................... 130 2.2 Shiffrin’s Argument from Unconsented Harm .................................................................................... 135 3. WHOLE‐LIFE OBJECTIONS TO PROCREATION ................................................................................................. 142 3.1 N‐conditions and C‐conditions .................................................................................................................. 144 3.2 C‐conditions and the New Problem of Non‐Identity ......................................................................... 147 4. THE SURVIVAL OF HUMANITY ........................................................................................................................... 153 5. THE ARGUMENT FROM THE FINAL VALUE OF HUMANITY ........................................................................... 161 6. CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................................................................... 168 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................................. 170 vi Acknowledgements My first and foremost thanks goes to the three members of my dissertation committee: Tim Scanlon, Frances Kamm, and Derek Parfit. An aspiring moral philosopher could not dream of a better and more devoted team of mentors than I have been privileged to work with over the past years. I am deeply grateful for their guidance and encouragement, their patience and constructive criticism, but most of all for setting, in their own work, an example of integrity and rigor, of imagination and wisdom that I can only strive to emulate in the future. For illuminating conversations on the subject matter of this thesis, as well as for invaluable feedback on my own ideas at various stages of the dissertation process, I thank Gustaf Arrhenius, Ralf Bader, Nick Beckstead, EliZabeth Harman, Iwao Hirose, Christine Korsgaard, Jeff McMahan, Melinda Roberts, and Larry Temkin. Eric Beerbohm,