Parsons - 'Why the Handicapped Child Case is Hard' (2004, PS)

7/24/2019 Parsons - 'Why the Handicapped Child Case is Hard' (2004, PS)

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JOSH PARSONS

WHY THE HANDICAPPED CHILD CASE IS HARD

(Received in revised version 26 September 2002)

ABSTRACT. This paper discusses the handicapped child case and some other

variants of Derek Parfits non-identity problem (Parfit, 1984) The case is widely

held to show that there is harmless wrongdoing, and that a moral system which

tries to reduce wrongdoing directly to harm (person-affecting morality) is

inadequate.

I show that the argument for this does not depend (as some have implied it

does) on Kripkean necessity of origin. I distinguish the case from other variants

(wrongful life cases) of the non-identity problem which do not bear directly onperson-affecting morality as I understand it. And finally, I describe a respect in

which the handicapped child case is puzzling and counter-intuitive, even on the

supposition that it is a case of harmless wrongdoing. I conclude that the case is

hard: it will take more than the rejection of person-affecting morality to remove

its puzzling character.

1. THE CASE

The handicapped child case. A woman, Elizabeth, desires to becomepregnant. She knows that if she were to become pregnant imme-diately, her child would have some mild genetic defect. However,she also knows that if she were to wait a year, her child would notsuffer from this defect. Despite this knowledge, Elizabeth becomespregnant without waiting and subsequently gives birth to a child,Anne, with the foreseen mild defect. Annes life is well worth living,but she suffers from this seemingly contingent affliction caused bythe circumstances of her conception.

For most people, this case evokes a powerful intuition that Eliza-beth has done something wrong. Lets call this the wrongdoing

intuition.Usually, people who havent heard this argument before also

have the intuition that Elizabeth has acted wrongly in a way thatmakes her accountable to Anne. That is to say, Elizabeths wrong-

Philosophical Studies 112: 147162, 2003.

2003Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.


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doing is specially connected with Anne. If Anne feels resentmenttoward Elizabeth, for example, that resentment is justified (and morejustified than any resentment you or I might feel toward Elizabeth).

Thisaccountability intuition is difficult to satisfy. Suppose Eliza-beth had waited a year before becoming pregnant. The child whowould then have been born call her Zoe would notbe Anne. Forit is possible that Elizabeth have both children: Zoe could be born ayear after the birth of Anne, and then they would be sisters. Possibly,Zoe and Anne will both exist, and so, by the necessity of identity,they cant be the same person.

Since, if Elizabeth had acted rightly had waited beforebecoming pregnant Anne would not have existed, Anne is noworse off than she would have been, had Elizabeth acted rightly.Annes life is not so bad that she is better off dead, or better off never

having existed. She should be glad that she exists at all. CertainlyElizabeth could not have acted in such a way that Anne wouldbe better off. If ought implies can, then Elizabeth had no obliga-tion to make Anne any better off than she actually did. So Annesresentment is unjustified.

The received view of this case takes it to show that there isharmless wrongdoing. People can do what is morally wrong withoutharming anyone and in this case, that is what Elizabeth has done.If this is right, then the case also refutes that is often called theperson-affecting view roughly, that right and wrong reduce to

benefit and harm to particular persons.

1

It seems to me that this is all basically correct. However, standarddiscussions of the case often confuse matters in various ways: bymaking spurious connections with the alleged necessity of origin;by being insufficiently clear about what the person affecting viewamounts to; or by confusing the case with another type of case,which I will label wrongful life. In addition, I think that thereis something troubling about the received view the moral thatthis is a case of harmless wrongdoing. Regarding Elizabeths actionsas harmless seems to lead to other problems, which have not beenwidely commented on.

Accordingly, in this paper, I try to give a clear characterisationof the argument that handicapped child cases present for harm-less wrongdoing and against person affecting morality. I explain


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WHY THE HANDICAPPED CHILD CASE IS HARD 149

why they do not depend on any essentialist premise, and how theyconnect to issues in the metaphysics of modality (section 2). I givea detailed statement of how the argument against person affecting

morality should proceed (section 3), and explain how the handi-capped child case is distinct from wrongful life cases (section 4).Finally, I argue that there is something puzzling about these cases,even if they are examples of harmless wrongdoing (section 5).

2. ESSENTIALISM

It is sometimes said of these cases that they depend on on a kind ofessentialism made popular by Kripke (1972) necessity of origin.This is just the idea that things have their origin essentially: in the

case of human beings, their circumstances of birth or conception.Usually, this is said to give an air of Kripkean authority to the argu-ment. Sometimes the cases are even made to depend on geneticessentialism: the idea that organisms have their genetic makeupessentially (though this is rarer).2 If the specification of the casedepends on either of these essentialisms, then it is open to a personaffecting moralist to defend herself by denying necessity of origin;or by denying genetic essentialism; or by denying that any kind ofessentialism is true.

I have a certain amount of sympathy for these objections, but Ithink that they are misplaced. Its not necessary to appeal to essen-

tialism in setting up the case, and I dont think that I did. I did appealto the following modal premise:

Counterfactual premise: If Elizabeth were to wait a yearbefore becoming pregnant, she would not give birth toAnne.

There is nothing about this premise that requires necessity oforigin (or other forms of essentialism). In particular, I have notappealed to this premise:

Essentialist premise: It is impossible that Elizabeth wait ayear before becoming pregnant, and give birth to Anne.

In logical terms, the essentialist premise employs a strict condi-tional where the counterfactual premise employs a counterfactualconditional. We can see the difference between them by looking at


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the standard semantic accounts that are given of them: The counter-factual says only that the nearest possible world (the most similarto the actual world, that is) in which Elizabeth waits is a world in

which the child she gives birth to is not Anne. The strict conditionalsays that every possible world in which Elizabeth waits is a worldwhere the child she gives birth to is not Anne. The strict conditionalentails the counterfactual, but not the other way around.

Nor is this simply an artifact of the possible world semantics.Take an analogous case: the counterfactual conditional If I wereoutside right now, I would be cold clearly does not entail the corre-sponding strict conditional It is impossible that I be outside rightnow and warm. It would be reasonable to object to the EssentialistPremise on the grounds that it embodies some kind of essentialism.But I have not affirmed it. If the objection is that Im involved

in essentialism by asserting the Counterfactual Premise, then thatobjection rests on a modal fallacy.

Perhaps a further objection is that there is no reason to believethe Counterfactual Premise apart from appeals to essentialism. ButI think I have given such a reason: namely that the child who wouldbe born if Elizabeth were to wait, Zoe, could have been born asAnnes sister. There is room for quibbling about whether this istrue in certain cases, but I dont see any appeal to essentialismhere.

3. PERSON AFFECTING MORALITY

I would like to explore a bit further exactly how the handicappedchild case makes trouble for person affecting morality, and also whatexactly the latter is. Ill start with a principle that a) is clearly sometype of person affecting principle; b) looks as though it is refutedby the handicapped child case; and c) apart from this might beindependently plausible.

Harm principle: An outcome is good only if it benefitssomeone; bad only if it harms someone.3

This way of stating person affecting morality has two drawbacks.First, it is ambiguous in a way that sometimes leads to misunder-standing of person affecting morality; and second, it entails several


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weaker doctrines, some of which have a better right to be called theperson affecting view than it does.

Harm and benefit are contentious terms in their own right,

and the contention extends to the interpretation of the harm prin-ciple. Harm is naturally used to mean what I will call temporalharm: the event of a persons welfare decreasing from one timeto the next. Analogously, benefit can mean temporal benefit, theevent of a persons welfare increasing from one time to the next. I amtemporally harmed at a timetiff my welfare beforetis greater thanmy welfare aftert; temporally benefited at tiff my welfare before tis less than my welfare after t.

However, that is not the type of harm and benefit that is relevanthere. Suppose I am unemployed, and am applying for an academicjob. You are one of my referees, and you have a choice of writing

me a favourable reference or an unfavourable one. My other refer-ences are favourable enough that either way I will get the job. Ifyou write a favourable reference I will be paid $40,000 p/a, if youwrite an unfavourable one, $39,000 p/a. In either outcome, then, Iam temporally benefited being on a salary of either $39,000 or$40,000 is better than being unemployed. Either way I am better offthan Iwas. But in the relevant sense it is only a favourable referencethat will benefit me, and only an unfavourable one that will harmme. It is only if you write a favourable reference that I am better offthan Iwould be.

The type of harm that is relevant for us is not temporal harm, butglobal harm:

Definition of global harm:Sis harmed in outcomeAiffAis worse for Sthan rival outcomes (or, for short, iffA isbad forS).Sis benefited in outcomeAiffAis better forSthan rival outcomes (for short, iffA is good for S).4

Outcomes, here, are thought of as complete ways the wouldmight be (as possible worlds, in metaphysical parlance), and personsas complete lives lived. This account asks us to compare Ss wholelife as it would be if A came about to Ss whole life as it would

be ifA did not come about.5

To avoid the ambiguity introduced bydifferent ways of understanding harm and benefit, we could foldthe definition of global harm into the harm principle to produce thefollowing:


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Person affecting constraint: An outcomeAis good only ifthere is someone for whom A is good.

The person affecting constraint is, I claim, the common thread

to all person affecting moral systems. It is appealed to indirectlyby many accounts of person affecting morality, including those thatendorse the harm principle. Some people will want to say that thisconstraint is too weak to properly capture person-affecting morality in a certain sense I agree (and this will be discussed further below).However, I think that it is important to isolate it because there aremultiple ways of strengthening it, each of which leads to a differentversion of person-affecting morality. The way of strengthening itthat I prefer will be described in the remainder of this section. I alsodiscuss a rival way in section 4.

I am now in a position to explain how the handicapped child caseconstitutes a counterexample to this constraint. It will be helpful torepresent the case in a type of diagram whose form I have borrowedfrom Broome (1999):

Elizabeth Anne Zoe

A (we, . . . 1, )

B (we, . . . , 10)

A and B are two outcomes available to Elizabeth in decidingwhen to have her child. Between the brackets are listed the levels ofwelfare that each person has in the outcome whose name is writtento the left. The ellipsis (. . .) represents the fact that many morepeople exist in each outcome than Elizabeth, Anne, and Zoe. I willbe assuming that these persons welfare is identical in each outcome.Finally, an omega () indicates that a person does not exist at thatoutcome. So, in both A andB, Elizabeth has some level of welfarewe. InA, Anne has welfare 1, and Zoe does not exist. In B, Zoe haswelfare 10, and Anne does not exist.

The assignment of numbers to levels of welfare is nearly arbi-trary. I chose a bigger number for Zoe in B than for Anne in A,

because Zoe is supposed to be better off in B than Anne is in A. Theorder is significant but the scale is not.Arepresents the outcome in which Elizabeth has a child now, B

the outcome in which she waits. Intuitively, B is definitely better


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thanA. Elizabeth ought to wait that is, she ought to bring about B,rather thanA.

The person affecting constraint, however, will require that B is

no better thanA, contrary to our moral intuitions. It wont quite dothis on its own, however. What it does is zeroes in on Anne and Zoe,who are the only people (according to the description of the case)whose welfare differs from outcome to outcome. They are the onlypeople, therefore, who could be harmed by Elizabeths choice ofAoverB.

Anne is not harmed by Elizabeths choice, because shes not anyworse off in A than she is in B. But we do need another premiseto ensure that Zoe is not worse off in A by virtue of not havingbeen created. This seems very plausible. Zoe is merely one amongan infinite number of merely possible persons. If all of them were

harmed by not being brought into existence, then person affectingmorality would instruct us refrain from bringing about this harm bycreating as many people as possible, and that would be absurd.

The missing principle is a doctrine to the effect that merelypossible persons, or indeed merely possible patients of any kind,are not worthy of moral consideration a point urged vigorously byJan Narveson:

[T]he sole ground of duty is the effects of our action on other people, and from

this it follows that whenever one has a duty, it mustbe possible to say on whose

account the duty arises i.e. whosehappiness is in question.

[I]f a person is not born, he does not exist . . . And as we all know, non-existent

people are not just a special kind of people. (Narveson, 1967, pp. 6364)

The principle suggested by Narveson, as I understand him, is thisone:6

Actualism about good for: Outcomes can only be goodfor actually existing moral patients.

The point here is that we can only properly evaluate Elizabethsaction in the light of who is actual who exists, has existed, orwill exist. If we are evaluating Elizabeths actions in a world whereshe has chosen A, then Zoe is a merely possible person, and the

potential benefit to her of her own existence does not contribute tothe goodness of outcomeB.Now we can show how the counterexample works. The intuition

provoked by the description of the case is that B is better than A


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Elizabeth has done wrong in bringing aboutArather thanB. ButBisno better thanA for Elizabeth, or any of the other people who existin both all of them, by hypothesis, have the same level of welfare

in both. Nor isB any better for Zoe, who is not an actually existingmoral patient. Nor isB any better for Anne, because, by hypothesis,Annes life is worth living, and she would not be better off if she didnot exist.

Hence, by the person affecting constraint, Bis no better than A.But intuitively it is, therefore either the person affecting constraintor actualism about good for must be false. Of the two, the mostplausible principle to reject is the person affecting constraint.

4. WRONGFUL LIFE AND EPICUREANISM

The handicapped child case is sometimes presented in a differentform, which, it seems to me, is a weaker argument against theperson affecting constraint. In this section, I want to discuss thisother form, and explain why I think it is a bad argument againstperson affecting morality. The case is this:

The wrongful life case. A woman, Elizabeth, desires to becomepregnant. She knows that if she were to become pregnant imme-diately, her child would have some severe genetic defect. However,she also knows that if she were to wait a year, her child would notsuffer from this defect. Despite this knowledge, Elizabeth becomespregnant without waiting and subsequently gives birth to a child,Anne, with the foreseen severe defect. Annes life is not worthliving, and she wishes Elizabeth had not brought her into existence.

To clear up the terminology a little, I will henceforth refer tocases like this one as wrongful life cases, and not as handicappedchild cases. It seems to me that the distinction between them is notalways as widely realised as it ought to be.

The difference between the two cases is that in the handicappedchild case, it is stipulated that Annes handicap does not prevent

her from living a worthwhile life. In the wrongful life case, on theother hand, Annes handicap is as severe as you like, and her life asmiserable as you like. Using the type of diagram introduced above,we might show the wrongful life case as:


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Elizabeth Anne Zoe

C (we, . . . 10, )

D (we, . . .

, 2)

Now let us run through the argument given at the end of theprevious section using this case instead of the handicapped childcase. The intuition is that D is better than C. D is not better forElizabeth, or for the other people who exist at both. Nor is D betterfor Zoe because she doesnt actually exist. However, in this case, itsmuch more tempting to say that D is better thanC for Anne.

Of course this will be a contentious point. It depends on whetherwe can make sense of the idea of someones being so badly off thatthey would be better off not existing at all. Notice, by the way, this

is not quite the same as being better off dead. It is one thing to bedead, and another never to have been born. The temptation, then, inthis case, is to say that Anne is so miserable that she should neverhave been born.D is, therefore, better for her than C.

If this is right, then the wrongful life case does not refute theconjunction of the person affecting constraint with actualism aboutgood for. The person affecting moralist can point to Elizabethscreation of Anne in a harmed state as the harm that her actions havecaused, and the ground of their wrongness. The wrongful life case,therefore, is a red herring from the point of view of arguments about

person affecting morality.However, things are not so simple. Some person affecting moral-ists would also like to believe this doctrine:

Global epicureanism: Outcomes can only be good (orbad) for moral patients who exist at those outcomes.7

If global epicureanism is true, D is not better for Anne than C,because Anne does not exist atD. The global epicurean will say thatI have cheated by representing Annes welfare in Cas a negativenumber. Perhaps there is no non-arbitrary zero point on the scale ofwelfare? If there is one, why suppose that it coincides with the point

at which lives worth living give way to lives not worth living?These are all good questions. I dont wish to argue against globalepicureanism here. I simply want to point out that it is independentof the person affecting constraint and actualism about good for. I


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will also try to answer a common argument that is given in favourof global epicureanism.

The argument runs like this:

1. Existing is a pre-requisite for having a level of welfare at all.2. Therefore, you can only have a level of welfare in an

outcome at which you exist.3. Therefore, outcomes can only be good (or bad) for moral

patients who exist at those outcomes.

To answer this argument, I will need to work by alternatives.I am now going to temporarily drop my neutrality about differentaccounts of welfare. I will show that, assuming a certain account ofwelfare, the argument does not work; and then that, assuming anyother account of welfare, it still doesnt work (though for different

reasons).

4.1. Preference Satisfaction and Epicureanism

The account of welfare in question is the preference satisfactiontheory. According to this theory, facts about a moral patientswelfare reduce to facts about which of their preferences are satis-fied. (Satisfaction here is used in its dry logical sense a patientspreference is satisfied when the world matches the way the patientwould like it to be, regardless of how the patient feels about thematter).

We might think of a patients preferences as an ordinal ranking ofpossible states of affairs from better to worse. It is this ranking thatwe are talking about when we describe a state of affairs as beinggood for a patient, or bad for a patient. The feature of this accountthat is important now is that the welfare a patient has in a givenoutcome is had in virtue of that outcomes position in the ranking.Good for is prior in explanation to welfare.

The preference satisfaction theory has a feature that the globalepicurean should like: because the facts about welfare are exhaustedby a merely ordinal ranking of states of affairs, there is no non-arbitrary zero point in the scale of welfare. There is no structural

feature of an ordered list of states of affairs that tells you where toput the zero point.But it has another feature that the global epicurean wont like:

there is nothing in the structure of a ordered list of states of affairs


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that prevents it from containing states of affairs in which the ordererdoes not exist.

Some people, however unreasonably, like the thought of playing

golf. If I like the thought of playing golf, then I put states of affairs inwhich I play golf high up in my preference ranking. In virtue of that,I get to have a high level of welfare at those states of affairs whereI play golf. Some people, however unreasonably, like the thought ofnever having been born. If they like that thought, then they put statesof affairs in which they were never born high up in their preferencerankings. In virtue of that, they get to have a level of welfare at statesof affairs where they do not exist.

If all that is needed a for patient to have a level of welfare at astate of affairs is that they place that state of affairs in their prefer-ence ranking, then there is no reason that a patient cannot have a

level of welfare at a state of affairs at which they do not exist. If thepreference satisfaction account of welfare is correct, then existenceis not a pre-requisite of having a level of welfare, and the premise ofthe Global epicureans argument is false.

4.2. Non-Preferencism and Epicureanism

I will call the denial of the preference satisfaction theory non-preferencism. According to non-preferencism, a patients havinga certain level of welfare at an outcome does not consist in thatpatients ranking that outcome in a preference ordering. Rather, thewelfare of a patient at an outcome is some ordinary property whichthe patient has according to that outcome.

For example, hedonism is a form of non-preferencism, on thisusage. According to hedonism, the welfare of a patient at anoutcome is the happiness (or unhappiness) of that patient at thatoutcome. Happiness and unhappiness are ordinary properties ofmoral patients, and are not constituted by patients preferences. Apatient is neither happy nor unhappy if she does not exist. Such apatient has, in consequence, no level of welfare. So according tohedonism, the first premise of the argument for global epicureanism

is true.A similar type of argument will apply for any non-preferenceaccount of welfare. Suppose, for example, that welfare consists incertain primary goods including, perhaps, health, vigour, intelli-


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gence, imagination, rights, liberties, powers, opportunities, incomeand wealth.8 As was the case for hedonism, a patient has none ofthese if she does not exist.

Like the preference theory, non-preferencism has a feature thatthe global epicurean should like: it is indeed impossible to havewelfare without existing, if welfare is an ordinary property such ashappiness.

However, the relationship between the welfare has at a state ofaffairs and that state of affairss goodness for that person might bequite complex. For example, consider a theory of value that identi-fies welfare with pleasurable sensations. It neednt follow from sucha theory that someone who never has any pleasurable sensations and thus, has no welfare is no worse off than someone withwelfare. Indeed, such a theory would surely say that the state of

having no welfare is worse for the person in that state than any stateof having welfare. Similarly, it neednt follow that someone whonever has any health, wealth, etc, is no worse off than someone whohas these things. So it doesnt in general follow, according to non-preferencism, that a state of affairs being good or bad for an patientrequires that the patient have a level of welfare at that state of affairs.

If you are going to identity welfare with an ordinary property(such as happiness) you will want to say that to completely lackthat property is bad for you. So, in this case, the conclusion of thelittle argument for global epicureanism does not follow from the

intermediate conclusion that you can only have a level of welfare inan outcome at which you exist.9 Regardless of whether the prefer-ence theory or some form of non-preferencism is correct then, thisargument gives no reason to believe global epicureanism.

5. THE RESENTMENT PROBLEM

I have now stated what I take to be the prima facie case presentedby the handicapped child case against person affecting morality.The case presents a counterexample to what is predicted by the

person affecting constraint conjoined with actualism about goodfor. The most natural way to reply to this counterexample is to denythe person affecting constraint. If the person affecting constraint isfalse, then there is no reason to deny that Elizabeth has done wrong.


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The wrong Elizabeth has done, however, does not consist in makingAnne (or anyone else, for that matter) worse off than she might be.Thus, by rejecting person affecting morality, we are able to retain

the wrongdoing intuition.Tempting as it is, however, there is something unsatisfactory

about the argument just outlined. The trouble is with the admissionthat Elizabeths wrongdoing is not connected with Annes welfare.That is, the proposed way of understanding the case does not seemto satisfy the accountability intuition.

Here is a way of making the problem more explicit: we mightimagine that Anne feels a strong and lasting resentment towardElizabeth. Pre-theoretically, this resentment seems only reasonableunder the circumstances. But if Elizabeths wrong has nothing to dowith Annes welfare, Annes resentment is inappropriate.

According to the standard account, resentment is only justi-fied toward someone who has negligently offended or injured us(Strawson, 1962, p. 7). A way to bring this point out is to considerthe contrast between resentment and indignation. Indignation is anemotion appropriate for me to feel toward someone who is respon-sible for a moral wrong, but not offended or injured me in particular.Resentment, on the other hand is a much more personal matter.

According to the argument from the handicapped child caseagainst the person affecting constraint, Elizabeth has not offended orinjured Anne. If there was a way of salvaging some kind of offence

or injury to Anne, then that offence or injury could count as a respectin which Annes welfare is less than it would be if the offence orinjury had not occurred. If Annes resentment is justified, then theargument against the person affecting constraint cannot work.

For this reason, I think that a person affecting account of thehandicapped child case would be desirable. Alternatively, a non-person affecting account that explained why it is reasonable forAnne to feel resentment toward Elizabeth would suffice. But it isextremely difficult to give either. It is hard to do the former for thereasons given in section 3, and hard to do the latter for the reasonsjust given above: Annes resentment is justified only if Elizabeth has

harmed her.That is not to say that either way of proceeding is impossible.

We could start to make progress in the person affecting direction


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by weakening the definition of global harm. We might say that Sis harmed in A iff A is worse for S than rival outcomes are forwhomever is inSs shoes is those rival outcomes. We would need

to spell out in Ss shoes, and we would need to reply to criticismsalong the lines of Why should Scare about what happens to otherpersons in her shoes at various outcomes?

Or we could start to make progress in the non-person-affectingdirection by abandoning the Strawsonian account of resentmentendorsed above. We would need either an account that makesAnnes resentment justified without requiring that she be offendedor injured, or at least an account that explains why her resentmentwould persist even on coming to fully understand the facts of thecase.

Either way heavy-duty theoretical work is needed. The handi-

capped child case does not straight-forwardly rule out personaffecting morality. It makes it hard but the case is hard foreveryone, not just for the person affecting moralist.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Elizabeth Ashford and Daniel Cohen, participants in theUniversity of Dundee Philosophy Department research seminar, andan anonymous referee forPhilosophical Studies.

NOTES

1 As always with philosophical examples, one has to abstract away a little. In

calling this a case of harmless wrongdoing, we are ignoring any minor harms

Elizabeth inflicts on herself or others by bringing Anne into existence. For

example, if Annes affliction is myopia, perhaps Elizabeth will have to go out of

her way later on to obtain corrective lenses for her. That might count as a minor

self-harm by Elizabeth, so her actions were not entirely harmless. The point,

however, is that the harm done does not exhaust the wrongness of Elizabeths

act, as the person-affecting view would have it.2 Thus, Jeff McMahan says, in the context of a version of the handicapped child

case, The view that alterations to genetic materials may be identity-determiningwith respect to the person who eventually develops from them seems compat-

ible with the widely accepted doctrine of necessity of origin (McMahan, 1998,

pp. 209210). Gregory Kavka says that, in order to set up his version, he will


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assume that sameness of genetic structure is, for practical purposes, a necessary

condition of personal identity (Kavka, 1982, p. 93). And Derek Parfit appeals to

The Origin View of personal identity of across worlds (Parfit, 1984, s. 119).3 I have chosen to formulate this principle in axiological terms in terms of

goodness of outcomes in order to keep exposition simple. Henceforth I will be

assuming that, according to both person affecting morality and according to its

principal foes, right action is justified by its bringing about a good outcome.

This outcome talk does cut me off from one type of person affecting morality.

According to the view I call quasi-deontic person affecting morality, right

actions are justified not in terms of the good, but directly in terms of their benefit

to moral patients. A quasi-deontist does not like to say anything at all about

the goodness of outcomes, only about right, wrong, benefit, and harm. It is still

consequentialist benefits and harms are consequences of actions but it will

not fit into the framework of ranking outcomes according to goodness that I will

be using. If you are tempted by the quasi-deontic view, it should be possible to

translate everything I say into its terms.

4 A problem with this conception of harm and benefit is that it might be over-demanding it might require you to be constantly maximising my welfare, on

pain of harming me. That doesnt follow from the definition above, though: we

also need a further principle to tell us what the rival outcomes are in the context

of a particular action or decision. For example, is the outcome in which you give

me all you own and become my slave a rival to the outcome in which you write

a favourable reference and I earn $39,000? If so, perhaps even writing a good

reference would harm me. But, plausibly, making yourself my slave is not a rival

outcome in that context, because its not an outcome of a decision about what kind

of reference to write.5 The distinction between global and temporal harm is connected with two

distinct types of welfare (1990, pp. 120123). When I described temporal harm

as a decrease in welfare, I had in mind a level of welfare as a state that is had by a

person at a time, or, perhaps, by a temporal part of a person.In thinking of whether

an outcome is worse for a person than another, we are assessing the total welfare

of a persons whole life. These two types of welfare are different properties: the

former, temporal, welfare is had only by person stages (or persons-at-times), the

latter, global welfare, is had only by whole persons.6 For a defence of this exegetical point about Narveson (and further discussion

of actualism about good for), see my 2002.7 The lower-case e is to indicate that I am not putting forward any claims about

the views of Epicurus or his followers here.8 Rawls list see Rawls (1971, p. 62).9 What a non-preference theorist probably will say is that the goodness or

badness of a state of affairs for a patient must supervene on the patients welfare

at that state of affairs. That is to say, no difference in goodness without a differ-ence in welfare. But global epicureanism doesnt follow from this either. It only

follows that if we rank states of affairs where I do not exist as good or bad for

me, we must do so consistently ranking all such states of affairs equally. To do


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otherwise would be to have a difference in goodness or badness for me without a

corresponding difference in welfare.

REFERENCES

Bigelow, J., Campbell, J., and Pargetter, R. (1990): Death and Well-Being,

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly71, 119140.

Broome, J. (1999): The Value of a Person, in Ethics out of Economics(pp. 228

242). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Department of Logic and Metaphysics

University of St. AndrewsSt. Andrews, KY16 9AJ, UK

E-mail: [email protected]

Documents

Parsons - 'Why the Handicapped Child Case is Hard' (2004, PS)