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Persson's Merely Possible Persons

July 2020
Utilitas 32(4):1-9

DOI:10.1017/S0953820820000199

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CC BY 4.0

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Stockholm University

All else being equal, creating a miserable person makes the world worse, and creating an ecstatic person makes it better. Such claims are easily justified if it can be better, or worse, for a person to exist than not to exist. But that seems to require that things can be better, or worse, for a person even in a world in which she does not exist. Ingmar Persson defends this seemingly paradoxical claim in his latest book, Inclusive Ethics . He argues that persons that never exist are merely possible beings for whom non-existence is worse than existence with a good life. We argue that Persson's argument, as stated in his book, has false premises and is invalid. We reconstruct the argument to make it valid, but the premises remain highly problematic. Finally, we argue, one can make sense of our procreative obligations without letting merely possible beings into the moral club.

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Persson’s Merely Possible Persons

Krister Bykvist1* and Tim Campbell2

Stockholm University and

Institute for Futures Studies, Stockholm

*Corresponding author. Email: krister.bykvist@philosophy.su.se

Abstract

All else being equal, creating a miserable person makes the world worse, and creating an

ecstatic person makes it better. Such claims are easily justified if it can be better, or worse,

for a person to exist than not to exist. But that seems to require that things can be better,

or worse, for a person even in a world in which she does not exist. Ingmar Persson defends

this seemingly paradoxical claim in his latest book, Inclusive Ethics. He argues that persons

that never exist are merely possible beings for whom non-existence is worse than existence

with a good life. We argue that Persson’s argument, as stated in his book, has false prem-

ises and is invalid. We reconstruct the argument to make it valid, but the premises remain

highly problematic. Finally, we argue, one can make sense of our procreative obligations

without letting merely possible beings into the moral club.

Many of our choices effect who will exist in the future. These include the choice of having a

child, of giving priority to young people over old when saving lives, and of offering gener-

ous state-funded parental leave. In many of these cases it seems that one outcome is worse

than another in virtue of the wellbeing of people who do not exist in both. For example, it

seems, creating a very unhappy person makes the world worse, other things being equal.

Some would also say creating a very happy person makes the world better, other things

being equal. It would be easy to justify these verdicts if it can be better, or worse, for a per-

son to exist than not to exist. But that seems to require that things can be better, or worse,

forapersoneveninaworldinwhichshedoes not exist, which sounds paradoxical.

This paradoxical-sounding claim is defended in Ingmar Persson’s latest book Inclusive

Ethics.

He argues that in a world in which a person does not exist, she is a merely possible

being –a being that never exists –and that for such beings it is worse not to exist than to

exist with a good life. Furthermore, he argues for this claim from what he calls ‘incontestable’

premises. We argue that the premises are far from incontestable. Persson’s argument, as stated,

has false premises and is invalid. One can reconstruct the argument to make it valid, but the

premises are still highly contestable. Finally, we argue, one can make sense of our obligations to

future generations without letting merely possible beings into the moral club.

terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unre-

stricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Ingmar Persson, Inclusive Ethics: Extending Beneficence and Egalitarian Justice (Oxford, 2017).

Utilitas (2020), 32, 479–487

doi:10.1017/S0953820820000199

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Persson’s argument is presented in the following passage:

[I]t follows that never having existed is worse for possible beings than an existence

in which things are overall intrinsically good for them if it is true that:

(1) for a being who has never existed nothing is either intrinsically good or bad,

and

(2) the fact that nothing is either intrinsically good or bad for a being is worse for it

than the fact that things are overall intrinsically good for it.

Claims (1) and (2) are the premises, which are claimed to be ‘incontestable’, and the

conclusion is:

(3) never having existed is worse for possible beings than an existence in which

things are overall intrinsically good for them.

Note that (1) talks about a being who has never existed. This does not rule out that it

will exist in the future. But Persson wants to say that non-existence can be worse for

merely possible beings, beings that never have existed and never will exist. So, readers

should interpret (1) and (3) as talking about merely possible beings.

Persson finds (2) ‘incontestable’, but as stated it is false, since the two facts mentioned

in (2) are incompatible. Necessarily, if it is a fact that nothing is intrinsically good or bad

for a being, then it is not a fact that things are overall intrinsically good for this being.

Hence, it cannot be true that the fact that nothing is intrinsically good or bad for a

being is worse for it than the fact that things are overall intrinsically good for it.

Another problem is that the facts compared in (2) are evaluative facts, facts about

whether things are good or bad for a being. But it is unclear what it means to say

one evaluative fact is worse than another for a being.

Finally, the argument is invalid: (3) does not follow from (1) and (2). According to

(2), a certain evaluative fact is worse for a being than a certain other evaluative fact. But

‘never having existed’in (3) refers to the non-evaluative state of affairs (or fact) of a

being never having existed.

III

The following reconstruction of Persson’s argument, where evaluative fact-talk is

replaced by non-evaluative state-of-affairs-talk throughout, avoids the problems of

the originally-stated argument:

Persson, p. 61.

This is an instance of the ‘relata problem’. See Gustaf Arrhenius and Wlodek Rabinowicz, Better to Be

than not to Be?, The Benefit of Broad Horizons: Intellectual and Institutional Preconditions for a Global

Social Science, ed. Hans Joas (Leiden, 2010), pp. 404–08; Gustaf Arrhenius and Wlodek Rabinowicz,

The Value of Existence, The Oxford Handbook of Value Theory, ed. Iwao Hirose and Jonas Olson

(New York, 2015), pp. 424–44, at 432; Krister Bykvist, Being and Well-Being, Weighing and Reasoning,

ed. Iwao Hirose and Andrew Reisner (Oxford, 2015), pp. 90–91; and Nils Holtug, Persons, Interests, and

Justice (New York, 2010), pp. 140–41.

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(4) For a merely possible being, non-existence is neither overall good nor overall

bad.

(5) Any state of affairs which is neither overall good nor overall bad for a being is

overall worse for it than a state of affairs that is overall good for it.

Therefore,

(6) For a merely possible being, non-existence is overall worse than an existence that

is overall good for it.

This reconstruction is valid, assuming ‘existence’and ‘non-existence’pick out states of

affairs. Moreover, it avoids comparisons of incompatible evaluative facts. Finally, it

makes clear that the relevant comparisons concern the overall values of states of affairs

(existence or non-existence), i.e. the total intrinsic value for the being of all the things

that the states of affairs would realize, if they obtained.

We should add that the reason

why (4) is true is that everything lacks positive and negative intrinsic value for the being.

But the argument is still problematic. According to (5), something that is overall

good for a being is better for it than something that lacks overall positive and negative

value for it. But something is better for a being than something else only if both things

have value for the being. The same holds for any comparative notion. One thing is taller

than another only if both have height; one thing is heavier than another only if both have

weight; one thing has a higher temperature than another only if both have temperature.

The question, then, is what value non-existence has for a merely possible being.

Persson states that non-existence has neutral value for a merely possible being.

Indeed, he claims that everything is neutral for a merely possible being. However, he

characterizes ‘neutral value for a being’as ‘being neither intrinsically good nor intrin-

sically bad for a being’.

This is an implausible characterization of ‘neutral value for a

being’because, plausibly, some states of affairs are undefined in value for a being.

Candidates include contradictory states of affairs (e.g. that 2 + 2 = 5), necessary states

of affairs (e.g. that 2 + 2 = 4), evaluative states of affairs (e.g. that happiness is good

for people), and states of affairs that concern other people’s wellbeing (e.g. that a stran-

ger is unhappy).

In conversation, Persson has said that he would accept this reconstruction if (2) were formulated sub-

junctively as ‘Any state of affairs which would be neither overall good nor overall bad for a being would be

overall worse for it than a state of affairs that would be overall good for it’just to make clear that states of

affairs have value for a being only when they obtain. We shall assume this reading implicitly. He has also

said he prefers that the premises be stated in terms of intrinsic goodness and badness for a being rather than

in terms of the overall goodness and badness that states of affairs have for a being. This is because he thinks

non-existence could be extrinsically good or bad for a being by excluding an existence that would be good

or bad for that being. On our view, the overall goodness or badness a state of affairs has for a being does not

depend on this kind of preventive value.

Persson, pp. 11, 57, 61. Nils Holtug defends a similar definition of ‘zero value for a being’in On the

Value of Coming into Existence, The Journal of Ethics 5 (2001), 361–84, but he now rejects this definition

because of the objection raised here. On the intelligibility of assigning neutral or zero value to non-

existence, see Melinda Roberts, Can It Ever Be Better Never to Have Existed at All? Person-Based

Consequentialism and a New Repugnant Conclusion, Journal of Applied Philosophy 20 (2003), 153–85;

Jens Johansson, Being and Betterness, Utilitas 22 (2010), 285–302; and Krister Bykvist, The Benefits of

Coming into Existence, Philosophical Studies 135 (2007), 335–62.

On the distinction between being neutral for and having undefined value for, see Ben Bradley,

Well-Being and Death (New York, 2009), pp. 98–104.

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Furthermore, being neutral for one is different from being neither good nor bad for

one. If something is neutral for one, it has a value that is neither positive nor negative,

but which can be compared to positive and negative values. This is analogous to:

(a) having zero temperature, which is having a temperature that is neither positive

nor negative, and thus different from lacking positive and negative temperature

just because one lacks any temperature, or

(b) having a weight that is neither heavy nor light, which is different from being

neither heavy nor light just because one lacks any weight, or

ther tall nor short just because one lacks any height.

Persson could deny that things must have value to stand in value relations or that neu-

tral value is a value in its own right. But such claims are highly contestable and Persson

does not give arguments for why value comparisons differ so radically from other

comparisons.

Premise (4) is also highly contestable. Indeed, that there are merely possible beings is

one of the most contestable claims in modal metaphysics.

Persson claims not only that

there are non-existent beings, but also that things are neutral for them and, given prem-

ise (5), that things can be better or worse for them.

Consider the existence claim first. It seems incoherent, since it seems to assert the

existence of non-existent beings. But Persson believes that in a certain sense of ‘exist’,

the claim is true:

In one sense of ‘exist’, it is true that there are merely possible beings because this

follows from the clearly true claim that it is possible that some beings will begin to

exist in the future. This is the sense in which I believe there to be merely possible

and, thus, non-existent beings. (60–61)

Persson’s claim that

A. there are merely possible beings

follows from

B. it is possible that some beings will begin to exist in the future

is puzzling. B states that in some possible world some beings will begin to exist in the

future. Why would it follow that there are and thus exist, in any sense, merely possible

beings here in the actual world? Compare: it is possible that the pope has two children in

the future, and thus possible that two children of the pope will begin to exist in the

These examples are relevant to how we should understand the nature of quantitative properties. See

Yuri Balashov, Zero-Value Physical Quantities, Synthese 119 (1999), 253–86.

For a critique of the claim, see Robert Stalnaker, Mere Possibilities (Princeton, 2012), chs 1 and 2.

We interpret B as ‘it is possible that it will be the case that some beings begin to exist’, not ‘it is possible

that there are now some beings that will begin to exist’, since the latter commits one to the possibility of

merely future beings, beings that do not exist yet but will exist in the future, a commitment which is almost

as contestable as the commitment to merely possible beings.

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future. But why would it follow that there exist, in any sense, merely possible beings here

in the actual world? Regardless of what sense of ‘exist’is assumed, we need to know how

to derive A from B. We could derive it if we accepted the Barcan formula as a bridge

principle:

If it is possible that there is a being that is F, then there is a being such that it is

possible that it is F.

For then we could make use of the following instance of the Barcan formula:

If it is possible that there are beings that will begin to exist, then there are beings

such that it is possible that they begin to exist.

and from B derive that there are beings such that it is possible that they begin to exist,

which entails A, assuming that they in fact will not begin to exist. But the Barcan for-

mula is highly contestable, and Persson claims (in correspondence) that this is not what

he intended.

So, we do not see how he can incontestably derive A from B.

Even if we could establish that A follows from B, we need to know what the relation

is between merely possible beings in one world and beings that begin to exist in some

alternative possible world. Consider Tommy, a child born with a painful condition who

lived an utterly miserable life. Persson seems committed to saying that things would

have been better for Tommy if he had not existed, and that this holds in virtue of

the fact that if he had not existed, things would have been neutral for a merely possible

being. Either this merely possible being and Tommy are identical or they are not. Both

options are problematic.

If they are identical, then a merely possible being which is not concrete (i.e. lacks

space-time location and causal powers) could have existed and been concrete. But

being non-concrete seems essential to its bearers: if something is non-concrete, it is

essentially non-concrete. Similarly, if something is concrete, it is essentially concrete.

If they are not identical, then it is unclear how Persson can establish that things

would be worse for Tommy, if he did not exist. If we had not created Tommy, he

would not have been around in any sense, since being concrete is essential to

Tommy. Since Tommy would not have been around, things would not have been

worse for him, for the relation ‘worse for’requires a subject for whom things are

worse. Even if there is a distinct merely possible being in the Tommy-less world and

things are worse for this being, it does not follow that things are also worse for

Tommy in that world, for we have assumed that the merely possible being is not iden-

tical to Tommy.

Let us now turn to the crucial value claim: things can be neutral, better or worse for

merely possible beings. This claim is far from obvious. After all, a merely possible being

is not a concrete being, an animal, a conscious being, a human, and so on. At most, it is

amerely possible concrete being, a merely possible animal, and so on. Why think that a

On the Barcan formula, see Timothy Williamson, Modal Logic as Metaphysics (New York, 2013), ch. 2.

In conversation, Persson seems to accept this horn of the dilemma. He compares merely possible

beings to abstract properties and concrete beings to property bearers. Merely possible beings are ‘actualized’

by concrete beings, but not identical to them. However, this doesn’t explain how things are worse for

Tommy in a Tommy-less world. Also, it sounds like a category mistake to say that things can be neutral

for property-like entities.

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being that merely possibly exemplifies these features can stand in value relations? Why

not think that standing in a value relation requires being concrete in some way, for

example, having a mind, body, space-time location or causal powers? We need an argu-

ment for the controversial claim that things can be better or worse for non-concrete

beings.

Persson offers an argument from analogy. The analogy involves a comparison

between a non-existent being and an anencephalic infant that lacks the capacity for con-

sciousness and so never becomes conscious:

It seems indisputable that, given that existing without consciousness, like anen-

cephalic infants do, is neither intrinsically good nor bad for them, this is worse

for them than having consciousness and leading a life in which things are predom-

inantly good for them. But . . . non-conscious beings are like non-existent beings in

that nothing is either intrinsically good or bad . . . for them. Therefore, non-

existence is worse for a being than a predominantly intrinsically good existence,

just as its existence is worse for a non-conscious being than a good existence.

According to Persson, the crucial similarity between the anencephalic and the merely

possible being is that both lack consciousness. This is supposed to show that nothing

is intrinsically good or bad for them, and hence that lacking conscious existence is neu-

tral for them. The analogy is contestable, however, for there is a clear difference between

the two beings. Although both lack consciousness, the anencephalic is a concrete being

and an animal. The merely possible being is only merely possibly concrete and merely

possibly an animal. Thus, the anencephalic seems a better candidate for a being for

which things can be neutral. Remember that being neutral for is not just a lack of

the relations being good for and being bad for; it is an evaluative relation in its own

right. Moreover, the analogy breaks down for flesh-and-blood individuals, such as

the previously discussed Tommy, for he would not exist in any sense if he were not cre-

ated (assuming such a concrete individual could not have been non-concrete).

Persson could reply that states of affairs can have value for a being if that being has a

capacity for being concrete, an animal, and so on, and both the anencephalic being and

the merely possible being have these capacities. This reply works at most for merely

possible beings, not for the flesh-and-blood Tommy, since he does not exist at all in

the Tommy-less world (assuming, again, that he could not be non-concrete), and

thus cannot exemplify any capacities in that world. Moreover, the reply succeeds

only if possibly having a certain property Fis sufficient for having a capacity to have

F. But this seems false. For example, the fact that you possibly jump to the moon,

i.e. that there is a possible world in which you do this, does not entail that you have

the capacity to jump to the moon.

Having a capacity to do or have something (in

the ordinary sense of ‘capacity’) requires more than having the purely modal feature

of being such that one possibly does or has it. Arguably, the capacity must be somehow

grounded in features that are not purely modal.

Persson’s analogy also assumes that lacking consciousness is worse for the anenceph-

alic than having a conscious good life, that the anencephalic would benefit from having

a conscious good life. But whether this is true seems to depend on which theory of our

identity is correct. Suppose our identity is essentially tied to our capacity for

Persson, p. 62.

Johansson (2010) makes this important observation.

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consciousness.

Then none of us could exist as the anencephalic in Persson’s example,

since it lacks this capacity. Suppose the anencephalic somehow acquires a fully func-

tional brain that is necessary and sufficient to realize the capacity for consciousness.

Then a new being, one of us, comes into existence. Call this being Beth. If Beth has

a good life, this does not imply that the anencephalic benefits. For it seems Beth is

the only welfare subject in this case, and she is not identical to the anencephalic.

Persson might claim that the anencephalic benefits in virtue of standing in some intim-

ate relation to Beth. For example, suppose the anencephalic is essentially a human body.

Then when Beth comes into existence, this human body might constitute Beth, or it might

acquire Beth as a spatial or temporal part. If Beth has a good life, then the human body

might also have a good life in virtue of standing in some such relation to Beth.

But this reply is problematic. Beth is a welfare subject. If Beth’s body is also a welfare

subject, there are too many welfare subjects. To emphasize the problem, consider the

case of body-switching. Suppose that Beth’s brain, which realizes her capacity for con-

sciousness, is transplanted into a different human body that somehow developed with-

out a brain. Since Beth’s capacity for consciousness is essential to her, Beth switches

bodies. Now suppose the body-switch benefits Beth because her new body is superior

in ways conducive to her well-being. Moreover, suppose Beth’s life after the body-switch

is overall good. If human bodies are welfare subjects, then Beth’s new body, call it Body,

should also benefit. There should be two beneficiaries –Beth and Body. In that case,

Body’s benefit would be distinct from Beth’s. Their benefits might even be of different

sizes. (For example, Beth might benefit only marginally from the body-switch while

Body benefits greatly.) But it seems implausible that there are two beneficiaries here.

Surely, Beth is the only beneficiary of the body-switch.

If our identity is essentially tied to our capacity for consciousness, we should deny

that Body benefits from acquiring Beth’s brain. But then it seems we should also

deny that the anencephalic in Persson’s example (a human body) would benefit from

acquiring a brain.

We conclude that Persson’s argument that non-existence is worse for a merely possible

being than an existence in which things are overall intrinsically good for that being fails.

Is this bad news? Not if our obligations of beneficence to future generations in non-

identity cases can be explained by appealing to their existence being good or bad for

them. We can have a reason to create a person if her life would be good for her. We

needn’t assume that her existence would be better for her than her non-existence.

Persson is not convinced that appealing to what would be good or bad for a person

(as opposed to what would be better or worse for her) can justify creating or refraining

from creating a person. He provides both a specific argument and a general argument.

His specific argument is this. Suppose you can either create A with a good life or benefit

a different person, B, who would exist independently of your actions.

Then if you bring the being (A) into existence, you would have done what most

benefits the beings who morally count. But, on the other hand, if you do not

See e.g. Tim Campbell and Jeff McMahan, Animalism and the Varieties of Conjoined Twinning, in

Animalism: New Essays on Persons, Animals, and Identity, ed. Stephan Blatti and Paul Snowdon

(New York, 2016), pp. 229–52.

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bring this being into existence, you would also have done what most benefits the

beings (B) who morally count, since now the being (A) that you could have brought

into existence does not count morally because, being forever non-existent, it cannot

be said to have been harmed by being denied existence. Therefore, you do not have a

reason to bring a being into existence rather than not to bring it into existence if it

can be benefited only in a non-comparative sense because if you do not act on the

reason, it dissolves, and there is no reason to which you have acted contrary.

This is unconvincing. Persson assumes that defenders of a reason to create the non-

comparative benefit of a good life must be moral actualists –i.e. that they must say

that you have a reason to confer a non-comparative benefit only if the beneficiary actu-

ally exists (or will exist).

This view is vulnerable to Persson’s objection. But consider

the following non-actualist view: if an action would bring about an outcome in which

someone exists with a good life, then this fact provides a reason to perform the action. This

view avoids Persson’s objection, since on this view the existence of the reason does not

depend on who does or will exist. It is enough that the relevant counterfactual is true.

Persson’s general argument for there being no reason to benefit a being in a non-

comparative sense unless one thereby also benefits her in a comparative sense is as

follows:

To ascertain that an action would provide someone with a non-comparative bene-

fit is . . . not sufficient to show that –as far as this individual is concerned –there is

reason to perform the action. For it may be that the outcome of performing the

action is not better, all things considered for the individual, than the outcome

of not performing it because bestowing this benefit removes or prevents the

individual’s having or getting an even greater benefit. Thus, in order to determine

that –as far as this being is concerned –you have reason to perform the action,

you need to ascertain . . . that the action benefits the being in the comparative

sense.

We agree that there is no contrastive reason to give a person a non-comparative benefit

rather than do what results in her having an even greater benefit. However, this does not

show that there is no contrastive reason to give her a certain non-comparative benefit –a

pleasure, say –rather than do what results in her not having this benefit. Thus, we think,

Persson has not established that the only reason to create a being with a good life is that

existence with a good life is better for that being than non-existence. We can have a con-

trastive reason to create a person who will have a good life rather than do what results in

her not existing at all, and thus not having any non-comparative benefit.

We have scrutinized Persson’s argument for the claim that non-existence is worse for a

merely possible being than an existence in which things are overall good for that being.

Far from being ‘incontestable’the argument’s premises, as initially stated, are false, and

Persson, p. 59.

Throughout this section, when we refer to reasons, we mean non-instrumental reasons of beneficence,

i.e. those grounded in considerations of what would benefit individuals. According to Persson, such reasons

make up one important class of moral reasons (Persson, ch. 1).

Persson, p. 58 (italics added).

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the argument is invalid. We presented what we take to be the most promising recon-

struction of Persson’s argument. Although the reconstructed argument is valid, the

premises are highly contestable. They assume that there are merely possible beings

and that things can be better or worse for them. Persson’s argument for the existence

claim is unconvincing and his argument for the value claim is based on a questionable

analogy involving anencephalic infants. Finally, we showed that Persson is not justified

in his dismissal of the idea that we can explain our obligations to future generations by

appealing to facts about their existence being good or bad for them.

In sum, Persson has not made a convincing case for giving merely possible persons

membership in the moral club. They will have to look for a different guarantor.

Many thanks to Ingmar Persson for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Funding from

the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond and from the Swedish Research Council is gratefully acknowledged.

Cite this article: Bykvist K, Campbell T (2020). Persson’s Merely Possible Persons. Utilitas 32, 479–487.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820820000199

Utilitas 487

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Karl Ekendahl

Reply to Bykvist and Campbell on Possible Beings

Article

May 2021

Ingmar Persson

On the Value of Coming Into Existence

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2001

Nils Holtug

In this paper I argue that coming into existence can benefit (or harm) aperson. My argument incorporates the comparative claim that existence canbe better (or worse) for a person than never existing. Since these claimsare highly controversial, I consider and reject a number of objectionswhich threaten them. These objections raise various semantic, logical,metaphysical and value-theoretical issues. I then suggest that there is animportant sense in which it can harm (or benefit) a person not to comeinto existence. Again, I consider and reject some objections. Finally, Ibriefly consider what the conclusions reached in this paper imply for ourmoral obligations to possible future people.

The Benefit of Broad Horizons: Intellectual and Institutional Preconditions for a Global Social Science

Book

Oct 2010

Inclusive Ethics

Book

Feb 2017

Ingmar Persson

Well-Being and Death

Article

Jan 2015

Ben Bradley

This book addresses philosophical questions about death and well-being. It defends two main theses. The first is hedonism, or the view that pleasure is what has intrinsic value for us. The second is a difference-making principle about value, according to which (i) the value of an event for a person is determined by the difference it makes to the intrinsic value of that person's life, and (ii) the value of an event for someone at a time is determined by the difference it makes to how well-off the person is at that time. These views have the following implications: things that happen after someone has died cannot harm that person; death itself, however, is bad for people after they die (contrary to what Epicurus thought), by making its victim worse off at those later times; death is worse the earlier it occurs, so it is worse to die as an infant than as a young adult; death is bad for fetuses and animals in essentially the same way as it is for adult humans; the only sensible way to make death less bad is to live so long that no more of a good life is possible.

Modal Logic As Metaphysics

Article

Mar 2013

Timothy Williamson

Preface 1. Contingentism and Necessitism 2. The Barcan Formula and its Converse: Early Developments 3. Possible Worlds Model Theory 4. Predication and Modality 5. From First-Order to Higher-Order Modal Logic 6. Intensional Comprehension Principles and Metaphysics 7. Mappings between Contingentist and Necessitist Discourse 8. Consequences of necessitism Methodological Afterword Bibliography Index

Persons, Interests, and Justice

Book

Apr 2010

Nils Holtug

This is a book on welfare and its importance for distributive justice. Part I is concerned with prudence; more precisely, with what the necessary and sufficient conditions are for having a self-interest in a particular benefit. It includes discussions of the extent to which self-interest depends on preferences, personal identity, and what matters in survival. It also considers the issue of whether it can benefit (or harm) a person to come into existence and what the implications are for our theory of self-interest. A 'Prudential View' is defended, according to which a person has a present self-interest in a future benefit if and only if she stands in a relation of continuous physical realization of (appropriate) psychology to the beneficiary, where the strength of the self-interest depends both on the size of the benefit and on the strength of this relation. Part II concerns distributive justice and so how to distribute welfare or self-interest fulfilment over individuals. It includes discussions of welfarism, egalitarianism and prioritarianism, population ethics, the importance of personal identity and what matters for distributive justice, and the importance of all these issues for various topics in applied ethics, including the badness of death. Here, a version of prioritarianism is defended, according to which, roughly, the moral value of a benefit to an individual at one time depends on both the size of the benefit and on the individual's self-interest, at that time, in the other benefits that accrue to her at this and other times.

Zero-Value Physical Quantities

Article

Jun 1999

Yuri Balashov

To state an important fact about the photon, physicists use such expressions as (1) “the photon has zero (null, vanishing) mass” and (2) “the photon is (a) massless (particle)” interchangeably. Both (1) and (2) express the fact that the photon has no non-zero mass. However, statements (1) and (2) disagree about a further fact: (1) attributes to the photon the property of zero-masshood whereas (2) denies that the photon has any mass at all. But is there really a difference between saying that something has zero mass (charge, spin, etc.) and saying that it has no mass (charge, spin, etc.)? Does the distinction cut any physical or philosophical ice? I argue that the answer to these questions is yes. Put briefly, the claim of this paper is that some zero-value physical quantities are not mere “privations”, “absences” or “holes in being”. They are respectable properties in the same sense in which their non-zero partners are. This, I will show, has implications for the debate between two rival views of the nature of property, dispositionalism and categoricalism.

The Benefits of Coming Into Existence

Article

Jan 2007

Krister Bykvist

This paper argues that we can benefit or harm people by creating them, but only in the sense that we can create things that are good or bad for them. What we cannot do is to confer comparative benefits and harms to people by creating them or failing to create them. You are not better off (or worse off) created than you would have been had you not been created, for nothing has value for you if you do not exist, not even neutral value.

Being and Betterness

Article

Sep 2010
Utilitas

Jens Johansson

In this article I discuss the question of whether a person's existence can be better (or worse) for him than his non-existence. Recently, Nils Holtug and Melinda A. Roberts have defended an affirmative answer. These defenses, I shall argue, do not succeed. In different ways, Holtug and Roberts have got the metaphysics and axiology wrong. However, I also argue that a person's existence can after all be better (or worse) for him than his non-existence, though for reasons other than those provided by Holtug and Roberts.

Can it Ever Be Better Never to Have Existed At All? Person-Based Consequentialism and a New Repugnant Conclusion

Article

Feb 2003

Melinda A. Roberts

Broome and others have argued that it makes no sense, or at least that it cannot be true, to say that it is better for a given person that he or she exist than not. That argument can be understood to suggest that, likewise, it makes no sense, or at least that it cannot be true, to say that it is worse for a given person that he or she exist than that he or she never have existed at all. This argument is of critical importance to the question of whether consequentialist theory should take a traditional, aggregative form or a less conventional, person‐affecting, or person‐based, form. I believe that, potentially, the argument represents a far more serious threat to the person‐based approach than does, for example, Parfit's two medical programmes example. Parfit's example nicely illustrates the distinction between aggregative and person‐based approaches and raises important questions. But the example — though not, I think, by Parfit — is sometimes pressed into service as a full‐fledged counterexample against the person‐based approach. As such, I argue, the example is not persuasive. In contrast, the Broomeian argument, if correct, is definitive. For that argument relies on certain metaphysical assumptions and various uncontroversial normative claims — and hence nicely avoids putting into play the controversial normative claims that lie at the very heart of the debate. The purpose of the present paper, then, is to evaluate the Broomeian argument. I argue that this potentially definitive challenge to a person‐based approach does not in fact succeed.

Persson's Merely Possible Persons

Abstract

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