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[Cross-posted on the parent blog]
So I've been talking a lot about the implications of the Non-Identity Problem
for the way we think about our obligations to future people, and I came
up with the idea that perhaps we want to talk about "costs" to future
people, as opposed to "harms," because the concept of harm doesn't seem
to apply. In my most recent post
on the subject, I created a thought experiment which (I hope)
demonstrated that costs can be imposed on people in spite of the fact
that these costs don't represent harms (I'll be referring to the
thought experiment in this post, so you might want to have read it
before continuing on here). I concluded that post wondering what
ethical significance we could attribute to these costs, since they
don't actually represent harms.
In an earlier post, I suggested that Sidney's de-pantsing couldn't possibly be a violation of any rights held by him:
...when
we talk about an infringement of rights, we compare a certain outcome
to a baseline. In a paradigm case, we might say that if I infringe your
right not to be robbed by robbing you, I "move you away" from the
baseline of you not being robbed, in the "direction" of you being
robbed. And if I infringe your right to inherit an unspoiled Earth, I
must be bringing it about that you do not inherit an unspoiled Earth.
And indeed I do. But I can't coherently say that I "move you away" from
a baseline of inheriting an unspoiled Earth. So instead I have to say
that I simply place you in a situation in which you are not on the
baseline.
Is this morally the same sort of thing? If the
critical element of a rights infringement is that I bring it about that
you aren't on the baseline, then my action might qualify as one. But we
have to acknowledge that your rights are not to "remaining on the
baseline" or "not being moved away from the baseline." They're purely
to "being on the baseline," even though you couldn't possibly have been
there. We would have to say that the "movement away" from the baseline
is not an essential part of the equation. But honestly, I think it is.
In
his boldly titled essay, "The Non-Identity Problem," James Woodward
disagrees. He discusses the choice of an energy policy which will cause
a nuclear catastrophe in the future, and writes, "...the sort of
analysis I have been exploring explains the wrongfulness of the choice
of the nuclear policy by focusing on the difference between the
situation of the nuclear people under the choice of the nuclear policy
(when they are killed, injured, etc.) and an (unattainable) baseline
situation in which the nuclear people exist and these violations of
their rights do not occur. This difference represents a loss which,
arguably, one can coherently think of as happening to the nuclear people."
It's
almost amusing how similar Woodward's point is to what I've been
saying. Really, there is only one major difference between our
thinking. Woodward thinks that these events which represent departures
from an abstract baseline represent violations of rights,
where I do not. Why does Woodward think that this is the case? He
writes, "Presumably what the nuclear people will complain about is the
fact that many of their number have been killed, injured, poisoned, and
so forth. Presumably they will not say, "We recognize that nothing
wrong has been done to us. What awakens our indignation is rather that
even better off people would have been produced if the alternative
energy policy had been chosen."" And I agree. Just as Sidney would
complain about having had his pants pulled down, and that the problem
with Vlad's actions seems to be tied to the costly event that Sidney
will be put through, it does seem that what's wrong with the nuclear
policy is that it brings it about that people are killed, injured,
poisoned, etc.
But remember that we have assumed as a
precondition that all of these people had lives that were worth living.
A reasonably strong case could seemingly be made that while these
people would complain about these things, and think that they were
wronged, their anger would be irrational. By saying that their rights
had been violated, they would need to say that their existence violated
their rights. And as long as they didn't wish that they had never been
born (or as long as it didn't actually "harm" them to be born), we
might say that their complaints represent a desire to have their cake
and eat it to. Accordingly, I find myself unconvinced by Woodward's
point.
It seems to me that a better place to start would be with
a statement like, "It is wrong to act in such a way that a person comes
into existence, upon whom the consequences of your actions will impose
costs, but who will not have been provided with proper compensation for
those costs." In my thought experiment, costs were imposed upon Sidney
by Vlad's actions, and he was not provided with any form of
compensation. In the same way, the nuclear people are not compensated
for the damage done to them by the nuclear catastrophe. Accordingly,
this principle would say that Vlad acted badly, and the policymakers
acted badly, which I think reflects our intuitions about the
situations. Further, it would capture an intuition, which Woodward and
I share, that if we provided proper compensation to future people for
costs our actions impose on them, then our overall actions would be
acceptable.
There's another important factor which is dealt with
by this principle, which was touched on by Steve Vanderheiden in his
essay, "Conservation, Foresight, and the Future Generations Problem."
Even if, as I have discussed, we think that Sidney and the nuclear
people do not have their rights violated by the actions of the people
in the past, we don't think that Sidney or the nuclear people would
look back on those actions with approval. We might imagine Sidney
saying, "Sure, I wouldn't trade the opportunity to live for not getting
my pants pulled down. But still, Vlad was wrong to launch the rocket;
he never should have done it. It's true that if he had acted rightly, I
wouldn't exist. But I can accept that without wishing that I had never
been born."
I think I'm happy with this, so I'll stop here.