People Who Do Not Yet Exist

Decisions made today decide which people will be born. A different energy policy changes who meets whom, and so which children arrive. Derek Parfit asked a sharp question: if a policy leaves a worse world, but the people who live in it would not have existed under a better policy, have they been harmed?

This is called the non-identity problem. If they have lives worth living, they can say they gained from the choice, since without it they would not exist. Yet it still seems wrong to leave a poisoned world when a clean one was easily possible.

Philosophers answer in different ways: some say harm need not require a victim who is worse off than they would have been, and some focus on what we owe to humanity as a whole. Either way, “they would not exist anyway” is not a good excuse.

The waste site

A town council debates whether to bury waste near a river or to pay for a safe site. Burying is cheaper, and a councilor says, “Children born in a century will not exist without these jobs. They cannot complain.”

A resident replies that the children will still drink the river. They agree that being able to complain is not the test, and the council votes for the safe site, citing a duty to the town’s future inhabitants.

Try this today Name one choice you make that someone living in fifty years will inherit, and what you would leave.