Philosophy
The Ethics of Procreation and the Non-Identity Problem
Quick fact
The non-identity problem, formulated by Derek Parfit, shows that many common objections to harmful but existence-granting actions fail because the person affected cannot complain about being harmed.
Why this is interesting
If a child is born with a disability solely because her parents waited, would it be wrong to bring her into existence? Since she wouldn't exist otherwise, can we say she was harmed?
Read the full explanation
Understanding The Ethics of Procreation and the Non-Identity Problem
Imagine two scenarios. In one, a woman conceives now, and the child is born healthy. In another, she waits six months due to medical advice, and the child is born with a disability. The second child is a different person—the exact combination of egg and sperm would have been different. The child cannot say, 'You harmed me,' because if you had done otherwise, she would never have existed. This is the non-identity problem: it challenges the idea that we can morally object to creating someone whose life is worth living, even if it involves a serious disadvantage, when the alternative would be non-existence.
A deeper explanation
The non-identity problem reveals a tension between two ethical intuitions: that we should benefit or avoid harming individuals, and that we should make the world better overall. In procreation, choices that lead to worse lives (but still worth living) for the people created do not harm those people in the traditional sense, because there is no alternative existence for them. This forces us to consider whether we have obligations to future people that are not 'person-affecting' but impersonal—obligations to bring about states of affairs with greater total well-being, even if no one is made worse off. The problem has profound implications for how we think about climate change, genetic engineering, and the ethics of bringing children into a world with limited resources.