To be (disadvantaged) or not to be? An egalitarian guide for creating new people

Shlomi Segall

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 2024, vol. 23, issue 2, 154-180

Abstract: Derek Parfit held that in evaluating the future, we should ignore the difference between necessary persons and merely possible persons. In this article, I look at one of the most prominent alternatives to Parfit's view, namely Michael Otsuka and Larry Temkin ‘shortfall complaints’ view. In that view, we aggregate future persons’ well-being and deduct intrapersonal shortfall complaints, giving extra weight to the complaints of necessary persons. I offer here a third view. I reject Parfit's no difference view in that I register a difference between necessary and possible persons. But I also reject the Shortfall View and replace its intra-personal complaints with an inter- personal complaints mechanism. I argue that the value of a population is its aggregate prioritarian value minus the egalitarian complaints that necessary persons hold. I show that the egalitarian view has all the explanatory power of the Shortfall view in easy cases, while significantly improving on it in three sorts of tough cases.

Keywords: egalitarianism; Michael Otsuka; population ethics; prioritarianism; shortfall complaints (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:pophec:v:23:y:2024:i:2:p:154-180

DOI: 10.1177/1470594X231189820

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