PHILOSOPHY - Ethics: The Nonidentity Problem [HD]

Hi. My name is Molly gardener and I am a

research assistant professor in the

philosophy department at the University

of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In this

video I will introduce you to the

non-identity problem. To understand the

problem, let's begin with a thought

experiment. Suppose that there are two

women, Alice and Barbara, who want their

children to have poor health. This is, of

course, a strange thing to want. But

suppose that they believe that if they

have sick children they will get more

attention from their friends and family.

Now suppose that to get what she wants

Alice takes a particular drug during her

pregnancy. The drug causes her child, whom

she name's Alex, to experience poor

health for his entire life. Nevertheless,

his life on the whole is worth living.

Meanwhile, Barbara uses in vitro

fertilization and screens the embryos

for a gene that causes poor health. When

she finds an embryo with that gene she

implants it. The selected embryo becomes

a child named Billie. Billie experiences

the same degree of hardship and

suffering that Alex experiences, however

like Alex Billie has a life worth living.

Many people think that Alice and Barbara

have both wronged their children. The way

in which Alice wronged Alex is pretty

straightforward. By taking the drug

during her pregnancy she harmed her

child. Since Barbara performed an action

that had similarly bad consequences for

Billie, it might be tempting to think

that Barbara also harmed her child.

Nevertheless, there is an important

difference between Alice's action and

Barbara's action. The difference is that

although Alex would still have existed

had his mother not taken the drug,

Billie is non identical to anyone who

would have existed had his mother not

selected for poor health. After all, if

Barbara had not selected for poor health

then either she would have not had a

child at all or else she would have

brought some other child into existence

instead of Billie. Many philosophers

appeal to a plausible theory of harming

in order to argue that this difference

in what would have

makes a moral difference. According

to their theory of harming, an action

harms you only if it makes you worse off

in at least some respects than you

would have been had the action not been

performed. Alice's action satisfies this

condition. Alex is worse off in many

respects than he would have been had

Alice not taken the drug. He has to go to

the hospital more often,

he misses more school and social events,

and he feels more pain and discomfort

than he otherwise would have.

However, Barbara's action does not

satisfy this condition. Even though

Billy's life is also full of trips to

the hospital, missed school days,
pain, and

discomfort, it is still worth living. The

alternative for Billy is non-existence.

And a life worth living does not seem to

be worse in any respect than no life at

all. If so, then when she selected for

poor health, Barbara did not harm Billy.

But, if Barbara's action did not harm

Billy, then we seem to be at a loss to

justify the intuition that, in much the

same way that Alice wronged Alex,

Barbara wronged Billy. Billy situation is

thus a non-identity case. It is a case in

which an individual appears to be

wronged by an action that is the

condition of his own worthwhile

existence. The problem of either

justifying the appearance that the

individual was wronged or explaining it

away is the non-identity problem. We can

make the problem clearer by formulating

it as a set of inconsistent claims: One,

Barbara wronged Billy. Two, the way she

wronged him was by harming him. Three the

only way she could have harmed him is by

making him worse off than he otherwise

would have been. Four, Barbara
did not make

Billy worse off than he otherwise would

have been. When I say these claims are

inconsistent, I mean that they can't all

be true together. If you pick any three

of the claims their conjunction will

logically entail that the fourth claim

is false. To solve the non-identity

problem we have to reject at least one

of the claims. We also need to identify

the flaw in the reasoning or the

intuition that originally seemed to

support whatever claim we choose to

reject. Notice that whatever

solution we opted for will have

wide-ranging implications for a number

of other issues. One issue is

reproductive rights. Although few

parents want to select for poor health,

some parents might want to use new

reproductive technologies to select for

conditions that other people associate

with poor health, unhappiness, or other

bad consequences. Opponents of

reproductive autonomy in these kinds of

cases will need to grapple with the

non-identity problem. Another issue is

genetic engineering. Although scientists

haven't yet produced any genetically

engineered humans, they have produced

plenty of genetically engineered animals.

The non-identity problem raises the

question of whether we are wronging such

animals by bringing them into existence.

A third issue is the environment. To see

why the non-identity problem is

particularly important here, consider

another thought experiment. Suppose that

we as a community must decide between

two policies, One policy involves

polluting the environment and the other

involves protecting it. If we opt for

polluting the environment then the air

and water quality will be much worse in

200 years than it would have been had we

chosen the other policy. However the

polluting policy will also have other

consequences. The economy will be

different and different people
will take

different jobs, different couples will

fall in love and have children. If

different couples have children then

different people will be born in 200

years. We might think that no one will

exist in the polluted community who

would have existed had we not polluted.

Suppose the people who do exist 200

years from now, in the polluted community,

suffer from health problems related to

the air and water quality.

Maybe they develop asthma, heart disease,

or cancer. Even so, the non-identity

problem makes it difficult to justify

the intuition that when we choose to

pollute the environment we wronged them.

After all,

they are no worse off than they would

have been have we decided to protect the

environment, for if we had decided to

protect the environment those people

would not have existed at all. And, for

those future people, a life with asthma

heart disease or cancer, if it is still

worth living, is not worse than having no

life at all. Thus, if we think we ought to

worry about climate change, nuclear waste,

or environmental degradation for the

sake of future generations, then we will

need to find some kind of solution to

the non-identity problem. In the next

video I will discuss some of the

solutions that have been proposed. Thank

you for listening.