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7 Rights, Interests, and Possible People
Derek Parfit
Do possible people have rights and interests? Professor Hare has argued that they do. I shall claim that, even if they don’t, we should often act as if they do.
We can start with future people. Suppose that the testing of a nuclear weapon would, through radiation, cause a number of deformities in the people who are born within the next ten years. This would be against the interests of these future people. These people will exist whether or not the weapon is tested, and, if it is, they will be affected for the worse – they will be worse off than they would otherwise have been. We can harm these people though they don’t live now, just as we can harm foreigners though they don’t live here.
What about possible people? The difference between these and future people can be defined as follows. Suppose that we must act in one of two ways. “Future people” are the people who will exist whichever way we act. “Possible people” are the people who will exist if we act in one way, but who won’t exist if we act in the other way. To give the simplest case: if we are wondering whether to have children, the children that we could have are possible people.
Do they have rights and interests? Suppose, first, that we decide to have these children. Can this affect their interests? We can obviously rephrase this question so that it no longer asks about possible people. We can ask: can it be in, or be against, an actual person’s interests to have been conceived? I shall return to this.
Suppose, next, that we decide not to have children. Then these possible people never get conceived. Can this affect their interests? Can it, for instance, harm these children?
The normal answer would be “No.” Professor Hare takes a different view. We can simplify the example he discussed. We suppose that a child is born with some serious disability or abnormality, which is incurable, and would probably make the child’s life, though still worth living, less so than a normal life. We next suppose that unless we perform some operation the child will die; and that, if it does, the parents will have another normal child, whom they wouldn’t have if this child lives. The question is, should we operate?
Hare suggests that we should not. He first assumes that we ought to do what is in the best interests of all the people concerned. He then claims that among these people is “the next child in the queue” – the normal child whom the parents would later have only if the disabled child dies. The interests of this possible child may, he thinks, “tip the balance.” The possible child, unlike the actual child, “has a high prospect of a normal and happy life”; Hare would therefore claim that we do less harm to the actual child by failing to save his life than we do to the possible child “by stopping him from being conceived and born.”
In this particular case, many would agree with Hare that we shouldn’t operate, but for different reasons. They may think that a new‐born child is not yet a full person, with rights and interests;1 or they may doubt whether life with a serious disability would be worth living.
The implications of Hare’s view can be better seen in another case. Take a couple who – we assume – live in an age before the world was over‐populated, and who are wondering whether to have children. Suppose next that, if they do, their children’s lives would probably be well worth living. Then, on Hare’s view, if the couple choose not to have these children they would be doing them serious harm. Since there is no over‐population, it would seem to follow that their choice is morally wrong. Most of us, I think, would deny this. We believe that there can be nothing wrong in deciding to remain childless. And if we also ask what Hare would count as over‐population, his conclusion would again be widely disputed. This is another subject to which I shall return.
What I have called “Hare’s view” is that we can harm people by preventing their conception. There are precedents for this view. The Talmud says that when Amram decided not to beget children, he was admonished for denying them the World to Come.2 But, as Hare admits, his view is unusual. He would argue that it can be justified by an appeal to the logic of moral reasoning.3 I shall not discuss whether this is so; but instead take a complementary path. I shall assume that we cannot harm those we don’t conceive. Even so, I shall argue, it is hard to avoid Hare’s conclusions.
The principle with which Hare works is that we should do what is in the best interests of those concerned. Most of us accept some principle of this kind. We may believe that other principles are often more important; but we accept, as one of our principles, something to do with interests, with preferences, or with happiness and misery. As this list suggests, such a principle can take different forms. We need only look at a single difference. The principle can take what I call an “impersonal” form: for example, it can run
1 We should do what most reduces misery and increases happiness.
It can instead take a “person‐affecting” form: for example
1 We should do what harms people the least and benefits them most.
When we can only affect actual people, those who do or will exist, the difference between these forms of the principle makes, in practice, no difference. But when we can affect who exists, it can make a great difference.
Return, for instance, to the childless couple in the uncrowded world. According to principle (1) – the “impersonal” principle – they should do what most increases happiness. One of the most effective ways of increasing the quality of happiness is to increase the number of happy people. So the couple ought to have children; their failure to do so is, according to (1), morally wrong.
Most of us would say: “This just shows the absurdity of the impersonal principle. What we ought to do is make people happy, not make happy people. The right principle is (2), the ‘person‐affecting’ principle. If the couple don’t have children, there is no‐one whom they’ve harmed, or failed to benefit. That is why they have done nothing wrong.”
This reply involves the rejection of Hare’s view. It assumes that we cannot harm people by preventing their conception. If we can, the childless couple would be