Child Versus Childmaker: Future Persons and Present Duties in Ethics and the LawChild Versus Childmaker investigates a "person-affecting" approach to ethical choice. A form of consequentialism, this approach is intended to capture the idea that agents ought both do the most good that they can and respect each person as distinct from each other. Focusing on cases in which a conflict of interest arises between "childmakers"-parents, infertility specialists, embryologists, and others engaged in the task of bringing new people into existence-and the children they aim to create, the author considers what we today owe those who will come into existence tomorrow. |
Contents
What Is the PersonAffecting Intuition? | xvii |
12 What Matters? | 1 |
13 What Else Matters? | 8 |
Existing People | 10 |
Merely Possible People | 11 |
162 A Weakly PersonAffecting View | 12 |
172 How Can We Have Obligations Toward People Who Do Not Yet Exist? | 13 |
173 How Do We Distinguish Between Future People and Other Possible People? | 15 |
39 A Deontic Solution to the Nonidentity Problem | 115 |
The Choice of the Lesser Child | 116 |
When Producing the Child Is Bad for Others | 117 |
3102 A PersonAffecting Account of Reproductive Tradeoffs | 119 |
311 The Repugnant Conclusion | 120 |
The Repugnant Version of the Repugnant Conclusion | 121 |
3113 The Difference between Personalism and Totalism | 124 |
3115 Feldmans Concept of Adjusted Utility | 125 |
175 Heyds Narrow PersonAffecting Approach | 16 |
18 Broomes Inconsistency Argument | 20 |
192 A PersonAffecting Reply to the Nonidentity Problem | 22 |
A Third Test Case? | 25 |
110 Wrongful Life | 27 |
111 Human Cloning and Other New Reproductive Technologies | 30 |
Notes | 34 |
Is the PersonAffecting Intuition Inconsistent? | 43 |
23 Broomes Formulation of the PersonAffecting Intuition | 46 |
24 Broomes Inconsistency Argument | 47 |
25 A Problem with Broomes Formulation of the PersonAffecting Intuition | 48 |
26 A PersonAffecting Sense of X Is at Least as Good as Y? | 50 |
27 Personal Wronging | 52 |
271 Failing to Maximize Is Sometimes But Not Always a Sufficient Condition for Personal Wronging | 53 |
272 Failing to Maximize as a Necessary Condition of Personal Wronging | 54 |
274 Theory of Fair Distribution | 55 |
275 Retribution and Equalization | 59 |
276 Summing Up Personalism | 60 |
28 Is Deprived Deprived in C? | 63 |
29 Two More Cases | 64 |
292 Infinite Populations | 68 |
210 Objections to Personalism | 69 |
2103 Does Personalism Violate the Independence Axiom? | 72 |
211 Pain and Sin | 76 |
The Nonidentity Problem | 85 |
312 Causing Pain and Creating Lives | 87 |
314 The Nonidentity Problem | 88 |
32 Three Nonidentity Cases | 89 |
322 The Slave Child Case | 90 |
323 The Pleasure Pill Case | 91 |
33 A PersonAffecting Account of the Nonidentity Cases | 92 |
332 An Equivocation | 94 |
Parfits Two Medical Programs Case | 96 |
34 A Counterfactual Interpretation of the Nonidentity Problem | 99 |
35 A Probabilistic Interpretation of the Nonidentity Problem | 101 |
36 Nonidentity Victims Fairness and Personal Wronging | 106 |
37 The Case of the FourteenYearOld Girl and the Problem of Future Mistakes | 108 |
38 A Totalist Solution to the Nonidentity Problem | 109 |
381 Same Number and Different Number Nonidentity Problems | 110 |
The Choice Not to Reproduce | 111 |
The Choice of the Lesser Child | 113 |
Notes | 127 |
Wrongful Life | 133 |
Common Ground | 135 |
422 The Requirement of a Discernible Effect | 136 |
43 What Is an Action for Wrongful Life? | 139 |
432 Examples of Wrongful Life Claims | 141 |
44 When Does Life Itself Constitute a Harm? | 143 |
442 The Value of Nonexistence | 146 |
443 The Value of a Flawed Existence | 148 |
444 The Comparison to Nonexistence Three Examples and One Problem | 149 |
45 A PersonAffecting Account of Wrongful Life | 152 |
46 The Problem of the Baseline and the Modal Test of Harm | 156 |
47 The Problem of Deflected IllBeing | 162 |
48 Logical Objections to Wrongful Life | 165 |
482 A Problem with Reference? | 167 |
Notes | 168 |
Human Cloning | 177 |
52 The Question of Harm to Children | 179 |
522 Robertsons Defense of the New Technologies | 181 |
53 Human Embryonic Cloning | 184 |
532 Robertsons Defense of Embryonic Cloning | 186 |
54 The Critique | 188 |
542 A PersonAffecting Statement of the Critique | 190 |
543 Benefits to Infertile Couples and the Question of Fairness | 193 |
55 Are Children Harmed by Cloning? | 196 |
552 The Issue of Psychosocial Distress | 197 |
553 The Control Issue or What Is Good for the Goose | 198 |
56 Human Somatic Cloning | 201 |
57 Cloning and the Constitution | 204 |
572 The Childs Right of Privacy and Equality | 205 |
573 Policy Implications | 207 |
58 Commercial Surrogacy and Other New Technologies | 208 |
Notes | 209 |
Conclusion | 215 |
Bibliography | 219 |
| 225 | |
| 229 | |
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Common terms and phrases
accessible world alternative argue avoid baby baseline better BPAR Broome Broome's brought into existence burying the glass Children of Choice consequentialist context counterfactual test couple defect defendant defendant's negligence donor insemination effect equality Ethics existence to begin expected well-being fact Feinberg flawed future person genetically identical individuals given Heyd Human Cloning infertility issue Kavka law of negligence least level of well-being matter maximized Mere Addition Paradox modal test moral never exists nonexistence nonidentity problem Paradox of Future parents Pareto-plus Parfit Partha Dasgupta perhaps person-affecting intuition person's well-being personal wronging plaintiff plausible pleasure pill Polly's principle procreative procreative liberty produce question reproductive technologies repugnant conclusion Robertson Robertson's defense s₁ seems slave child somatic cloning someone suffers suggests Suppose surrogacy test of harm thalidomide theory of fairness things tion totalist trade-off type 2-alt worse worth living wrong the child wrongful life claim