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The Morality of Creating Lives Not Worth Living: On Boonin's Solution to the Non-Identity Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2022

Olle Risberg Open the ORCID record for Olle Risberg [Opens in a new window]
Olle Risberg*
Affiliation:
Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
*
olle.risberg@filosofi.uu.se
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Abstract

David Boonin argues that in a choice between creating a person whose life would be well worth living and creating a different person whose life would be significantly worse, but still worth living, each option is morally permissible. I show that Boonin's argument for this view problematically implies that in a choice between creating a person whose life would be well worth living and creating another person whose life would not be worth living, each option is also morally permissible.

Keywords

The non-identity problemHarmPopulation ethicsPerson-affecting views
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Utilitas , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , March 2023 , pp. 88 - 97
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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