NOTE-1318: Population and Having Children Now

Contribution

Narveson returns to the population question fifty years after “Utilitarianism and New Generations”, now as a non-utilitarian. He keeps his original “insight”, that bringing someone into existence confers nothing on them, and draws a new line around it. Creating happy people is good, but nobody is owed it. Morality’s enforceable part protects actual people only. Procreation is then the parents’ own business, limited by harm to others and by their ability to bear the costs.

Key insight

Value and obligation come apart. “The existence of people leading good lives is (normally) a good thing” (p. 50), but not because of what it does for them: “there is no person upon whom life is conferred when we have children” (p. 50). Duties are “always and by definition” to people (p. 50), and only actual people can be harmed. So the good of future lives gives reasons that may be praised but not enforced.

Assumptions

• A comparative account of harm and benefit. “A is better or worse off at t2 than A at t1. But if there is no person at t1, we have lost our comparator” (p. 53).
• All duties are to persons. Obligations regarding anything else are indirect (p. 50).
• Two departments of morality (pp. 54–55). Directives that may be enforced by punishment, and directives “reinforceable” by praise and blame. Only harm to others licenses the first.
• Contractarian background. Morality as directives issued by “everybody”, ideally unanimously (p. 54); dealings with others “by negotiation, with a view to advancing mutual interests” (p. 57). The foundations are deferred to his This is Ethical Theory (2009, n. 4).
• Persons begin late. He sets abortion aside and dates a person’s emergence somewhere between conception and late gestation (pp. 50, 53).

Key results

• The original theme (p. 49). His 1967 point “was that utilitarianism did not commit one to making happy people, but only to making people happy”, and “something like that” ran through the 1973 and 1978 papers. He has since “abandoned my original proclivity toward utilitarianism”.
• No conferring (pp. 49–50). “There isn’t any ‘one’ upon which to confer ‘life’”. Before birth the only candidate is “a bit of germ plasm”, to which no one has duties.
• But good lives are good (pp. 50–51). Asked whether a child’s being happy is a good reason to have it: “Contrary, perhaps, to what I have been (perhaps mis)understood to say in those earlier papers, the correct answer is: of course!” (p. 50). Such a life is good to its possessor, usually a benefit to its parents, and usually a “public” good.
• Why it matters to us (p. 51). “There are just two sorts of answers.” (1) To parents or “simply benevolent persons” good lives “‘just do’ matter”. (2) “Much more importantly”, more good people benefit others in their social environment.
• Against Benatar (p. 52). Coming into existence exposes one to harms, but bringing someone into existence is not harming them in the morally wrong sense, and goods can outweigh harms, as a dentist’s pain is outweighed.
• Not aiding is not harming (p. 53). People may have children so long as they impose no significant costs on others. That they could instead have helped the suffering does not make having children a harm. This is “an outright rejection of utilitarianism, and certainly of ‘prioritarianism’”. He then qualifies it: it may not entail such a rejection “unless those views are interpreted in a certain way” (p. 54), which the two departments of morality are meant to show.
• Costs fall on parents (p. 54). A child costly to raise is the parents’ charge; if they cannot internalize the cost they acted wrongly or irresponsibly.
• When others may interfere (p. 55). Only if having or not having children “would work ill for some persons. Not, however, for some fancied future possible persons, but for actual persons, alive, breathing, and acting now (or at any rate in their lifetimes.)” Note 2 (p. 53) allows that “some of those persons are in the future”.
• Why people have children (p. 55). Their parents want grandchildren; they love children; “we want to continue our particular DNA type”; old age support; failed contraception; the community needs people of their kind. “Our values are what move us to do what we do—not the values of … other persons, future or present” (p. 56).
• Resources (pp. 56–59).
  • Resources “are not fixed: they are created, by us”, and more people make more (p. 58). Malthusian scarcity “simply isn’t on any more” (p. 57).
  • Climate: serious perils, if any, are decades off; current abatement is “fabulously inefficient”; “What’s our hurry?” (p. 58).
  • Ontario’s wind and solar more than doubled consumer electricity prices with little or no CO2 gain; wind blows usefully “about 26% of the time” (n. 8, p. 59). No data are given beyond cited books.
• Possible people owed nothing (pp. 59–60). Even if one’s child would keep “some identifiable future person” from existing or from being as happy, the present person keeps the right, because that future person “doesn’t exist”. With a scarce medicine and two births, the one born first has the prior claim.
• No bargain (p. 60). A bargain obliging us to have fewer children for future generations’ sake is possible, but “why would present persons really desirous of having families engage in any such bargain?” “A supposedly philosophical interest in the welfare of future generations evaporates in the face of reality.”

Claims

id	claim	strength	support
C1	Bringing a person into existence neither benefits nor harms them, since there is no prior person to compare	moderate: follows from a comparative account of harm, which is assumed, not defended	pp. 49–50, 53
C2	The existence of people with good lives is normally good, and a reason to create them	weak: asserted as obvious	pp. 50–51
C3	Coercion over procreation is justified only by harm to actual persons, never to merely possible ones	moderate: follows from C1 and the two departments of morality; the scope of “actual” is left unclear	pp. 54–55, 59–60
C4	Having children rather than aiding the poor does not harm them, because not benefiting is not harming	moderate: the standard doing/allowing distinction, stated	p. 53
C5	Benatar’s case fails because a life’s goods can outweigh its harms	weak: one paragraph, against a summary of Benatar	p. 52
C6	There is no general conflict over resources between present and future people	weak: popular books and one regional example; the climate claims rest on contested sources	pp. 56–59

Concepts

• conferring life: the idea, rejected, that creating a person gives something to someone.
• enforceable versus reinforceable directives: morality backed by punishment versus morality backed by praise and blame.
• actual versus possible persons: those who exist now “or at any rate in their lifetimes”, against “fancied future possible persons”.
• internalizing costs: the parents bear what their child costs.

Connections

• Narveson 1973 (LIT-1769), unread. Named as continuing the 1967 theme and listed with its reprint in Bayles (1976). Not restated. The 2017 paper suggests the earlier papers were read as denying that happy lives are a reason to create them, and says that was perhaps a misreading.
• Caviola et al. (NOTE-1267). They test the 1973 slogan and find lay judgement counts adding a happy person as good. Their note observes that this counts against neutrality about value, not against a person-affecting view of obligation. Narveson 2017 holds exactly the second without the first.
• Meyer, SEP (NOTE-1304). Meyer traces the procreation asymmetry to Narveson 1967 and 1973 and keeps its half that gives no reason to create the happy. Narveson 2017 now gives such a reason, though not a duty. On the other half he allows exceptions, “when foreseeably a baby would be born with some horrible disease” (p. 52), “the case is different”, but he does not say why.
• Parfit (LIT-1768), unread. Named as the occasion for returning to the subject (p. 49), and his repugnant conclusion is used as a scene (p. 56), but the non-identity problem is not engaged.
• Gardiner (LIT-1681), unread. Narveson grants the structure Gardiner calls a storm: the present will not bargain with the future, and “each person does his or her best to promote her interests, letting the chips fall where they may—and rightly so” (p. 60). He reads it as permission, not as a problem.
• Scheffler (NOTE-1298). Both put the value of future lives in the living’s attitudes. Scheffler finds a deep dependence on humanity going on; Narveson finds parents’ and the benevolent’s liking, and benefit to others.

Bearing on the record

• QUESTION-299. These are inferences; Narveson does not frame his view by the question’s grounds.
  • The person-affecting ground, in its founder’s late version, does not deny that future good lives matter. It denies they are owed. What is owed is non-harm to actual people, and the future enters only as people who will be actual “in their lifetimes”.
  • Why future lives matter is given entirely through the living: the liking of parents and the benevolent, and the benefit to others. That moves him from the “good of future people” ground to the question’s third, “what the living value”, with a harm constraint added.
  • He has no answer, and wants none, for the far future: a world without those people wrongs no one.
• The owner’s thesis (CLAIM-491). Narveson says that “our values are what move us” (p. 56) and that interest in future generations’ welfare “evaporates” against a person’s wish for a child (p. 60). That fits the thesis’s prediction that concern stops where the self’s stake stops. But it is the trivial reading CLAIM-492 warns of: every motive is the agent’s own value, which does not make it self-interested. His list of reasons to have children includes one that is extension of the self in the thesis’s sense, continuing “our particular DNA type” (p. 55), beside others that are not. He gives no evidence on motive. No dated note on the claim; the point belongs to the question (section 4).
• The triviality objection (CLAIM-492). An example of the objection’s target, not a test of it.
• No THEORY filed.
• No ML instruction.

Limitations

• Not the 1973 paper. What “Moral Problems of Population” argued is still unread; this paper summarizes the earlier work in one sentence.
• Polemical in its second half. The empirical claims on resources, climate and Ontario’s electricity rest on popular books (Ridley, Bailey, Moran, Etherington) and are not argued. He recommends reading Nuccitelli alongside Moran (n. 7).
• The scope of “actual persons” is unclear. The text limits it to those “alive, breathing, and acting now (or at any rate in their lifetimes)” (p. 55) and “currently known persons” (p. 60). Note 2 (p. 53) allows future persons. Which future persons count is not said.
• Non-identity is named, not answered.
• Typos.
  • “Might this be on argued the ground” (p. 52).
  • “Daniel Benatar” for David Benatar (n. 6, p. 57).
  • “Erlich” in the references (p. 60), “Ehrlich” in n. 1 (p. 52).
  • “CO2 admissions” for emissions (n. 8, p. 59); “these who supply” for those (p. 59).
  • A stray parenthesis: “(see Nuccitelli, 2015, pp155-6) for perhaps the most extreme current view)” (p. 58).
  • “St, Martin’s Press” and “l973”, “l976”, “l978” with a letter l (pp. 60–61).

Open questions

• Did the 1973 paper deny that happy lives give a reason to create them, or only that utilitarianism requires creating them? Only the 1973 text can settle Narveson’s “(perhaps mis)understood”.
• Does a person-affecting view of obligation, joined to an impersonal view of value, have anything to say about extinction? Narveson’s does not.