Contingent Future Persons: On the Ethics of Deciding Who Will Live, or Not, in the Future

218 Pages·1997·13.38 MB·English

by  Nick Fotion (auth.), Nick Fotion, Jan C. Heller (eds.)

CONTINGENT FUTURE PERSONS
Theology a nd Medicine
VOLUME 8
Managing Editor
Earl E. Shelp, The Foundation/or I nterfaith R esearch & Ministry, Houston, Texas
Editorial B oard
James F. Childress, Department 0 / Religious Studies, U niversity o/Virginia, Charlottesville,
Virginia
Margaret A. Farley, The Divinity S chool, Yale University, New H aven, Connecticut
Ronald M. Green, Department 0/ Religion, D artmouth College, Hanover, New H ampshire
Stanley Hauerwas, The Divinity S chool, Duke U niversity, Durham, North Carolina
Richard A. McConnick, S.1., Department o /Theology, University o /Notre D ame,
Notre Dame, I ndiana
Wayne Proudfoot, Department o /Religion, C olumbia University, New Y ork
CONTINGENT
FUT URE PERSONS
On the Ethics of Deciding Who Will Live,
Of Not, in the Future
Editedby
NICKFOTION
Department ofP hilosophy, Emory University,
Atlanta, Georgia, U.SA.
and
JAN C. HELLER
Center for Ethics in Health Care, Saint Joseph' s Health System,
Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A .
....
SPRINGER SCIENCE"+BUSI NESS MEDIA, B.V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-94-010-6345-6 ISBN 978-94-011-5566-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-5566-3
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1997
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1997
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
JAN C. HELLER / Preface Vll
NICK FOTION / Introduction
R. M. HARE / When Does Potentiality Count? A Comment on
Lockwood 9
MICHAEL LOCKWOOD / Hare on Potentiality: A Rejoinder 19
CYNTHIA B. COHEN / The Morality of Knowingly Conceiving
Children with Serious Conditions: An Expanded "Wrongful
Life" Standard 27
INGMAR PERSSON / Person-Affecting Principles and Beyond 41
DAVID HEYD / Divine Creation and Human Procreation:
Reflections on Genesis in the Light of Genesis 57
JAN C. HELLER / Deciding the Timing of Children: An Ethical
Challenge Only Indirectly Addressed by the Christian
Tradition 71
NICK FOTION / Repugnant Thoughts about the Repugnant
Conclusion Argument 85
CLARK WOLF / Person-Affecting Utilitarianism and Population
Policy; Or, Sissy Jupe's Theory of Social Choice 99
AVNER de-SHALIT / Down to Earth Environmentalism:
Sustainability and Future Persons 123
LUKAS H. MEYER / More Than They Have a Right to: Future
People and Our Future Oriented Projects 137
ROBERT ELLIOT / Contingency, Community and
Intergenerational Justice 157
CAROL A. TAUER / Bringing Embryos into Existence for
Research Purposes 171
WILLIAM P. GEORGE / Anticipating Posterity: A Lonerganian
Approach to the Problem of Contingent Future Persons 191
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 209
INDEX 211
JAN C. HELLER
PREFACE
How ought we evaluate the individual and collective actions on which the existence,
numbers and identities of future people depend? In the briefest of terms, this
question poses what is addressed here as the problem of contingent future persons,
and as such it poses relatively novel challenges for philosophical and theological
ethicists. For though it may be counter-intuitive, it seems that those contingent
future persons who are actually brought into existence by such actions cannot
benefit from or be harmed by these actions in any conventional sense of the terms.
This intriguing problem was defined almost three decades ago by Jan Narveson
[2], and to date its implications have been explored most exhaustively by Derek
Parfit [3] and David Heyd [1]. Nevertheless, as yet there is simply no consensus on
how we ought to evaluate such actions or, indeed, on whether we can. Still, the
pursuit of a solution to the problem has been interestingly employed by moral
philosophers to press the limits of ethics and to urge a reconsideration of the nature
and source of value at its most fundamental level. It i s thus proving to be a very
fruitful investigation, with far-reaching theoretical and practical implications.
To date, however, almost no theological ethicists or moral theologians have
taken up the challenges of the problem of contingent future persons. It s hould thus
come as no surprise that most of the contributors to a volume in the Theology and
Medicine series are philosophers. One purpose of this volume, then, is to introduce
the problem to theologically interested readers. A second is to advance the
investigation of the problem itself, both philosophically and theologically. We will
judge the volume a success to the extent that it fulfills these two purposes.
From the start, this volume has been a collaborative effort. For their work and
scholarship, we gratefully acknowledge the contributors to the volume. We also
thank the General Editor of the Theology and Medicine series, Earl E. Shelp, for his
generous support. And last we want to thank our secretaries, Mrs. Pat Redford, in
the Department of Philosophy at Emory University, and Ms. Joan Frost, at Saint
Joseph's Health System, for their good-humored help and efficiency.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Heyd, D.: 1992, Genethies: Moral i ssues i n the Creation of People, University of California Press,
Berkeley, CA.
2. Narveson, J.: 1967, "Utilitarianism and New Generations," 1\,find 76, pr. 62-72.
3. Parfit, D.: 1984, Reasons a nd P ersons, Clarendon Press. Oxford.
VII
NICK FOTION
INTRODUCTION
This volume raises and discusses a variety of questions about future persons from a
variety of viewpoints. The overarching question discussed is: What is the ethical
relationship between future persons and those of us who are here now? Many
thinkers express this relationship in terms of rights. Do some or all future persons
have certain rights charged against us? Do these future persons, for example, have
rights pertaining to the environment such that we must act now t o protect it for them
then? Do they have a right to be created? More than that, do they have a right to be
created in a condition of good health and, even beyond that, a right to be created in a
better condition than we had when we were born? And just how strong are these
rights? Are these rights absolute (with no exceptions), almost absolute or merely
ones that can be rebutted with any number of good reasons?
Many other thinkers express the relationship between us and future generations
in terms of duties. These people ask: Do we have duties to care for the environment
for the benefit of future persons and perhaps even for the benefit of the various
animals and plants found on our planet? Do we have duties to procreate, and to
procreate in such a way that future persons are healthy? If indeed we do have such
duties, what about their strength? Are they so strong as to require us to make
immense sacrifices for future people? Or are these duties rather weak so we are only
required to be somewhat sensitive to the needs of these people?
Let us assume for the moment that we have duties of some sort to future people.
This is an assumption we might very well accept, especially when we focus on our
relationships to those who will be born within our family and ethnic group. We
think that we need to do whatever we can so that they will be able to live a good life
as we would have liked to have had, and perhaps have had. Initially, doing these
things seems perfectly correct and unproblematic. But a problem faces us almost
immediately when we realize that future people do not represent just one, two or
three generations the way we do; but an indefinite number. There are the future
people who will appear on earth within the next few years, within fifty, one
hundred, one-hundred and fifty years, two hundred years and so on. If we have
duties to each of these groups of future people, it would seem as if we would have to
undergo process of discounting ourselves. It is a bit like a couple with a dozen
children. Duties toward making each child happy keeps them from doing things for
themselves, especially if the family's financial resources are severely limited.
Would, then, having duties to all those future people mean that we must make
sacrifices for their benefit; sacrifices, some would say, so onerous as to be
counterintuitive?
2 NICK FOTION
Perhaps we need not make quite so many sacrifices. Maybe we don't have to cut
the human population level back from over five billion (what it is now) to below
one billion; and don't have to cut our energy consumption back to one fifth of what
it is now. Instead of discounting ourselves, maybe we should discount future people.
Even if we continue to insist that we have duties to them (and/or that these future
people have rights), those duties might be less because we don't know how many of
them there will be, what they will be like, what their needs and wants will be, what
technologies will be available to make them have good or bad lives and, overlapping
all these reasons, can't predict distant future events with any precision. So, even
though we may have duties to future people, these duties may be less than those we
have to ourselves for a variety or combination of reasons. But how much less? Just
how much discounting should we do? These are not easy questions to answer.
The discounting problem is only the beginning. Other problems press upon us
once we begin thinking about future people. Unfortunately, there is no obvious way
to package them, largely because they overlap so much. Perhaps the best way is to
follow David Heyd ([I] pp. 95-96). He clusters these problems under the headings
of existence, number and identity (or quality).
Problems of existence have to do with whether we have duties to create the next
generation and the one following that. Did Mary's parents have a duty to create her
or, putting it another way, did she have a right to be created? Does it even make
sense to talk about duties and rights here since Mary's parents had no idea that they
were creating her, as against some other child? After all, had they delayed their
sexual encounter for even a few minutes, a totally different child would likely have
been created.
Even if Mary's parents had no duty to create her, and Mary no right to be
created, did her parents have a duty to create some child or other? But even if they
had such a duty, is this duty to the future child itself or to the society? Many argue
that we have duties to reproduce since humanity, and the ethnic and/or racial group
we belong to, need to replenish themselves. It m ight even be argued that the parents
have duties to themselves. Beyond that, however, does it make sense to say we have
a duty to some indefinite future child as well, where, in effect, we are directly
concerned with the benefit of this yet to be conceived creature?
Or is there no duty here at all? Perhaps having or not having a child is not a
matter of duty (or some right), but something personal. Beyond just wanting the
pleasures associated with sex, many people desire offspring. They want children
because they enjoy them and, perhaps, because they see these creatures as ways to
be immortalized through their genes. Whatever the reason(s), it can be and has been
argued that ethics plays no role in driving the creation of babies.
Even if individuals, and individual couples, have no duty to future persons to
create them, perhaps the society has such a duty. So perhaps the society has a duty
to encourage many but not necessarily all of its members to bring future people into
existence. If it does, it might carry out its duty by employing tax policies favoring
families laden with children, giving families direct subsidies, giving mothers-to-be
and the resulting children free medical care, praising and honoring mothers who
INTRODUCTION 3
have many children and so on. But, again, the question is: Is it just so much rhetoric
to say we have duties owed to future people? Are these duties really owed to these
people (even before they are conceived), or is the society's replenishment policy
driving the process? Or is it both?
Problems dealing with number, Heyd's second heading, have to do with just how
many humans we should create. Is it better to create more people, even if the life
they lead isn't too good, simply because we do more overall good by having many
people around? Might not the total good be greater with many people living a life
barely above the level of a worthwhile life, than to have fewer people on the planet
with most of them living a very good life? Derek Parfit calls this the Repugnant
Conclusion because he and many others find it repugnant to suppose that the former
kind of life on earth is better than the latter ([3] pp. 388-389). More generally,
number problems when dealing with future people have to do with just how many
humans can live optimally on this planet (or elsewhere). These problems also raise
questions about an optimal life for non-human animals. How many of these
creatures can live on this planet while we, at the same time, continue to reproduce to
the point where there are not just six billion of us here but, perhaps, ten, fifteen or
more? Do more of us necessarily mean that there will be fewer non-human animals
on this planet? Or can, at least to some extent, technology allow us to multiply
without harming them too severely?
Problems of identity (quality), falling under Heyd's third heading, are
intertwined with those of existence and quantity. If we have duties to create future
persons in whatever numbers, do we have duties as well to create them in a healthy
and happy state? It w ould seem so. Yet what if parents create a child who they know
will be genetically deformed? From the point of view of the child, it might well wish
to live with the deformity if the only choice its parents had was to create it with its
deformity or create a totally different child. They could have chosen the latter option
simply by waiting to reproduce at a time when, let us say, the mother was no longer
ill and thus could create a normal child. Isn't it true that what is good for the
deformed child is that it be conceived with its deformity rather than not be
conceived? Putting it differently, that child could not be harmed by its parents
insofar as it is born deformed because it could never be normal. Harm, as we usually
speak of it, compares a normal state of a person to a later inferior state. To harm
someone is to degrade his or her status. But the deformed child is not harmed in this
way when it is allowed to be conceived. Rather it is given life.
There are other quality of life problems in dealing with future people. Because
we have so little control over what happens in the future, it could be argued that our
duties to these people do not extend to bringing about good lives for them. Rather,
those duties merely demand that we place them in an environment that guarantees
them a minimal life. The rest is up to them. Is that the extent of our duties, or do our
duties demand more from us?
The articles that follow deal with most of these problems and a few more. The
first and second articles, by R. M. Hare and Michael Lockwood respectively, focus
on when potentiality counts, that is, at what point can we start counting the interests
4 NICK FOTION
of a person. These articles deal with a variation of the existence problem. Hare
argues that we can start counting even before conception. We can do so not because
gametes, embryos and even fetuses have interests as such. Rather possible and
actual people have interests in a developed state. Among the interests they have is
that their gametes, embryo and fetus be treated properly. Thus a healthy and happy
Harriet benefited from the fact that her mother helped conceive her and that, later,
she did not abort her. Within limits, an early or late abortion, for Hare, would have
been equally harmful to Harriet. Time, as such, is not important. Hare would add
that what is good for Harriet is equally good for others who are similarly situated,
even if those others, like Harry, were aborted. It w ould have been equally good for
Harry to have developed into an adult and to have lived a healthy and happy life like
Harriet.
Michael Lockwood is in deep disagreement with Hare. Whereas Hare talks about
the (actual) interests of possible people, some of whom might never exist,
Lockwood does not. Instead he talks about possible people having only possible (not
real) interests. Not having real interests, it makes no sense for Lockwood to say that
we can harm or benefit possible people. Thus we have no duty to create Andrew
who exists not even as a glimmer in his father's eye. In contrast, Hare would say we
do have a duty to create some as yet to be specified possible person (whom we will
call Andrew or Andrea) if we can reasonably expect that the child born will have a
good life. For Lockwood creating children is not a duty-bound activity but is, as he
says, supererogatory.
(These two articles in this volume are the only ones not directly commissioned
for it. They first appeared in Bioethics in 1988. Hare's article is in response to
another Lockwood article [2]. We did not feel it was necessary to reprint that article
as well, since the relevant issues for this volume discussed in that earlier article are
amply discussed by Hare and by Lockwood himself in the articles reproduced here.)
Our third article, by Cynthia Cohen, does not address the question: Do we have
duties to create babies? but the related question: Do we have a duty knowingly not
to create babies who will have serious disabilities? Her answer is "Yes." The
"wrongful life" standard, she observes, claims that a child harmed by the means
used to create him or her (such as in vitro fertilization) has no grounds for
complaint, since but for its use that child would not exist-and existence is better
than nonexistence. Cohen argues that this standard confuses posthumous
nonexistence with preconception nonexistence. To remedy this, it must be expanded
to take into account that death is worse than not being conceived. Thus, while we
wrong the living child who has serious, but not devastating, disabilities by letting
him or her die, we do not wrong the same possible child when we do not create him
or her in the first place. That possible child has no interest in being born.
Ingmar Persson is the first of our writers to explicitly bring to the discussion the
frequently made distinction between person-affecting and impersonal values.
Person-affecting values are those that apply only to so-called actual people-those
who exist already or who will come to exist quite apart from the choices their
parents make about their existence (e.g., those created "by accident"). Advocates of