Voices from Another World: Must We Respect the Interests of People Who Do Not, and Will Never, Exist?

Ethics 117 (3):498-523 (2007)
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Abstract

This is about the rights and wrongs of bringing people into existence. In a nutshell: sometimes what matters is not what would have happened to you, but what would have happened to the person who would have been in your position, even if that person never actually exists.

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10.1086/512172

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Caspar Hare
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Citations of this work

Population axiology.Hilary Greaves - 2017 - Philosophy Compass 12 (11):e12442.
Counting Incompossibles.Peter Fritz & Jeremy Goodman - 2017 - Mind 126 (504):1063–1108.
Direct Consequentialism, Unlimited.Philip Pettit - forthcoming - In David Copp, Tina Rulli & Connie Rosati, The Oxford Handbook of Normative Ethics. Oxford University Press.

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References found in this work

Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Anarchy, State, and Utopia.Robert Nozick - 1974 - New York: Basic Books.
Anarchy, State, and Utopia.Robert Nozick - 1974 - Philosophy 52 (199):102-105.
Should the numbers count?John Taurek - 1977 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 6 (4):293-316.

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