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I will now explore whether and how the Person-Affecting Restriction
can avoid the Non-Identity Problem. I will argue that the Non-Identity
Problem can be avoided if the Person-Affecting Restriction is interpreted
in a wider manner.
3 The wide person-affecting restriction
As explained above, the Non-Identity Problem has been brought forward
as the major challenge to the view that outcomes should be evaluated in
terms of benefits and harms to sentient beings. It seems that proponents
of the Person-Affecting Restriction have nothing to say in favour of the
outcome that maximizes welfare in different people choices. After all,
it seems that the choice of this outcome does not benefit anybody, as
different beings exist in both outcomes.
But are the beings that exist in both outcomes - such as the baby that
the 14-year-old girl could have now or the baby that she could have a
couple of years later - really different, in a morally relevant sense? It is
true that the babies would be different individuals, genetically speaking.
But is this the criterion that is relevant here? In what follows, I will focus
on the notion of betterness and argue that different notions of better-
ness are relevant in different contexts. When questions about moral
responsibility are at stake, as in non-identity cases, the notion of better-
ness should capture what is morally salient. Since the Wide Person-
Affecting Restriction evaluates outcomes in terms of benefits and harms
for sentient beings without being focused on genetically distinguished
individuals, it can accept that in case of the 14-year-old girl, having a
child later would be better
for the girl's child
. Utilitarianism in conjunc-
tion with the Wide Person-Affecting Restriction would require choosing
the outcome that maximizes welfare and thus delaying conception. It
would avoid or circumvent the Non-Identity Problem.
As we have seen, according to the Person-Affecting Restriction what
matters in the evaluation of outcomes is not the quantity of welfare, but
rather harms and benefits to sentient beings. Two interpretations of the
Person-Affecting Restriction can be distinguished. In one interpretation
the focus is on harms and benefits for
particular individuals
. In the other
interpretation the focus is on harms and benefits for sentient beings,
whoever they are
. On the basis of this distinction, two possible interpre-
tations of the claim that an outcome can only be better (worse) if it
is better (worse) for sentient beings can be distinguished. On the first,
narrow, interpretation, what is good must be good for someone and
what is bad must be bad for someone, where 'someone' is understood as
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