Agriculture Reference
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It can be argued against the Wide Person-Affecting Restriction that a
wide notion of identity is not helpful. After all, individuals in the wide,
de dicto, sense such as 'the 14-year-old girl's next child' cannot have
interests, nor can they be better or worse off. Only concrete particular
(present or future) individuals can. One can have interests in virtue of
being a certain type or description, but the interests relate to a particular
person, de re. Therefore, it can be argued that recourse to the de-dicto
sense makes no sense.
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It is of course true that only particular individuals can have interests
or be better or worse off. Even if we say in the case of the 14-year-old
girl that 'her next child' will be better off if she waits a couple of years
before having it, it is not the case that a particular individual (de re) of
flesh and blood would be better or worse off depending on what the
14-year-old girl does. Proponents of the wide person-affecting restric-
tion are of course aware of this fact.
In the same vein, the wide person-affecting restriction can be criti-
cised because it does not explain why a child born to the 14-year-old girl
would have any reason to complain. Utilitarianism in conjunction with
the wide person-affecting restriction would require that the girl should
do the best for 'her next child', whoever it will be. However, utilitari-
anism in conjunction with the wide person-affecting restriction would
not establish that any child born to the 14-year-old mother had any
reason to complain. That particular child would not have been better
off if the girl had waited before having a child. Rather, it would then
not have existed at all and the girl would have had another child. Even
though, arguably, personal identity is not relevant for the moral duty of
the mother concerning the time of conception, it seems still to be rele-
vant with respect to the child's reasons to complain about her mother
not having waited a couple of years. Thus, there is still a sense in which
the non-identity problem remains intact.
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I do not think that this is very disturbing from a utilitarian perspec-
tive. It can be established with the aid of the Wide Person-Affecting
Restriction that the mother ought to strive for the optimal outcome in
terms of welfare. Utilitarianism is not concerned with particular indi-
viduals
as particular individuals
. What counts is the overall maximization
of welfare (possibly defined as aggregate net benefit) for sentient beings.
It can be granted that the child in question cannot complain with refer-
ence to its particular interests. Still, the mother should have acted differ-
ently, morally speaking.
So, even if the optimal outcome in terms of welfare is chosen in non-
identity cases, it is not the case that a particular individual (de re) is
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