Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
of welfare as an abstract quantity, even if it harms and benefits nobody.
Or, alternatively, should utilitarianism be concerned with sentient beings
and how they are affected in their welfare? One famous way of presenting
this choice is whether utilitarianism should be concerned with making
happy people or with making people happy. One infamous implication
of the first, impersonal, interpretation of utilitarianism is known as the
Repugnant Conclusion. It will be discussed in the following chapter.
For now, it should be clear that utilitarians could accept the Person-
Affecting Restriction on the evaluation of outcomes. As compared to
the Narrow Person-Affecting Restriction, the Wide Person-Affecting
Restriction is not focused on harms and benefits for particular individ-
uals, but rather on effects on sentient beings, whoever they are. In that
respect, the Wide as compared to the Narrow Person-Affecting Restriction
seems to be somewhat closer to the Impersonal View. However, the Wide
Person-Affecting Restriction is still crucially different from the Impersonal
View. It is not an intrinsic aspect view that evaluates outcomes only in
terms of the quantity of welfare that they contain. The Wide Person-
Affecting Restriction is concerned with aggregate net benefits. If the
Person-Affecting Restriction is interpreted in a wide way, it is not vulner-
able to the major challenge that has been brought forward against this
view on the evaluation of outcomes, namely the Non-Identity Problem.
6 Conclusion
The Prior Existence View needs a particular assumption about what
matters in the evaluation of outcomes in order to be a coherent utilitarian
view about the question across whom to aggregate. It needs to assume
that what matters in the evaluation of outcomes are harms and benefits to
sentient beings. The Person-Affecting Restriction implies that an outcome
can only be better (worse) if it is better (worse) for sentient beings. In
its narrow interpretation, this means that the outcome must be better
(worse) for any particular being. This Narrow Person-Affecting Restriction
runs into the Non-Identity Problem. The Non-Identity Problem refers to
the observation that in different people choices, the optimal outcome in
terms of welfare cannot be said to be better for any particular being.
A wide definition of the Person-Affecting Restriction can avoid the
Non-Identity Problem. 12 The Wide Person-Affecting Restriction claims
that outcomes must be evaluated in terms of their aggregate net benefits.
The Wide Person-Affecting Restriction implies that an outcome is better
(worse) if and only if it is better (worse) for sentient beings, whoever they
are . This way of circumventing the Non-Identity Problem is based on the
Search WWH ::




Custom Search