Repugnant Conclusion and Expected Misery Argument - Killing Happy Animals: Explorations in Utilitarian Ethics - page 118

does not count. This challenge is referred to as the Asymmetry. 29 The
Asymmetry refers to the discrepancy between on the one hand accepting
the potential suffering of a potential child as a reason for not having
it and, not accepting the potential happiness of a potential child as a
reason for having it on the other. In other words, the future misery of
a potential miserable child counts as a reason for not having the child,
while the future happiness of a potential happy child does not count as
a reason for having this child. Taking it into account in one case (the
miserable child) and not taking it into account in the other case (the
happy child) implies an asymmetry.
It should be noted, though, that the Asymmetry does only arise if
one horn of the dilemma is gripped. It arises only if proponents of the
Prior Existence View want to count the misery of the contingent miser-
able child as a reason against having it. The other horn of the dilemma
would be not to take the misery into account. Then, there would be no
asymmetry. However, this would go against the idea that it is morally
blameworthy to bring into existence the miserable child.
5 Can prior existence utilitarianism account for the idea
that there is something morally wrong about having the
miserable child?
In this section I argue that, contrary to what has been claimed, Prior
Existence Utilitarianism can account for the intuition that bringing into
existence the miserable child is morally blameworthy.
First of all, we need to specify what seems to be wrong with the case.
The idea might be, more precisely, that parents that would like to have
such a child are bad persons or people with a bad character. Indeed the
parents seem to be very egoistic, thinking only about themselves and
not about their child. Maybe they are keen on having such a child in
order to care for it, but then still this would be very egoistic. A related
idea might be that such parents would never be good parents and should
not have a child at all. Alternatively, the project of having the child as
such might be considered the reason why there is something morally
wrong with having the child.
Considering these possible specifications of the idea that there is
something morally wrong with the parents wanting to have the miser-
able child, I will argue that Prior Existence Utilitarianism can at least
account for the first set of justifications, namely those referring to the
character of the parents. After all, Prior Existence Utilitarianism, just as
other forms of utilitarianism, can accept character as an evaluative focal