Conclusions - Killing Happy Animals: Explorations in Utilitarian Ethics - page 142

better with utilitarianism, and it avoids the Non-Identity Problem. Thus,
the focus in standard Non-Identity cases is on aggregate net benefits.
Total Utilitarianism, in contrast, implies the Impersonal View on
what matters in the evaluation of outcomes. According to that view,
outcomes are not morally evaluated in terms of how they affect people
(or sentient beings), but rather in terms of the abstract amount of
welfare that they contain. The Impersonal View is an intrinsic aspect
view on the evaluation of outcomes. The outcome that contains the
greatest amount of welfare is considered best, irrespective of how this
relates to harm or benefit for sentient beings.
A famous implication of this intrinsic aspect view on the evaluation of
outcomes is that a population consisting of well-off people can be required
to multiply, even if this reduces the welfare of the already existing people,
and even if everyone, including the newly created people, will end up
with a welfare level that is barely positive. The Impersonal View has this
implication because it is only concerned with the quantity of welfare that
an outcome contains and not with benefits and harms for sentient beings.
If the resulting population is large enough, the sum of everybody's welfare
can be greater than the overall amount of welfare that was present in the
original population consisting of a smaller number of very happy beings.
This implication, that a population consisting of very well-off beings can
be required to develop into a much larger population consisting of barely
happy beings, has been dubbed the Repugnant Conclusion.
Prior Existence Utilitarianism does not lead to the Repugnant Conclusion.
Prior Existence Utilitarianism does not sanction adding additional beings
to a population at the expense of those who already exist or will neces-
sarily exist. This is because Prior Existence Utilitarianism does not include
the welfare of contingent beings in the aggregation of welfare.
This has led to the challenge, famously exemplified by Parfit's case of
the Wretched Child, according to which Prior Existence Utilitarianism
cannot account for the expected misery of a contingent miserable child.
In Parfit's case, a couple knows for sure before conception that any child
it could have would have a short and miserable life. According to the
Prior Existence View, the welfare of this contingent child cannot be
taken into account in the decision about whether or not to have that
child. However, there would be other reasons for not having this child,
such as the welfare of the prospective parents and other beings that
already exist or will necessarily exist.
In the very unlikely case that the parents would want to have this child,
and others would not be negatively affected, what could proponents of
Prior Existence Utilitarianism say? They could say that conceiving the
child with the intention of having it in spite of its suffering could be