Introduction - Killing Happy Animals: Explorations in Utilitarian Ethics - page 16

two assumptions. It depends on the assumption that causing an animal to
exist cannot harm or benefit that animal. It also depends on the assump-
tion that utilitarianism should be concerned with harms and benefits for
sentient beings, rather than with quantities of welfare as such. If what
matters morally are indeed harms and benefits to sentient beings, and if
causing a being to exist can indeed not harm or benefit that being, then
(and only then) it makes sense to exclude the possible welfare of contin-
gent beings from the aggregation of welfare.
In Chapter 6 I defend the assumption that causing a being to exist can
neither harm nor benefit that being. Although someone can of course
have a good, bad or neutral life, it is impossible to compare the welfare
of a person's life with the welfare that this person would have had, if he
or she had not come into existence. I argue that the absence of value in
case of non-existence is not the same as neutral welfare. Therefore, exist-
ence and non-existence are incommensurable, and thus, it cannot be
said that existence can make a person better or worse off than he or she
would otherwise have been. Coming into existence cannot be a genuine
comparative benefit or harm.
In Chapter 7 I defend the assumption that utilitarianism should be
concerned with harms and benefits to sentient beings rather than with
the quantity of welfare as such. This assumption is known as the Person-
Affecting Restriction. The Non-Identity Problem is known as the major
challenge to the Person-Affecting Restriction. The Non-Identity Problem
refers to the fact that in particular cases the optimal outcome in terms of
welfare does not benefit any particular being. I defend a wide definition of
the Person-Affecting Restriction that can avoid the Non-Identity Problem.
Given this result and that of Chapter 5, both assumptions that Prior
Existence Utilitarianism needs can be upheld. Therefore, both Total
Utilitarianism and Prior Existence Utilitarianism are feasible utilitarian
views. In the remaining chapters, I explore the implications of both
Total Utilitarianism and Prior Existence Utilitarianism.
In Chapter 8 I explore the implication of Total Utilitarianism known as
the Repugnant Conclusion. I also consider the alleged implication of Prior
Existence Utilitarianism, namely, that it cannot account for the intuition
that bringing into existence a miserable being should be considered morally
wrong. I argue that, contrary to what has been claimed, Prior Existence
Utilitarianism can account for this intuition. In this context I also reflect
on the role of appeals to intuitions in utilitarian moral reasoning.
In Chapter 9 the implications of both versions of utilitarianism for the
practice of animal husbandry will briefly be explored. An influential argu-
ment in favour of animal husbandry, known as the Logic of the Larder,