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connectedness. If the harm of death for a being consists in the depriva-
tion of its future welfare, it seems to matter to what extent the being that
is killed is connected to its future self. That is to say, it seems to matter to
what extent what is taken away is really
her
future. This has to do with the
concept of personal identity, in particular personal identity over time. This
is relevant in order to determine the amount of personal harm incurred.
This is what we are after when we determine the harm of death: it is the
harm that death is for the being that dies. In principle, different concep-
tions of personal identity over time are compatible with utilitarianism.
With regard to the harm of death, it has been proposed that the under-
lying assumptions about personal identity over time matter:
In addition to asking how much good a person's future life would
have contained, we must also ask ... How close would the prudential
unity relations have been between the individual as he was at the
time of his death and himself as he would have been at those later
times when the goods of his future life would have occurred? ... The
badness of the loss must be discounted for the absence of [psycho-
logical connections].
10
So, according to this view, which McMahan calls the Time-Relative
Interest Account, the loss of welfare is discounted in proportion to the
lack of psychological connectedness between the being's present self
and its future 'selves'. In order to determine the degree of psychological
connectedness, it matters, for instance, how far a person's beliefs and
desires remain the same, how rich the person's mental life is, how much
the person remembers things from the past, and how much a person
strives to satisfy desires that occurred in the past.
11
On this account of the harm of death, death is a lesser harm for animals
than for normal adult humans. Although the degree of psychological
connectedness varies per animal, many animals seem to live more in the
moment, and have less far-reaching memories and desires. Even if this
account of the harm of death was true, and death were indeed a lesser
harm for animals than for normal adult human beings, it is not clear that
this would justify the routine killing of animals for minor purposes. After
all, the harm of death for animals would not be zero, on this account.
Generally, at least mammals and birds are known to have the capacity for
rich mental lives, memories and desires for the (at least nearer) future. So,
death might still be a significant harm for those beings.
This Time-Relative Interest Account, which is in fact a modification
of the foreclosure view on the harm of death, has been criticized. In the
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