Can Existence Be Better for a Being Than Non-Existence? - Killing Happy Animals: Explorations in Utilitarian Ethics - page 81

goodness for the being. Such a comparison is necessary in order to deter-
mine whether existence is better for the being. However, in case of non-
existence, there is no being at all.
Nils Holtug argues that existence can be better or worse for a being
than non-existence. This does not mean that existence as such is
conceived to be valuable and always better than non-existence. Rather,
existence is viewed as an extrinsic good, which makes the having of
intrinsic goods, such as having a life in which the good outweighs the
bad, possible. Holtug's argument is based on a comparative judgement.
Accordingly, if someone's life has an overall positive value to him (in
terms of mental states, preference satisfaction or items on an objective
list), this can be compared to a state of non-existence. If this person
would not exist, no value at all would accrue to him. According to
Holtug, if positive value accrues to the person that is better for him or
her than if no value at all accrues to him or her. The major objection
against this view, to be discussed in the remainder of this chapter, is
that the absence of welfare is not commensurable with any score on
the welfare scale. Before discussing this objection, which is called the
'incommensurability objection', I will briefly mention two other objec-
tions that have been brought forward against the view that coming into
existence can benefit or harm a being.
One objection is that future people cannot be identified and therefore
cannot be harmed (or benefited). Future people, it is said, cannot be iden-
tified by 'rigid designators', that means by terms that denote one and the
same individual in all possible worlds in which it has denotation. For
instance, when a couple refers to their future child as 'our future child',
this is no rigid designator, because it refers to different possible chil-
dren, depending on which sperm fertilizes which egg. Holtug counters,
however, that rigid designators could in principle be provided, although
they would have to be complex, depending on the situation and the
criteria for being one and the same person that one assumes. In the case
of the couple, one could provide rigid designators for all the children
they could have within nine months by itemizing possible combinations
of gametes and perhaps specifying certain further conditions.
Still, it could be objected that this only tells us about who their possible
future children are, but we need to identify the child they actually will
have, if any. This, however, is not necessary for the view that coming
into existence can benefit a being. This view only claims that if this
person comes into existence, it might thereby benefit or be harmed. 1
Anyway, even the identification of possible future people is not neces-
sary for Holtug's Value of Existence View to hold. 'For the view can be