Aretaic Assessment and the Non-Identity Problem

• Author / Creator

  Underkoffler, Keith D

• The Non-Identity Problem arises in cases in which an agent causes someone to exist in an undesirable state, and it intuitively seems they have acted wrongly by doing so. It can be difficult to locate the source of this wrongdoing, however, since in these cases there is no way for the agent to cause the future person to come into a more desirable existence. If the agent had acted otherwise, the future person simply would not have existed, so the agent’s action was not worse for them. In light of this, it is natural to revisit the intuition that the agent acted wrongly in order to see what the precise nature of the original disapprobation was. In this thesis, I argue that it may not be impermissible to bring the future person into existence, but it may be morally bad, depending on the reasons for which the agent acted.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Ethics
  • The Non-Identity Problem
  • Parfit

• Graduation date

  Fall 2013

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Arts

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3FJ29N1W

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.