The Procreative Asymmetry and Impersonal Goodness

Travis Rebello

University of Colorado, Boulder

Many believe that if someone’s life would be overall bad for them, that gives us reason not to bring them into existence, but if someone’s life would be overall good for them, that doesn’t give us reason to bring them into existence. I argue that this asymmetry casts doubt on the view that anything is impersonally good—i.e. simply good, period, or good simpliciter—in a way that gives us a moral reason to bring it about.

The asymmetry, if true, suggests either that (i) well-being can’t be good simpliciter, or (ii) the fact that a state of affairs is good simpliciter isn’t a reason to bring it about. Because it is highly plausible that if anything is good simpliciter, then well-being must be good simpliciter, this suggests that if the procreative asymmetry is true, we ought to deny that a state of affairs can be good simpliciter in a way that gives us reason to bring it about.

An objection is that the same argument must similarly cast doubt on the view that well-being is reason-giving. We could argue that, if the asymmetry is true, then either (i) causing someone to exist who will enjoy an overall positive level of well-being can’t be good for them, which is hard to maintain, or (ii) the fact that a state of affairs would be good for someone isn’t a reason to bring it about, which is absurd.

In reply, we can explain why, in procreative contexts, a state of affairs’ being good for someone doesn’t give us a moral reason to bring it without thereby calling into question the general idea that we can have moral reasons to improve the well-being of others. We can explain this by supposing that we have moral reason not to do what would be worse for someone only if some actual person, not some merely possible person, would be worse off because of our action. I defend this view against several objections, including the objection that it yields implausible results in so-called non-identity cases.

By contrast, we can’t explain why, in procreative contexts, a state of affairs’ being good simpliciter doesn’t give us a moral reason to bring it about without thereby calling into question the general idea that we can have moral reasons to improve the level of impersonal goodness in the world. I consider and reject several attempts to do so, including several arguments by analogy to other moral asymmetries.

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