Abstract
This paper argues that non-identity actions are wrong because they cause harm to people. While non-identity actions also typically benefit people, failure to act would similarly benefit someone, so considerations of benefit are ineligible to justify the harm. However, in some non-identity cases, failure to act would not benefit anyone: cases where one is choosing whether to procreate at all. These are the hard non-identity cases. Not all “different-number” cases are hard. In some cases, we don’t know whether acting would result in more or fewer people; this paper argues that this epistemological factor makes acting in these cases wrong.
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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
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Harman, E. (2009). Harming as Causing Harm. In: Roberts, M.A., Wasserman, D.T. (eds) Harming Future Persons. International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine, vol 35. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5697-0_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5697-0_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-5696-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-5697-0
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