hi my name is Molly gardener and I am a
research assistant professor in the
philosophy department at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in this
video I will introduce you to the non
identity problem to understand the
problem let's begin with a thought
experiment suppose that there are two
women Alice and Barbara who want their
children to have poor health this is of
course a strange thing to want but
suppose that they believe that if they
have sick children they will get more
attention from their friends and family
now suppose that to get what she wants
Alice takes a particular drug during her
pregnancy the drug causes her child whom
she name's Alex to experience poor
health for his entire life nevertheless
his life on the whole is worth living
meanwhile Barbara uses in vitro
fertilization and screens the embryos
for a gene that causes poor health when
she finds an embryo with that gene she
implants it the selected embryo becomes
a child named Billie Billie experiences
the same degree of hardship and
suffering that Alex experiences however
like Alex Billie has a life worth living
many people think that Alice and Barbara
have both wronged their children the way
in which Alice wronged alex is pretty
straightforward by taking the drug
during her pregnancy she harmed her
child since Barbara performed an action
that had similarly bad consequences for
Billie it might be tempting to think
that Barbara also harmed her child
nevertheless there is an important
difference between Alice's action and
Barbara's action the difference is that
although Alex would still have existed
had his mother not taking the drug
Billie is non identical to anyone who
would have existed had his mother not
selected for poor health after all if
Barbara had not selected for poor health
then either she would have not had a
child at all or else she would have
brought some other child into existence
instead of Billie many philosophers
appeal to a plausible theory of harming
in order to argue that this difference
in what would have
and makes a moral difference according
to their theory of harming an action
harms you only if it makes you worse off
and at least some respects than you
would have been had the action not been
performed Alice's action satisfies this
condition alex is worse off in many
respects than he would have been had
Alice not taken the drug he has to go to
the hospital more often
he misses more school and social events
and he feels more pain and discomfort
than he otherwise would have
however Barbara's action does not
satisfy this condition even though
Billy's life is also full of trips to
the hospital missed school days pain and
discomfort it is still worth living the
alternative for Billy is non-existence
and a life worth living does not seem to
be worse in any respect than no life at
all if so then when she selected for
poor health Barbara did not harm Billy
but if Barbara's action did not harm
Billy then we seem to be at a loss to
justify the intuition that in much the
same way that Alice wronged Alex
Barbara wronged Billy Billy situation is
thus a non-identity case it is a case in
which an individual appears to be
wronged by an action that is the
condition of his own worthwhile
existence the problem of either
justifying the appearance that the
individual was wronged or explaining it
away is the non-identity problem we can
make the problem clearer by formulating
it as a set of inconsistent claims one
Barbara wronged Billy to the way she
wronged him was by harming him three the
only way she could have harmed him is by
making him worse off than he otherwise
would have been for Barbara did not make
Billy worse off than he otherwise would
have been when I say these claims are
inconsistent I mean that they can't all
be true together if you pick any three
of the claims their conjunction will
logically entail that the fourth claim
is false to solve the non-identity
problem we have to reject at least one
of the claims we also need to identify
the flaw in the reasoning or the
intuition that originally seemed to
support whatever claim we choose to
reject notice that whatever
solution we opted for will have
wide-ranging implications for a number
of other issues one issue is
reproductive rights although a few
parents want to select for poor health
some parents might want to use new
reproductive technologies to select for
conditions that other people associate
with poor health unhappiness or other
bad consequences opponents of
reproductive autonomy in these kinds of
cases will need to grapple with the
non-identity problem another issue is
genetic engineering although scientists
haven't yet produced any genetically
engineered humans they have produced
plenty of genetically engineered animals
the non-identity problem raises the
question of whether we are wronging such
animals by bringing them into existence
a third issue is the environment to see
why the non-identity problem is
particularly important here consider
another thought experiment suppose that
we as a community must decide between
two policies one policy involves
polluting the environment and the other
involves protecting it if we opt for
polluting the environment then the air
and water quality will be much worse in
200 years than it would have been had we
chosen the other policy however the
polluting policy will also have other
consequences the economy will be
different and different people will take
different jobs different couples will
fall in love and have children if
different couples have children then
different people will be born in 200
years we might think that no one will
exist in the polluted community who
would have existed had we not polluted
suppose the people who do exist 200
years from now in the polluted community
suffer from health problems related to
the air and water quality
maybe they develop asthma heart disease
or cancer even so the non-identity
problem makes it difficult to justify
the intuition that when we choose to
pollute the environment we wronged them
after all
they are no worse off than they would
have been have we decided to protect the
environment for if we had decided to
protect the environment those people
would not have existed at all and for
those future people a life with asthma
heart disease or cancer if it is still
worth living is not worse than having no
life at all thus if we think we ought to
worry about climate change nuclear waste
or environmental degradation for the
sake of future generations then we will
need to find some kind of solution to
the non-identity problem in the next
video I will discuss some of the
solutions that have been proposed thank
you for listening