WORK IN PROGRESS -- Melinda A. Roberts

●  Abortion and the Moral Significance of Merely Possible Persons (Springer, forthcoming 2010) -- draft only -- comments welcome!

Abstract.  This book has two main goals.  The first is to give an account, called Variabilism, of the moral significance of merely possible persons—persons who, relative to a particular circumstance, or possible future or world, could but in fact never do exist.  The second is to use Variabilism to illuminate abortion.  

According to Variabilism, merely possible persons—just like anyone else—matter morally but matter variably.  Where we understand that a person incurs a loss whenever agents could have created more wellbeing for that person and instead create less, Variabilism asserts that the moral significance of any loss is a function of where that loss is incurred in relation to the person who incurs it.  That is:  a loss incurred at a world where the person who incurs that loss does or will exist has full more significance, according to Variabilism, while a loss incurred by that same person at a world where that person never exists at all has no moral significance whatsoever. 

Some other views deem all merely possible persons and all of their losses to matter morally.  Still other views deem no merely possible persons and none of their losses to matter morally.  Variabilism, instead, takes a middle ground between these two extreme positions.  It thus opens the door to a certain middle ground on procreative choice in general and abortion in particular.  Thus, given that, for persons, thinking and coming into existence come together, Variabilism supports the argument that the early abortion is ordinarily permissible when it is what the woman wants.  That is so, since the loss incurred when, as an effect of the early abortion, a given person is never brought into existence to begin with has no moral significance at all.  In contrast, the late abortion is ordinarily subject to a different analysis.  For the loss incurred in that case has full moral significance, according to Variabilism, since it is incurred at a world where the person who incurs it already exists.

●  Doing the Best We Can:  Dialogue Concerning Future Persons, Harm and the  Nonidentity Problem

This dialogue is intended to facilitate the teaching of the nonidentity problem, the person-affecting, or person-based, approach in ethics and issues having to do with the obligations we have in respect of future persons.  Comments very welcome!

●  "Do the Merely Possible Matter Morally?"

Abstract.  The person-affecting intuition has been associated with the idea that the only losses we need take into account in determining the permissibility of an act are losses incurred by actual persons or, alternatively, by persons who would exist were that act performed.  After all, if losses incurred by the merely possible are deemed morally significant, it may seem to follow that agents have some obligation to bring them into existence (provided that their wellbeing levels would then be positive).  But that result is anathema to the person-affecting intuition.  At the same time, if losses incurred by the merely possible are deemed morally insignificant, it may seem to follow that agents are obligated to bring those persons into existence whenever their existence would be good for some existing or future person and even if the losses that they would incur are substantial and perfectly avoidable.  But that result is also objectionable.  My paper addresses this dilemma.  I conclude with a view (itself not to be confused with what Parfit describes as the “wide” person-affecting principle) that recognizes that (1) losses incurred by persons who count as the “merely possible” at an outcome cannot ground a finding of wrongdoing at that outcome; (2) losses incurred by those same persons may ground a finding of wrongdoing at still other outcomes—outcomes, that is, where those same persons do or will exist; and (3) that latter fact often bears on the permissibility of acts performed not just at those other outcomes but at the one outcome.  (Deeper losses “there” may thus justify smaller losses to existing and future persons “here.”)  So the merely possible do matter morally—but in their own special way.