Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: Two Paradoxes About Duties to Future Generations

DAVID BOON1 N-VAIL Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: Two Paradoxes About Duties to Future Generations

Suppose that you were given the power to determine what life on earth would look like at some point in the future, and were forced to choose between two possible populations, A and B. The average level of well- being is higher in A than in B-indeed, everyone in A enjoys a higher level of well-being than everyone in B-but there are twice as many people in B as in A so that the total amount of well-being is nonetheless higher in B.'

j A B

FIGURE 1

I would like to thank Derek Parfit for his extremely detailed, probing, and encouraging comments on the previous two versions of this article, and Alisa Carse, David Gauthier, Steven T. Kuhn, Jon Mandle, Christian Perring, and Alec Walen, as well as audiences at SUNY Albany, the University of South Carolina, and 'Mane University for useful comments on still earlier generations.

1. In each figure, the width represents the number of people and the height represents the level of well-being for each person. For purposes of this article, "well-being" and "hap-

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There seems clearly to be a morally relevant sense of “better than” in which one of these states of affairs could prove to be better than the other. And if you are like most people, you will probably feel at least a fairly strong pull in favor of saying that one is, in fact, better in this sense, namely A. Moreover, this pull seems reasonable. It is difficult to see why the mere fact that B contains more total happiness than A should carry weight morally, if no one in B is as well off as anyone in A. To the extent that morality is concerned with promoting happiness, most of us are likely to insist, the point must surely be to produce more happiness for people, not to produce more people for happiness.*

In addition, if you were instead inclined to judge B better than A on the grounds that when all else is equal total happiness should be given priority over average happiness, you would have to consider that this reasoning seems equally to imply that Z, in which there are vastly more individuals all of whom live lives that are just barely better than no life at all, would be better than either of them. But very few people are likely to accept the claim that Z really would be better than A or B. And if we are unwilling to prefer Z to B, it is difficult to see how we could prefer B to A. Most of us, then, will seem at least initially drawn to what I will call the

OriginaE Assessment: A would be better than B

This is certainly my own initial reaction to the choice. But Derek Parfit has presented a seemingly irreproachable argument

to show that this assessment must be mistaken.3 His Mere Addition Par- adox rests on three simple premises, each of which seems unimpeacha- ble, and apparently demonstrates that A would not be better than B.

I want here to do four things. First, I want briefly to spell out Parfit’s paradox in such a way as to make each of its premises seem at least piness” are taken to be interchangeable, and the arguments discussed are meant to apply on any particular account of what they amount to.

2. This way of characterizing the point derives from Narveson, who is also cited in this regard by Parfit. See, e.g., Jan Narveson, “Utilitarianism and New Generations,” Mind (Jan- uary 1967), cited in Parfit, Reasons and Persons, p. 525.

3. I follow Parfit’s presentation of the argument in “Overpopulation and the Quality of Life,” in Peter Singer, ed., Applied Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19861, pp. 145- 64. All page references in the text, unless otherwise noted, are to this essay. Parfit also notes that the implication that Z would be better than B would also follow if you judged B better than A, not on the grounds that it contains more total happiness, but on the grounds that B contains some additional people with lives worth living (p. 150).

269 Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow

- A

FIGURE 2

1 A+

initially plausible. Second, I will consider two ways in which we might attempt to justify dismissing the paradox as morally trivial, and will argue that both attempts fail. Third, I will consider two ways in which people have attempted to resolve the paradox by rejecting one of the argument’s premises, and will argue these approaches are unsuccessful. Finally, I will propose an alternative approach to responding to Parfit’s paradox. Rather than claiming to solve the paradox as Parfit has formu- lated it, I will identify a variation on the paradox, which can be generated along lines parallel to those employed by Parfit. It is this variant of the paradox, I will argue, which poses the serious challenge to our moral convictions that initially seems to be embodied in Parfit’s paradox, and I will attempt to demonstrate that this second paradox is capable of resolution. If my argument is successful, then Parfit’s original paradox may remain unresolved without creating the important moral difficulty it initially appeared to create.

I

First, Parfit’s argument: Consider the choice between A and what Parfit calls A+, where A+ contains A plus an additional population of equal size, separated from the first, of people whose lives are of lower quality than those in A, but still well worth living (see Figure 2, above). Parfit asks: would A+ be worse than A just because its average level of well- being is lower? This seems very difficult to maintain. It seems that we


can maintain it only if we think that it would have been better that these extra people never have existed, even though they all live lives that are well worth living. But that would seem preposterous. How, Parfit asks, could the mere addition of reasonably happy people make things worse from the moral point of view? So we seem committed to accepting (what I will call)

Pi: A+ is not worse than A

Next, consider the choice between A+ and what Parfit calls Divided B. Divided B is exactly like A+, except that there is a little bit less happiness per person on the left side of the divide and a lot more happiness per person on the right.

A B

----The average-. level in A+

A+ Divided B

FIGURE 3

This seems to be an improvement. Divided B is superior to A+ from the standpoint of both total (and average) utility and equality. It seems that we can prefer A+ to Divided B, Parfit therefore insists, only if we take the elitist view that the small loss for the few at the top is more important than the big gains for those at the bottom. But we are unlikely to tolerate such a view, and unlikeIy to view the two choices with indifference, and so seem committed to (what I will call)

P2: Divided B is better than A+


But there is no difference between Divided B and B other than the gap that divides the latter, and the divide is surely irrelevant from the moral point of view. B and Divided B contain exactly the same number of people with exactly the same level of well-being. So we also seem committed to (what I will call)

P3: Divided B is equal to B

Each premise seems secure. But if all three are true, it seems plainly to follow that

C: B is not worse than A.

After all, B is morally equal to something that is morally better than something that is not morally worse than A. And as Parfit points out, by way of analogy, “you cannot be taller than me if you are shorter than someone who is not taller than me” (p. 153).4

Yet the conclusion that B is not worse than A is inconsistent with our Original Assessment, that A is better than B, since it is plain that if A is better than B then B is worse than A. So accepting the conclusion of this argument would force us to abandon that assessment, and (more disturbingly) the principle on which it rested: that all else being equal, more happiness for people is better than more people for happiness. How shall we respond?

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Many of us may be tempted to respond as follows: Parfit must be a utilitarian of some sort and I am not a Utilitarian. The paradox is generated only if you accept utilitarian standards of evaluation, but I reject these. So the paradox shows only that utilitarianism has unacceptable implications. But I knew that already; that’s why I’m not a utilitarian. The paradox thus has no grip on me and so I need not be troubled by it.

This response is tempting, but it is unwarranted. It is true that the 4. It might seem that we are entitled to conclude more than this, not merely that B is

not worse than A, but that B is better than A. But in this sense, the analogy with comparisons of height is misleading. As Parfit points out in Reasons and Persons, sec. 146, “not worse than” does not imply “at least as good as,” since there may be only rough compara- bility between the various candidates. Still. the weaker conclusion is sufficient to contra- dict the Original Assessment and thus generate the paradox.

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paradox requires us to believe that there is a morally relevant sense in which one outcome can be judged better than another, but it does not specify the way in which the judgment must be morally relevant. If I am a utilitarian, of course (or, at least, an act utilitarian), then the conclusion that one state of affairs is better than another in this sense will commit me to the conclusion that I should attempt to bring it about. But it does not follow from this that only a utilitarian believes that the fact that one state of affairs is better than another is relevant to deciding how one should act. Suppose, to take perhaps the most obvious alternative, that I reject utilitarianism because I believe that there are certain deontological constraints which it is morally wrong to break even if doing so is necessary in order to produce an outcome which is better overall from an impartial point of view. In that case, I will still believe that some states of affairs are better than others and that it is important to determine which state of affairs would be best, even if it turns out that I am forbidden from bringing it about. Of course, a deontologist might deny that some states of affairs are better than others in a morally relevant sense, but there is nothing about being an anti-utilitarian that commits her to this, and thus nothing about Parfit’s assumptions that commits him to utilitarianism.

We may also be tempted to respond to the paradox by saying something like this: ethics is a practical science and moral principles must therefore be adequate for guiding us in the sorts of choices that we can realistically expect to confront. But I will never be confronted by anything even remotely resembling the choice between A and B, and so it is not a problem if the principles for evaluating competing possible outcomes which guide me in the sorts of choices that I do have to make yield paradoxical results when applied to a kind of choice that I will never have to make. This is not an uncommon response to much of Parfit’s writings: he generates clever puzzles, it is said, but they are of no real moral significance.

This reaction also seems to me unwarranted. It is true that we lack the power to choose between A and B, but many of the choices we can make, both individually and as a society, can reasonably be expected to contribute to the future’s looking a little bit more like one than like the other. Individually, we affect the future when we decide, for example, how many children to have and how to raise them. As a society we affect the future when we choose among competing policies involving birth


control, famine relief, scientific research, energy consumption, environ- mental regulation, and so on. It is not unreasonable to suppose that one package of such policies could be expected to leave the future more like A than like B, while a second could be expected to leave the future more like B than like A. Most of us would be initially inclined to think that the first set of policies would produce the better outcome, and to think that one outcome’s being better than the other in this sense would have to count for something in its favor in our moral deliberations. If we do think this, then we cannot avoid being troubled by the fact that Parfit’s argument apparently demonstrates that the claim that A would be better than B is mistaken.

I do not see, then, that we can in good faith simply dismiss Parfit’s paradox on grounds of irrelevance either to our own moral views or to our practical situation. How else might we respond?

I11

Since the conclusion seems clearly enough to follow from the premises, the most natural response is surely to suppose that one of the premises must be false. Responses to Parfit’s paradox have tended to focus on Pi in particular. There is, I think, some suspicion that once the addition of these extra people to A is admitted, the path to the conclusion that B would be better still, and so not worse than A, becomes almost inevita- ble. Leaving open the possibility that someone might attempt to launch an objection to P2 or P3, then, I want to focus on some criticisms which have been aimed at Pi, and to argue that they are not sufficient to warrant our rejecting it.

Thomas Hurka has argued that we can justify rejecting Parfit’s claim that A+ is not worse than A by appealing to the following sort of analogy:5 A is an art gallery containing only ten masterpieces. A+ is the same gallery with ten additional paintings, each of which is good, well worth seeing, but also well below the quality of the original ten. We might say that A is a better art gallery than A+, in the sense that it is more perfect. And the same sort of thing is also often said about careers, say those of great athletes or entertainers: that their careers as a whole would have been better if they had quit while they were at the top. This is how many

5. Thomas Hurka, “Value and Population Size,” Ethics 93 (1983): 496507.


people tend to feel about Elvis Presley, for example. Suppose A is Elvis’s career through the early 1960S, and A+ is all of that plus the rest of his work until his death. His career as a whole would have been better had he stopped earlier; the mere addition of music and films which are still good, or at least better than none at all (or at least said by those who take this view to be better than none at all), nonetheless makes his career as a whole worse. There is nothing particularly mysterious about how this could be the case, and perhaps this provides us with a way to deny PI: A is better than A+ because A is a more perfect world than A+.

Now in the case of the art gallery, and arguably in the case of Elvis, I am inclined to agree that there is an important sense in which A is better than A+. But this seems to me to be at bottom an aesthetic judgment, that A is more pure, more simple. And it is difficult to see this as morally relevant in the case of possible future populations of living beings. This is so in part because it is difficult to see it as morally relevant even in the example Hurka gives. Suppose we are comparing two possible art galleries, only one of which will be built, and which will be the only one to serve a large but isolated metropolitan community from which many people may never be able to travel far enough to see another. This gallery will be their only first-hand exposure to great art. In this case, I cannot see how the claim that A would be the more perfect gallery than A+ could in any way justify the claim that the outcome in which it is produced would be the one which is better in the morally relevant sense than the one in which A+ is produced. A+ would contain twice as many paintings for its visitors to see, each of its additions being quite good and worth seeing, and far better than no painting at all.

The only plausible argument I can envision for the claim that A would nonetheless be morally better than A+ would have to be predicated on the claim that exposure to the lesser paintings would somehow diminish the visitors’ appreciation of the masterpieces, in the same sort of way that our memory of the later, Las Vegas, Elvis adulterates our memory of the younger, Memphis, one (or the way that adding a reasonably good dessert to an exceptional dinner might diminish the overall quality of a meal). But if this is our reason for concluding that in the case of the art galleries A would be morally and not just aesthetically better than A+, then it is a reason that does not extend to the case of the future populations. Adding some lesser paintings to gallery A may arguably reduce the total level of happiness it generates, but this is not so, by definition, in


the case of the competing populations. The addition of the less happy people does nothing to diminish the happiness of the others, and only increases the total level of human well-being by adding extra reasonably happy people. So even if we agree that there is an important sense in which population A is more perfect than A+, this does not seem to provide a reason for thinking the outcome in which is it produced to be the morally better one.6

Don Locke has suggested a second way of justifying the claim that A is better than A+: “Certainly,” he says, “I know which of the two I would prefer myself, or anyone else, to be in, if I had the choice.” Deliberating “in ignorance of my final position,” Locke says, he would choose A, and he suggests that we would, t00.7 Now there is perhaps something prom- ising about Locke’s approach here: since Rawls, we are used to the idea of evaluating at least some sorts of competing social institutions by considering how we would choose from behind a veil of ignorance,’ and to seeing this as a mechanism for making the choice a morally satisfactory one, by abstracting away from considerations which would lead to par- tiality and bias. In this sense, the moral relevance of Locke’s criterion is more apparent than is the moral relevance of Hurka’s. So we might well say that a future world‘s being the one you would choose to create from

6. There may also be a further reason to doubt the alleged moral relevance of the claim that population A is more perfect than A+. I raise the concern somewhat more tentatively because I am not myself so clear about how these perfectionist judgments are to be made, but it seems to me at least plausible that to the extent that I would !ind A to be a more perfect world than A+, I would also find A to be a more perfect world than what I might c d A-superplus, which would be A plus a handful of others enjoying a higher level of happiness than the rest. After all, consider the choice between two art galleries, one of which contains fifty somewhat above average though not in any sense particularly good paintings and the other of which contains fifty somewhat above average though not in any sense particularly good paintings plus three of the greatest masterpieces in the history of art. There seem to me to be some sense in which the first gallery is more perfect than the second (though a gallery containing only the three masterpieces could be more perfect than either of them); it is more simple, more coherent, more neat. Indeed, there is something bordering on the absurd about the second gallery while there is nothing at all absurd about the first one. And in th is sense the same could be said about the choice between the corresponding populations. But surely it would be unacceptable to take this as a moral reason to prefer A to A-superplus. How could the mere addition of a few extra lives which are even better than the rest make things worse?

7. Don Locke, “The Parfit Population Problem,“ Philosophy 62 (April 1987): 144. Locke also suggests that he would choose A “even if I knew that in the A+ World I would myself be one of those better off,” but he does not argue that everyone would make this choice, nor does he give a reason for this beyond the sort suggested by Hurka and rebutted above.


behind a veil of ignorance counts as a reason to consider it the morally better one. And it seems right to say, as Locke says, that if you didn’t know which position you would occupy in either society, you would rather be born into A than into A+.

Let us accept for the sake of argument that a future world’s being the one you would choose to create from behind a veil of ignorance does count as a reason to consider it the morally better one. There are two ways you might think about this choice. You might ask which of the two societies you would rather be born into, or you might ask which of the two societies you would rather have the society in which you are born choose to create for its distant descendants. On either version, this broadly contractarian procedure fails to undermine PI, and so Locke’s strategy is impaled on the horns of a dilemma.*

Consider the second version first. On this account, you are understood as choosing not on behalf of yourself (you, after all, will be long dead by the time that either A or A+ comes about), but rather on behalf of those individuals in the distant future, if any, about whom you particularly care (or, more precisely, on behalf of those individuals in the distant future about whom you have reason to believe, from behind the veil of ignorance, that you will particularly care once the veil is lifted). Per- haps, for example, you believe that you will have a special concern for your own distant descendants. This creates a serious difficulty, which can itself be put in the form of a dilemma. For either you will make the assumption that the individuals you care about will exist in A and in A+, or you will not. Making this assumption is ruled out because it begs the question to assume that any particular individual will be born into either society when the choice you are making concerns precisely the question of how many people that future society will contain. But not making the assumption undermines the case for choosing A over A+. For in that case, A+ could contain many more such people leading lives that are well worth living, and in order to prefer A to A+ you would therefore have to believe, if you are really choosing on their behalf, that it would be better for them not to have existed. You might, of course, think that it would not be worse if they had not existed, on the ground that nonexistence doesn’t harm anyone, but even that would not be enough to generate Locke’s conclusion that from behind the veil you

8. Parfit provides further reasons for rejecting this sort of resolution of the problem in Reasons and Persons, sec. 133.


would choose A over A+. So if we understand the question to be asking you to choose a future population on behalf of those you care most about, we might at most find that A is as good as A+. And that would still amount to accepting p1.

Suppose, on the other hand, we understand the question to be asking you to choose a population on behalf of yourself. Then a parallel problem arises. Either you will assume that you will exist in A and in A+, or you will not. Assuming that you will exist in either case (as bcke does) begs the question, since the choice you are making concerns precisely the question of how many people the society will contain. And doing without the assumption again undermines the case for choosing A over A+. For since A contains only half as many people as A+, it can only be half as likely to contain any particular individual, including you. And even if we can render intelligible the question of whether, from behind the veil, you would choose never to exist than to exist at the lower level of well-being in A+, it remains the case that such individuals have lives that are worth living. If you are really choosing on your own behalf, then while you might think that it would not be worse for you not to exist than to exist at that level, this will at most show that A is as good for you as A+, and this will again amount to accepting R. So on either framing of the question you face from behind the veil, Locke’s approach provides no good reason to reject R.

Iv So where does this leave us? For most of us, at any rate, I suspect it leaves us feeling that we lack a satisfactory way to justify rejecting Pi. This is certainly how I feel. And while I am happy to acknowledge the possibility that I have overlooked other, and better, objections either to this premise or to one of the others, or that I have underestimated the strength of one of the objections I have considered, I suspect that most us will be unwilling simply to assume that I have, and will thus be forced, at least until a better argument comes along, to conclude that all three of parfit’s premises are true, that the conclusion follows from the premises, and that the conclusion is unacceptable. In short, this leaves us back at the beginning.

So let us go back to the beginning. I began by having you suppose that you were given the power to determine what life on earth would look

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like at some point in the future, and were forced to choose between two possible future populations, A and B. I then asked which of these two outcomes you thought would be better. I want now to ask a different question: which do you think would be the morally better one to choose? This second question concerns the same set of choices as the first, but has as its subject of evaluation, not the competing states of affairs themselves, but rather the possible actions of choosing one over the other. If your response to the initial set of questions was first to endorse the Original Assessment and then to affirm Pi-P3, however, it is difficult to see how you could avoid affirming a parallel set of answers to the second set. You will, that is, initially endorse what I will call the

New Original Assessment: choosing A is morally better than choosing B

And will then be led to affirm what I will call

Pi’: choosing A+ is not morally worse than choosing A P2’: choosing Divided B is morally better than choosing A+ P3’: choosing Divided B is morally equal to choosing B

All of the considerations which I marshalled in favor of the Original As- sessment and Pi-P3, after all, would seem equally to apply here. The New Original Assessment embodies the idea that, to the extent that producing happiness is morally good, it is morally better to produce more happiness for people rather than more people for happiness. You can reject Pi’ only by thinking that it would be morally better to choose that the extra, reasonably happy people in A+ never existed. You can reject P2’ only by thinking either (a) that it would be morally better to choose a world with one group of very happy people and another group of somewhat happy people, than a world with one group a little less happy than the very happy people and another group substantially happier than the somewhat happy people; or (b) that choosing the two worlds would be morally equal. And you can reject P3’ only by thinking that it is morally better to choose one of two populations over the other when both contain precisely the same number of people with the same degree of happiness.

Each premise seems as secure as its counterpart in the original argument. But if all three are true, it seems plainly to follow that

C‘: choosing B is not morally worse than choosing A.


And since this conclusion is inconsistent with the New Original Assess- ment, we are again confronted with paradox. Since Parfit’s paradox arose from comparative judgments about the goodness of states of affairs and this one arises from comparative judgments about which of two actions is the one that you ought to choose, I will refer to the original paradox as the Goodness Paradox and this new one as the Oughtness Paradox. The Oughtness Paradox, like the Goodness Paradox, presupposes neither that utilitarianism is true9 nor that ethics can be fully severed from real-life concerns. And the arguments of Hurka and Locke which fail to resolve the Goodness Paradox fail to resolve the Oughtness Paradox for parallel reasons. But there is one important difference between the two: the Oughtness Paradox can be solved.

The structure of my solution to the Oughtness Paradox is as follows: I propose first to demonstrate that the argument from Pi’-P3’ to C‘ is not valid and then to argue that the revision required to render it valid also renders it unsound. In doing so, I will argue that the attempt to construct a parallel solution to the Goodness Paradox is unsuccessful, so that we are left with the Oughtness Paradox resolved but with the Good-

9. The argument for this claim differs from the argument for the claim that Parfit’s argument need not presuppose utilitarianism. In the case of Parfit’s paradox, it suffices to note that a nonutilitarian can (and is likely to) agree that some states of affairs are better than others. But in the case of the Oughtness Paradox, it may seem that we need to assume more than this, not merely that A+ would be no worse than B and so on, but that it is always morally better to choose the better state of affairs. And that would render the Oughtness Paradox, unlike the Goodness Paradox, a problem for utilitarians only, since those who believe in deontological constraints will accept the goodness premises but then reject some of the corresponding oughtness premises. But this is not so. For we could simply stipulate that there is a route from the present to A, to A+ and to B none of which involve any violations of such constraints. Perhaps each would be the result of different rates of population growth and natural resource depletion, none of which would involve treating anyone in a way that violated a deontological restriction (no promise breakings, no killings of innocent people, etc.). In this case, even the anti-utilitarian would have to be troubled by the problem. In order to escape the force of the paradox, one would have to believe not only that it is morally better to observe these constraints than to violate them even when violating them produces better outcomes, but that all choices which respect these constraints are morally equal. One would have to believe, that is, that as long as we respect the rules, it is just as morally good for us to aim to produce A as it is to produce B or 2. But very few of us are likely to hold this view; even those who believe strongly in deontological constraints are likely to view them as constraints within which it is still morally better to aim to produce better outcomes. So even if we are strongly anti-utilitarian in this sense, we still owe the Oughtness Paradox a response.

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ness Paradox still unresolved. I will then conclude by arguing that the solution to the Oughtness Paradox nonetheless deprives the Goodness Paradox of its moral significance.

Before presenting my solution to the Oughtness Paradox, however, I want to make three emendations in its presentation. The first modifica- tion is motivated by the following consideration about Pi’ (though it applies equally to Pi of the Goodness Paradox): I suspect that in both cases, a good number of people will think that an even stronger claim is warranted, and will be inclined to accept that A+ is not only not worse than A (or that choosing A+ is not only not morally worse than choosing A), but is actually better (or that choosing it is morally better). Of course, some people who would find A+ to be better than A in these senses might do so because they hold that having more worthwhile lives or more total happiness always makes a state of affairs (or the choice to produce it morally) better, and they would then find the conclusion that B is better than A (and that Z is better than either) unobjectionable. But my impression is that many people who think A+ to be better than A do not think this; they believe that when all else is equal (as in the choice between A and the left-hand column of A+) the extra worthwhile lives point in favor of the larger population while still resisting the claim that B (or choosing B) is not worse than A (a choice in which all else is not equal in this sense).lO Since my solution to the Oughtness Paradox turns on the claim that the argument’s conclusion does not follow from its premises, I want for the sake of the argument to grant the stronger version of Pi. In granting the stronger version, I should make clear, I do not mean to be endorsing it, or even the claim that it is the more plausible of the two versions of Pi. My reason for granting it is simply that a response to the Paradox which attempts to show that the conclusion does not follow from the premises but which assumes for the sake of the argument only the weaker version of the premise will be unsatisfactory to those who think we should accept the stronger version and still wish to resist the conclusion.

The second emendation stems from the fact that my proposal does not quarrel with the role that P3’ plays in the argument. It may therefore help to simplify the discussion if we grant that we can substitute “B” for

10. This is my impression from having discussed earlier versions of this article with a number of people and from having presented Parfit’s paradox to students in a few ethics courses.


“Divided B” in P2’. The third emendation stems from the fact that once Pi‘ is revised, a stronger conclusion is warranted: not merely that choosing B is not morally worse than choosing A, but that choosing B is morally better than choosing A. As a result of these modifications, we can represent the argument for (the revised) C‘ as follows:

PI’: choosing A+ is morally better than choosing A P2’: choosing B is morally better than choosing A+; therefore C’: choosing B is morally better than choosing A

It is plain that if this argument is invalid then the original formulation of the argument is invalid as well, and since this formulation is simpler and embodies the stronger version of W, I will refer primarily to it in what follows. Parfit, in fact, provides a version of the argument for the Goodness Paradox that permits us to pass over the role of Divided B as well. In this version, A+ is simply A plus a population of deaf people whose lives are well worth living though not as good as the lives of the hearing people, and B is the result of the deaf people’s having their deafness cured at some lesser cost to the others (p. 155). So we can also condense the argument for the Goodness Paradox to

Pi: A+ is not worse than A Pz: B is better than A+; therefore C: B is not worse than A

I want to follow that example both in introducing my solution to the Oughtness Paradox and in explaining why my solution fails to resolve the Goodness Paradox.

Let me begin by making explicit the structural identity of the two arguments: both involve moving from a set of pairwise comparisons that evaluate x and y, and y and z with respect to some relationship R, to a pairwise comparison of x and z with respect to R. And in both cases, the comparisons that constitute the premises of the argument seem extremely difficult to resist. If you are like most people, your response to the considerations I briefly presented on their behalf was to endorse them. But now notice that in assenting to such pairwise comparisons, you mean to be affirming one claim, but it can be unclear which claim it is. In agreeing that some relation R obtains between x and y, one might mean to be agreeing that the relation R obtains between x and y regard- less of whether or not there are any further possibilities. Or, one might


mean to be agreeing only that the relation obtains between x and y provided that there are no further possibilities. Let us call these the unrestricted and restricted senses, respectively.

Now perhaps you already had this distinction between the restricted and unrestricted sense clearly in mind when you considered the pairwise comparisons the first time around. But I suspect that you did not. The presentation of the choices in isolation from one another can encourage the idea that, say, when you are comparing A and A+, you are looking at the only two possible outcomes. And if you are thinking in this way and express a preference for, say, A+, you will not be thinking about whether your assessment is contingent on the assumption you were tacitly making, that there were no other possible outcomes. And indeed, in Pafit’s presentation of the deafness example, this feature of the situation is made explicit. When Parfit describes the case for thinking that A+ would not be worse than A, the condition of deafness is stipulated to be an example of “some handicap which cunnotbe cured” (p. 155, emphasis added). This has the effect, at least when the example is imported into the Oughtness Paradox,” of seeming to render A and A+ the only two possible outcomes. Either the extra people will not exist in the first place (A), or they will exist and have this condition (A+), but there is no way for the extra people to exist and be cured at some lesser cost to the others (B). In urging us to agree that B would be better than A+, on the other hand, the condition is now said to be curable “at some lesser cost to the other group” (p. 155). This has the effect, when applied to the Oughtness Paradox, of apparently rendering A+ and B as the only possibilities. Either these people will have this condition (A+) or they will have been cured of it at some lesser cost to the rest (B), but they will exist either way (so that A is not a possible outcome).

For some sorts of relations, of course, the distinction between the

11. In Parfit’s example, the claim that the deafness is incurable is introduced for a different reason: to preclude the concern that the inequality in A+ might be the result of social injustice. Even when the claims are placed in the context of the original Goodness Para- dox, however, I suspect that this feature of the story (though unintentionally) encourages the reader to think of each pairwise claim as a claim about the relative goodness of the only two outcomes that could have occurred. When you are told that the deafness is incurable and are asked whether it would have been better if these extra people had never existed, the fact that the deafness is incurable encourages the thought that their not having existed is the only possible alternative to their having existed with their deafness. This extra assumption is not a sound one, but it seems to be a natural one nonetheless.


restricted and unrestricted sense in which a pairwise comparison can be affirmed is clearly irrelevant. If you have agreed that Larry is taller than Moe, your judgment will not be affected by the discovery that although Curly is shorter than Larry he might have been taller than him. But it is not obvious that this is so for all relations. And for those relations to which the distinction proves relevant, if we have reason to assent to the premises only in the restricted sense, then the argument will prove invalid. We cannot move from the truth of the premises in the restricted sense to the conclusion in either sense. My suggestion, then, is this: we may be able to account for the sense in which the premises initially seem compelling by assenting to them in the restricted sense only. We should therefore begin by assenting to both the premises and the New Original Assessment only in the restricted sense and then ask whether we have reason to resist the move to the unrestricted sense. If we do, then we have reason to resist a move that is needed in order to generate the paradox

Suppose, then, that I use the deafness example so understood to mo- tivate the Oughtness Paradox In that case, I will convince you that it would be morally better to choose the population that includes the in- curably deaf people over the population that does not, and that it would be morally better to create the population where the deafness has been cured at some small cost to the rest over the one where it has not been cured, provided that you assume in each case that there is no third possible outcome. But if you are initially led to assent to the premises of the argument in the restricted sense only, then in order for the argument generating the Oughtness Paradox to be valid, it will have to contain an additional premise, namely:

when choosing between bringing about one of two future populations, if choosing x is morally better than choosing y when x and yare the only possible outcomes, and choosing y is morally better than choosing z when y and z are the only possible outcomes, then choosing x is morally better than choosing z when x and z are the only possible outcomes.

This premise asserts, in effect, that the relation “is a morally better population to choose,” like the relation “is taller than,” is transitive when understood as a two-term predicate. As long as the relation obtains between A and B, and between B and C, that is, we may conclude that it obtains between A and C. Let us call this the Oughtness Transitivity


Axiom. If we assent to the premises in the restricted sense only, then the assumption that this axiom of transitivity is true is necessary to generate the Oughtness Paradox. It is needed to ensure that in committing our- selves to the claims that choosing B is morally better than choosing A+ and that choosing A+ is morally better than choosing A (P2’ and Pi’), we are truly committed to the conclusion, that choosing B is morally better than choosing A, which contradicts our New Original Assessment (that choosing A is morally better than choosing B). Without this Oughtness Transitivity Axiom, the argument from the premises in the restricted sense is invalid. With the Axiom, it is valid. But is it sound? The question now becomes: is the Oughtness Transitivity Axiom true?

Before attempting to answer this question, let me briefly consider how this analysis would apply to the Goodness Paradox. Again, you will start by assenting to the premises in the restricted sense only: you will say that the A+ world with the deaf people is not worse than the A world without them, at least if those are the only two possible worlds, and that the B world where the curably deaf people have been cured at some lesser cost to the others is better than the A+ world where they have not, at least if those are the only two possible worlds. And you will again conclude that if you assent to the premises in the restricted sense only, the argument generating the paradox will need an additional premise in order to be valid. In this case, what I will (although a bit misleadingly)’* call the Goodness Transitivity Axiom:

when evaluating the relative goodness of two possible future populations, if x would not be worse than y when x and y are the only possible outcomes, and y would better than z when y and z are the only possible outcomes, then x would not be worse than z when x and z are the only possible outcomes.

This premise asserts, in effect, that the relation “is a better population than,” like the relation “is taller than,” is transitive when understood as a two-term predicate.

12. This is slightly misleading, since the principle does not identify a single relation and then claim that if the relation obtains between x and y and between y and z then it also obtains between x and z. Rather, it identifies two distinct relations and then claims that if the first obtains between x and y and the second obtains between y and z, then the first also obtains between x and z. Still, this is the claim that plays the role in the Goodness Paradox that is parallel to the role that the Oughtness Transitivity Axiom plays in the Oughtness Paradox, and it will simplify the discussion if this parallel is reflected in their names.


Now there may be a reason to reject the Goodness Transitivity Axiom, but I am certainly not prepared to offer one. It is difficult to make sense of the claim that how good a state of affairs is can depend on what other states of affairs might have obtained instead.m And assuming that the Goodness Transitivity Axiom is true, it turns out not to matter if one initially assents to the premises of the Goodness Paradox in the restricted sense only. If you agreed that A+ would not be worse than A but were assuming that these were the only possible outcomes, the fact that B was in fact also a possible outcome will be unable to influence your judgment. In short, if the Goodness Transitivity Axiom is true, then if you assent to the premises in the restricted sense you are committed to accepting them in the unrestricted sense, and if you are committed to accepting them in the unrestricted sense then you are committed to accepting the conclusion. And so the distinction between the restricted and unrestricted sense will fail to resolve the paradox.

But what about the Oughtness Transitivity Axiom? If the Oughtness Transitivity Axiom is false, then assenting to the premises of the argument in the restricted sense does not commit us to accepting them in the unrestricted sense, and if there is reason to believe that the axiom is false, this reason will show why we should refrain from accepting them in the unrestricted sense. I want now to argue that the Oughtness Transitivity Axiom is, in fact, false, but I will do so indirectly I will propose a moral principle for choice in cases such as those we have been considering the acceptance of which would entail that it is false. I want first to articulate the principle in question and to establish that ifthe principle is accepted, then while choosing B would be morally better than choosing A+ where these are’the only two possible outcomes, and choosing A+ would be morally better than choosing A when these are the only two possible outcomes, it nonetheless is not the case that choosing B would be morally better than choosing A when these are the only two possible outcomes, so that the Oughtness Transitivity Axiom turns out to be false and we thus have no reason to abandon our New Original Assessment. I will then address the question of whether we should accept the principle in the first place. I propose

The Population Choice Principle: when choosing between bringing about one of two future populations, x and y, you should: (1) first,

13. See Reasons and Persons, p. -9. Though see Temkin’s articles discussed below.

286 Philosophy G Public Afsairs

determine for each population what would result if it were to subsequently distribute its given resources in the most moral way available to it; call these the resulting states, x, and y,; (2) second, determine which of the two resulting states it would be morally better for you to choose if you were choosing between bringing about xr and yr, with the understanding that (i) these were the only possible outcomes and (iilthese would be the final outcomes; (3) third, choose the initial population that corresponds to the resulting state which you would choose if you were choosing from among the resulting states.

Let us begin by supposing that we accept this principle, and by asking what it would say about the choice between A and A+, where A+ would contain A plus an added population of people with some condition that diminishes their level of happiness but still leaves them with lives well worth living. There are two different scenarios, one in which the condition in A+ would be incurable and one in which it would be curable. Let us begin with the latter.

We begin by asking, for each of our two available choices, what the result would be if our chosen population subsequently distributed its resources in the most moral way available to it. If we create A, and that population distributes its resources in the most moral way available to it, it will apparently remain A. After all, everyone in A is equally happy, and there is no reason to think that a small cost to some would create a larger benefit to others. So from the standpoint both of total (and average) utility and of equality, A would be right to remain A. If we create A+, and that population distributes its resources in the most moral way available to it, it will become B. The people without the condition will sacrifice some of their surplus wealth to finance surgery for the affected people, and this will represent an improvement both in terms of equality and in terms of total (and average) utility. One need not believe that doing so would be morally obligatory, to agree that it would be morally better than not doing so. So if each population does the morally best available to it, A will remain A and A+ will become B.

We now ask which of these two resulting states, A and B, it would be morally better to choose to bring about if we were instead choosing between them with the understanding that these were the only two possible outcomes and that they would represent the final results that

287 Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow

would persist on into the future. According to our New Original Assess- ment, choosing A is morally better than choosing B when those are the only two possible outcomes, since everyone in A is better off than everyone in B. So choosing the resulting state that corresponds to A (that is, A) is better than choosing the resulting state that corresponds to A+ (that is, is better than choosing B). The Population Choice Princi- ple directs us to choose the population that corresponds to the resulting state which it would be morally better to choose, and so according to the Principle, we would be right to choose A over A+ in this case.

'Iko possible concerns merit attention at this stage of the argument. The first is this: the argument from the Population Choice Principle requires that we be able to determine which of two possible resulting states it would be morally better for us to choose to bring about. In particular, it requires that we agree that it would be morally better to bring about A rather than B if those were the only two possible outcomes. It requires, in short, that we accept the New Original Assessment in the restricted sense. A question then naturally arises: what is the justification for this claim? There would seem to be two possibilities. One is that we could appeal to the claim that it would be morally better to bring about A rather than B because doing so would be bringing about a better state of affairs. If that were the claim, then my approach could not solve the Oughtness Paradox without first solving the Goodness Par- adox, since the Goodness Paradox itself threatens to undermine the claim that B is a better state of affairs than A, and I have already con- ceded that my approach cannot solve the Goodness Paradox. So this possibility is unacceptable. The other possibility would be to advance an independent reason for thinking it better to bring about A than B, a reason that does not lend itself to the trap of the Goodness Paradox. And what could that reason be?

I think there is a simple answer here: the reason that we are entitled to maintain the New Original Assessment at this stage of the argument is that we have not yet been given a reason to reject it. We began by finding the assessment to be a natural one in virtue of the idea that to the extent that actions are morally better for their producing more happiness, they are better when they produce more happiness for people rather than when they produce more people for happiness. The reason that this appeal might seem inadequate for our purposes here is that it


initially seemed that we could appeal to the same sort of consideration as a justification for the old Original Assessment, the claim that A was a better state of affairs than B, and yet that claim proved to be strikingly difficult to maintain. And so we might think it an inadequate reason for thinking that choosing A is morally better than choosing B as well.

But that reason was a good reason for thinking that A is a better state of affairs than B, and it remains a good reason. We are prevented from assenting to the first Original Assessment in the end only because we find that if we assent to it in the restricted sense, then unless we are willing to reject the Goodness Transitivity Axiom, we must also assent to it in the unrestricted sense, and once we do this with the claims about A and A+ and about A+ and B we seem forced to accept a conclusion that undermines it. But the case is different with the New Original Assess- ment, the claim that choosing A is morally better than choosing B. We begin with a good reason for embracing this claim in the restricted sense and then ask if we are comparably forced to accept it in the unrestricted sense. My claim, so far, is that we are not forced to accept it in the unrestricted sense if we reject the Oughtness Transitivity Axiom, and that we can reject the Oughtness Transitivity Axiom if we accept the Population Choice Principle. The claim, in short, is that accepting the Population Choice Principle is precisely what allows us to preserve our initial affirmation of the New Original Assessment. And so there is nothing unreasonable about appealing to that assessment in determining how the Population Choice Principle would direct us to choose in the case of a particular pair of populations.

But suppose this response to the objection is rejected. There is a second and distinct argument in favor of the claim that we can conclude that choosing A is morally better than choosing B without first resolving the Goodness Paradox. My first argument maintained, in effect, that you can conclude that choosing A is morally better than choosing B despite the fact that the Goodness Paradox remains unresolved. This second argument maintains that you can conclude that choosing A is morally better than choosing B because the Goodness Paradox remains unresolved. The argument runs as follows: so long as the Goodness Paradox remains unresolved, you cannot determine whether Parfit’s argument for C is sound or unsound, and so cannot determine whether it is true that A is a better state of affairs than B or false that A is a better state of affairs than B. But in neither case do you have reason to suppose that


it will turn out that A is a worse state of affairs than B. Parfit explicitly rejects the claim that his argument would show that A is worse than B. So even with the paradox unresolved, you can conclude that A is either better than or not better than but not worse than B. As a result, if you choose A, you can be certain that you are not choosing the worse state of affairs, while if you choose B, you know that you are choosing what might turn out to be the worse state of affairs. And if you choose B, you can be certain that you are not choosing the better state of affairs, while if you choose A, you know that you are choosing what might turn out to be the better state of affairs. The first consideration alone might well suffice to warrant the conclusion that choosing A is morally better than choosing B, since it seems quite plausible to suppose that in such cases of uncertainty one should appeal to a kind of maximin principle by which one makes the choice with the best worst-case outcome. But even if the first consideration is taken to be insufficient, when conjoined with the second consideration, the case seems to me to be compelling: the choice with the best worst-case outcome is also the choice with the best best-case outcome. Either Parfit’s argument for C is mistaken or it is not mistaken. Given that you cannot determine which, you have good moral reason to choose A over B and, so far as I can see, no good moral reason to choose B over A. What could be said in favor of making the choice that may turn out to be worse and at best will turn out only to be not worse? So long as the Goodness Paradox remains unresolved, then, you can confidently conclude that choosing A is morally better than choosing B.

The second concern to note at this stage of the argument is this: I have said that I am attempting to construct a solution to the Oughtness Par- adox which begins by assuming that its premises are true and then tries to show that its conclusion does not follow from them. But in saying that it would be morally better to choose A over A+ in the case where the condition in A+ is curable, it might be thought that I am reneging on this claim by urging that we go back and reject PI’ after all, since Pf says that choosing A+ is morally better than choosing A. But this is not so. The claim that it would be morally better to choose A over A+ in the case where the condition in A+ is curable is perfectly consistent with our initial acceptance of PI’. For we were initially led to accept W, on my account, by accepting it in the restricted sense. We agreed that choosing A+ is morally better than choosing A when those are the only two possible outcomes. And when the condition in A+ is curable, A and A+ are not


the only two possible outcomes. B is still a possible future population even if we are only being asked to provide a relative ranking of choosing A and choosing A+. And on the Population Choice Principle, this fact about the possibility of B makes a difference to the relative ranking of choosing A and choosing A+.

To see this more clearly, let us now consider what the Population Choice Principle would say about the choice between A and A+ where these really are the only two possible outcomes. Suppose we are choosing between A and A+ where the condition in A+ is instead incurable so that there truly is no possibility of one group making a small sacrifice to provide a large benefit for the other. In that case, in asking what the corresponding resulting states would look like, we would conclude that A would remain A and A+ would remain A+, since neither could act to improve overall equality and utility. And since our initial acceptance of Pi’ said that choosing A+ is morally better than choosing A if those are the only possible outcomes, the Population Choice Principle would in this case direct us to choose A+ over A.

This feature of the Population Choice Principle can be further illumi- nated by comparing the solution it offers to the Oughtness Paradox with a spurious solution which might be offered to the Goodness Paradox. In tackling Parfit’s original paradox, it is often tempting to slip into a mode of thinking which ultimately amounts to the claim that a given premise of the argument must be rejected on the grounds that it is incompatible with the other two. And that, of course, could be said equally of all three premises.l4 When arguing in this way, one ends up, for example, appealing to the claim that B would be an improvement over A+ (P2) and the claim that B would nonetheless be worse than A (Original Assessment), and uses them to justify the conclusion that A+ would in fact be worse than A (that is, that Pi is false). And if that is the argument, then the argument could just as well accept the claim that B is better than A+ (Pz) and the claim that A+ is not worse than A (Pi) and use them to justify the conclusion that B is not in fact worse than A (that is, that the Original Assessment is false).

This objection is certainly telling against any such approach to the Goodness Paradox. But it is important to see that it does not apply to the solution proposed here to the Oughtness Paradox. The objection would

14. See Reasons and Persons, p. 428.


be telling if the argument claimed that A+ is worse than A because even when A+ is made better by being made into B it is still not as good as A is. But the argument does not claim that B is better than A+ and that A is better than B so that A is better than A+. It does not even claim that A is better than A+. The argument claims that whether or not it is right to chooseA+ over A depends on whether or not it will be possible for A+ to do the morally better thing by becoming B. It is not that the level of goodness of A+ itself changes according to these variables, but rather that the rightness of choosing it does. Choosing A+ when the affliction is curable places the better off group in a position in which they suffer losses by doing the morally better thing, while choosing A+ when the affliction is incurable does not place them in such a position. To distinguish between the two cases, as the Population Choice Principle does, is to maintain that the fact that one choice would place people in a position in which they are made less well off by doing the morally better thing tells against that choice. Since this is the way that the argument functions, it is not subject to the claim that it could equally be used to generate an alternative argument for choosing B over A (and thus aban- doning our New Original Assessment). In choosing between A and A+, there is a possibility that A+ can redistribute its resources to become B only because the population size is the same in A+ and B. But in choosing between A and B, the prospects are different. A cannot redistribute its resources to become A+ since A+ is twice as populous as A, so that it is consistent with accepting p1’ to maintain that in this case A does right to remain A. We could ask of B whether it could become A+: could it impose serious costs on one half so that the other half could enjoy modest additional benefits? But we will presumably agree with Pz’ that it would not be morally better to do so even if it could. So A would be right to remain A and B would be right to remain B, and this is consistent with accepting both PI’ and P2’ and the New Original Assessment that choosing A is better than choosing B. And since this is so, the Population Choice Principle endorses the choice of A over B and cannot, as the objection would maintain, be manipulated into endorsing the choice of B over A.

According to the Population Choice Principle, then, choosing A+ is morally better than choosing A when these are the only two possible outcomes, but choosing A is nonetheless morally better than choosing A+ when B is also a possible outcome. And thus, if we accept the Princi- ple, we can see how merely adding extra, reasonably happy people can


be worse from the moral point of view. If the condition of the extra people is curable, then their addition to A makes choosing the population containing them morally worse than choosing the population not containing them by rendering the resulting state that corresponds to the population after the addition a morally worse choice than the resulting state that corresponded to it before the addition. And by showing how we can consistently retain our belief in our New Original Assessment: that choosing A is morally better than choosing B when those are the only two possible outcomes, while continuing to agree with Pi’: that choosing A+ would be morally better than choosing A if those were the only possible outcomes, and with P2’: that choosing B would be morally better than choosing A+ if those were the only possible outcomes, we can conclude that the Oughtness Transitivity Axiom is false. The relation “is a morally better population to choose than,” on this account, is not transitive when understood as a two-term predicate. Rather, it is transitive only when understood as part of a three-term predicate where the third term represents the set of possible future populations. If x, y, and z are all possible future populations contained in the set S (which may or may not include still other possible future populations) , that is, then if choosing x is morally better than choosing y given S and choosing y is morally better than choosing z given S, then choosing x is morally better than choosing z given S, But this sort of transitivity is insufficient to generate the Oughtness Paradox since, as I have argued, we are led to assent to the comparative premises necessary for generating it by failing to distinguish between the restricted and the unrestricted senses in which they can be asserted, and this amounts precisely to failing to hold the background set of possible outcomes constant. We can retain all of the beliefs we initially found compelling without accepting the conclusion we found repelling. The Oughtness Paradox is therefore dis- solved.

V

But all of this, of course, is ifwe accept the Population Choice Principle. And we may well respond by wondering whether we should accept it.

Let me begin by saying that I do not believe that I need to provide any independent reason for accepting the principle in order to conclude that the Oughtness Paradox has been solved, as long as there is no rea-


son to think the principle is itself paradoxical or for some other reason unacceptable. For the Oughtness Paradox to resist solution, we must be convinced that as long as we accept Pi’ and P2’, we must reject our New Original Assessment. And I have shown that this is not so. We can consistently maintain the truth of PI’ and P2’ and of our New Original As- sessment, so long as we are willing to accept the Population Choice Principle. If the claim generated by the appearance of paradox is that our initial set of views cannot be rendered coherent, and if the Popula- tion Choice Principle is not itself paradoxical or absurd, then that claim has already been shown to be false.

In addition, and relatedly, the fact that accepting the Population Choice Principle enables us to reconcile PI’ and P2’ with our New Orig- inal Assessment seems itself to count as a strong reason for accepting the principle. That is, we can view my argument to this point as a defense of the Population Choice Principle by reductio ad absurdurn. The principle is at the very least not an absurd one, and its denial seems to entail an absurd conclusion, that either Pi’, P2’, or our New Original Assessment is false. Indeed, once we make explicit the fact that the va- lidity of the argument depends on what I have called the Oughtness Transitivity Axiom, we can simply recast the Oughtness Paradox in a new light, not as an argument which shows that choosing B is morally better than choosing A, but rather as an argument which shows that we should reject the view that the relation “is a morally better population to choose than” is a transitive two-term predicate.

I take it that these considerations establish a strong presumption in favor of resolving the paradox by appeal to this principle. And I also believe that the principle itself possesses a degree of prima facie plausibility since the principle it embodies-the claim that the fact that one choice would place people in a position in which they are made less well off by doing the morally better thing tells against that choice-seems itself to be independently plausible. I do not, therefore, think that I need to offer any further defense of the principle that arises from independent considerations, and am not at all confident that I can do so in any event. The only question that remains, then, is whether there is sufficient independent reason to reject it.

One reason for being dubious of the Population Choice Principle might be precisely that it poses a threat to the unrestricted transitivity of evaluative pairwise judgments. If the undermining of transitivity


which the principle brings about itself produces unacceptable consequences, then these consequences will serve as the absurdurn part of a reductio objection to the principle itself. It is precisely at this point, though, that it is important to emphasize how narrow are the implications of the principle with respect to transitivity of normative judgments generally, and perhaps the best way to do this is to compare the analysis I have proposed of the Oughtness Paradox with the one that Larry S. Temkin has offered of Parfit’s original paradox. There are (at least) three important differences between Temkin’s analysis and the one I have defended here. First, while my analysis rests on a claim about the transitivity of judgments of the form “is a morally better choice than,” Temkin’s suggestion rests on a claim about the transitivity of judgments of the more general form of “is better than.” Second, while my analysis identifies a reason to question the transitivity of a particular and idio- syncratic class of such judgments, those concerning choices about which of two future populations it would be morally better to choose to bring about, Temkin’s approach focuses on the entire class of judgments. Third, while I have based my suggested solution on the limited claim that this particular relation is transitive as a three-term but not a two-term predicate, Temkin’s suggestion is that one could solve Parfit’s original paradox by accepting the much more radical claim that “the notion of ‘better than’-indeed, even the notion of ‘all things considered better than’ is not a transitive relation.”ls

Now Temkin’s defense of this solution to Parfit’s paradox does include an argument in defense of the thesis that “all things considered better than” is not a transitive relation. And he has more recently produced a further argument in defense of this thesis, which mentions Parfit’s paradox only in passing.’6 But as Temkin himself acknowledges, the claim that “all things considered better than” is not a transitive relation strikes many people as “wildly counterintuitive,” if not simply in- coherent. And accepting the claim, as he emphasizes, “will not only threaten the possibility of arriving at a coherent approach for ranking

15. Larry S. Temkin, “Intransitivity and the Mere Addition Paradox,” Philosophy E. Pub- lic Affuairs 16, no. 2 (Spring 1987): 138.

16. See Temkin, “A Continuum Argument for Intransitivity,” PhiZosophy G. Public Affairs 25, no. 3 (Summer 1996): 175-210, esp. sec. 111. The Mere Addition Paradox is mentioned at pp. 188-89.


outcomes, it may threaten the notion of rationality itself.”l7 While Temkin is surely correct to insist that these facts cannot by themselves establish that the claim is false, they do nonetheless suggest that his solution to Parfit’s paradox comes with a very high price. It permits us to avoid the counterintuitive conclusion that Parfit has identified only if we are willing to accept the range of counterintuitive implications that Temkin would have us embrace. And this suggests that accepting Temkin’s solution to the paradox may amount to little more than trading one paradox for another.

The merits of Temkin’s arguments against the transitivity of “all things considered better than” must remain beyond the scope of this article. But even if one agrees that he has provided a surprisingly force- ful defense of his thesis, it is surely important to ask whether accepting it is necessary in order to resolve the Oughtness Paradox. And the Pop- ulation Choice Principle shows that is is not. The reason is this: if we say that the Population Choice Principle makes a claim about which choices are “all things considered” morally better than others, then its claim is that one of the “things” that must be included in the “all things considered” is precisely the question of what sort of foundation each provides for the further future. The existence of yet other possible alternatives is thus relevant to the evaluation of which population it would be morally better to choose, but it is relevant for a reason that is peculiar to the kind of choice we are making: it is because we are trying to make a decision that has an effect on all future generations and are asking which would be better morally speaking. And since the answer to the question of what sort of foundation A+ provides for the further future depends on whether or not B is also a possible future, whether or not B is a possible future is relevant to whether choosing A+ is, “all things considered” morally better than choosing A. The limited claim about transitivity im- plied by the Population Choice Principle, then, does not generate the sort of strongly counterintuitive results that Temkin’s suggested more general rejection of transitivity of normative judgments does (or at least seems to do). And at the same time, the limited claim about transitivity which I have defended avoids the counterintuitive results we would be stuck with if we made no such claim at all and treated the relation “is

17. Temkin, “Continuum Argument,” pp. 175, 178.


a morally better population to choose than” as a transitive two-term predicate, since that would force us to abandon both our New Original Assessment and (more disturbingly) the common-sense view that in such cases as the choice between A and B we should aim to create more happiness for people rather than more people for happiness.

A second objection that might be raised runs as follows: the Popula- tion Choice Principle seems to embody a kind of “maximax” principle of reasoning, in which one supposes that when making a decision under conditions of uncertainty one should pick the option that has the best best-case outcome. And this kind of principle is unsound. Consider, the critic may say, the parent who wants to make the right decision about which of two distributions of goods he should leave for his only child. Distribution 1 would be better for his child than Distribution 2, assuming that the child would immorally hoard whatever he was given, but for some reason Distribution 2 would be better for him than Distribution 1 if in each case the child took the distribution and did the morally better thing with it. A principle that was maximax in the sense that the Popula- tion Choice Principle seems to be would have the parent choose Distri- bution 2 since this would produce the better result if the child did the morally better thing. In particular, it would leave no room to take into account the probability that he actually will do the morally better thing. And this can seem irrational. If the odds of the boy spending his money in the morally better way are low enough, then this would seem to tip the scales in favor of Distribution 1. And so similary, the critic will argue, we should not choose A over A+ if we are sufficiently confident that A+ will in fact remain A+, since we have already agreed that we would choose A+ over A if those were the only two possible outcomes.

This objection is certainly tempting, but it seems to me to rest on a confusion between doing the best thing for your child and doing the morally right thing with respect to your child. It may well be the case that if you are quite confident that your child will turn out to be a louse you can make his life go better for him by setting things up differently from the way that would make things go best for him if he turns out not to be a louse. And I cannot deny that in such a case there may be a strong temptation for a parent to do so. But it is not at all obvious that it would be right to do so, since doing so would seem to reward the child for doing the morally worse thing or to punish him for doing the morally better thing, and setting things up for him in this way seems itself anti-


thetical to the principles of morality. I cannot claim that this constitutes a definitive rebuttal to the claim that one would be morally right to choose Distribution 1 for one’s child. And if one is willing to accept what seems to me the dubious claim that this would be the morally right way to proceed in the case of the child, then one could indeed use this to support the claim that it would also be right in the case of the future populations, and this would count as a rebuttal and alternative to the Population Choice Principle. But then we would be saying something much less interesting than what we started with: not that we are forced to reject our New Original Assessment by the conjunction of a set of seemingly obvious premises, but rather that we would be forced to reject it by conjoining those premises with a further and much more con- troversial assumption.1*

A third objection might focus on the role that the resulting states play in the Population Choice Principle by registering the following complaint: we are not responsible for what future populations choose to do with their resources. We should simply make the best choice that is available to us and let them worry about the rest. But this objection is also misplaced. It is true that we are not responsible for the subsequent choices which our chosen future population makes or fails to make. But we are nonetheless responsible for more than just the level of well-being which they at that moment enjoy. For in choosing between A and A+ we determine not only their size and level of well-being, but also the constraints under which their subsequent choices about the future will be made. In taking these future choices into account, the Population Choice Principle does not presuppose that we are responsible for those choices; it presupposes only that we are responsible for determining whether or not the future population will be such that some of its members must incur harm in order to do the morally better thing. This is the sense in which the principle urges that, when thinking about our duties to future generations, we must think not just of what is now the future to us, but also of what will then be the future for them. It is because the future society will in turn have to make choices about its future that whether we should choose A or A+ can be influenced by whether or not B is also possible. And this seems reasonable: once we have decided that our moral deliberations should include the effects of our actions on fu-

18. In addition, the problem would now seem to remain only for utilitarians, since it is difficult to imagine a nonutilitarian defense of giving the child Distribution 1.


ture generations, it only makes sense that we should have the whole future in mind. In this sense, the independent motivation behind the principle is perhaps best captured in the refrain of the otherwise forget- table song from which this paper takes its title: once we decide that in our moral deliberations we should start thinking about tomorrow, we shouldn’t stop.

This way of trying to explicate the independent motivation for the Population Choice Principle may give rise to a final objection. For one might now complain that even if there is some independent plausibility to the ideal of not putting the future in a position in which doing the morally better thing requires a sacrifice by some of its members, the ideal’s weight should not be made so decisive. One can imagine exam- ples of choices between two future populations in which even though one and not the other would be such that some of its members would incur harm in making the morally better choice regarding their future, this would still be the morally better one for us to choose. If the Popula- tion Choice Principle yields the “wrong” answers in such cases, then this will count as a problem with the principle. And if the wrong answers are sufficiently implausible, this will count as a reason not simply for being unhappy with the principle, but for rejecting it.

Suppose, for example, you had to choose between A+ and what I will call A’, which contains a population the same size as in A, but at the level of happiness of the less happy people in A+, rather than the level of the more happy (so, in Parfit’s example, A’ contains only the deaf people rather than only the non-deaf people; see Figure 4, opposite). If A’ does the morally best it can do, it will remain A’, while if A+ does the morally best it can do, it will become B. The consideration against creating a population in which some of its members would incur harm in making the morally better choice about its future tells in favor of choosing A’ in this example, but surely it would be morally better to choose A+ over A‘. And if the Population Choice Principle directs us to choose A’ instead, this may well seem sufficiently absurd to warrant rejecting the principle: how could the addition of a population of non-deaf people to the population of the deaf ones make it a morally worse population to choose?

The implication that choosing A’ would be morally better than choosing A+ is surely extremely implausible, but it is not an implication of the Population Choice Principle. In choosing between A’ and A+, you will choose the population with the resulting state you would have chosen


A” A’” A A+ B

FIGURE 4

had you been choosing between the resulting states with the understanding that they were the only two possible outcomes, and since the resulting state of A‘ is A’ and the resulting state of A+ is B, and since it would uncontroversially be morally better to choose B over A’ if those were the only possible outcomes (B contains more people and happier people), the principle will direct you to choose A+. The fact that the principle involves comparing the resulting states, then, serves to place a limit on the weight that attaches to the consideration against putting people in a situation in which they incur harm for doing the morally better thing.

The same response would apply to the somewhat less problematic choice between A+ and what I will call A”. A” contains a population the same size as in A, at a level of happiness that is higher than that on the right-hand side of A+, but lower than in B. We could picture the people in A“ as having an ailment that diminishes happiness less than does deafness, but which is a burden greater than the burden that the hearing people in A+ would incur in order to cure the deaf people. Let us suppose they have some degree of asthma that makes this assessment reasonable. Again, since the resulting state for A+ (that is, B) would be morally better to choose than the resulting state for A” (that is, A again, more and happier people), the principle will direct you to choose A+. So even in the choice between a population with a less serious difficulty than deafness, the weighting of the principle will suffice to choose the


mixed population that is half healthy and half healthy and deaf, over the smaller uniform population that is asthmatic and hearing.

But now we do come to a problem case. For consider A'". Like A' and A", it has the same sized population as A and a level of happiness lower than in A. And like A , its level of happiness is greater than that on the right-hand side of A+. But unlike A", its level of happiness is alsc higher than that of B. So the people in A have some small burden which is less than the burden that will be borne by the hearing people in A+ if they cure the deaf people. Let us suppose that they have very minor cases of psoriasis, which the hearing people in A+ would reasonably consider a slighter burden than the cost to them of curing the deaf people. In this case, the Population Choice Principle will direct you to choose A'" over A+, to choose the smaller, uniform population with the psoriasis over the larger, mixed population with the healthy people plus the deaf people. And this should also seem implausible, since A+ contains not merely an extra population of reasonably happy deaf people on the right, but some extra happiness in the form of freedom from psoriasis for the already happy people on the left.

Of course, one might be tempted simply to restrict the scope of the principle at this point, so that it only applies to choices between a given distribution of happiness or the same distribution plus a further group. On this account, the consideration about there being costs to doing the morally better thing would only apply when all else was equal. One could then try to rig things so that when this proviso is not met, it is morally better to choose A+ over A'", while remaining morally better to choose A over A+. The problem with this move, though, is that it would allow us simply to generate a new version of the same paradox. For we would now be conceding that in the case where the deafness is curable, choosing A+ would be morally better than A"', and that choosing B would be morally better than choosing A+, and this would result in the conclusion that choosing B would be morally better than choosing A"', which is structurally identical to the claim that choosing B would be morally better than choosing A since both amount to choosing the population with more total happiness over the one with more average happiness.

So it seems to me that the proponent of the Population Choice Princi- ple will have to bite the bullet at this point. Is this an acceptable response? Let me begin by stating plainly that I do not like accepting it. I


would strongly prefer to discover a way to avoid the conclusion that the principle entails even that choosing A”’ would be morally better than choosing A+, or to find a way to modify the principle so that it could both avoid this implication and still resolve the paradox. But I have not been able to do so, nor do I see any other way to attack the paradox without a relevantly similar choice principle. So the question is not whether this implication of the principle is objectionable; it is objectionable. The question is whether it is sufficiently objectionable to warrant rejecting the principle, given that the alternative seems to be to continue to embrace a set of inconsistent propositions. And much as I would prefer not to face this choice, the answer seems to me to be no. The principle does not commit me to the view that A’” would be a better state of affairs than A+, nor does it commit me to the view that it would be morally better to choose A’ or A” over A+. Because of the role that resulting states play in the principle, the range of cases in which it is morally better to choose populations like A”‘ over A+ is substantially limited. And difficult as it may be to accept the existence even of this limited range of cases, it is not as difficult as it is to believe that a set of inconsistent claims are all true. Accepting the principle on these grounds in face of this example, moreover, does not amount to a reversion to the sort of reasoning I rejected in Section W, in which one claims that we should reject a given premise of the paradox because the alternative is embracing an inconsistent set of beliefs. The problem with that approach was that it could be said equally of all three premises. But that is not so in this case. The belief that I am asking us to reject is the belief that choosing A”’ would not be morally better than choosing A+ in the case where the condition of the extra people in A+ would be curable at some lesser cost to the others. That belief is not one of the premises of the original argument, and appealing as it is, it is not nearly as compelling as the belief that the premises of the original argument are true in the restricted sense. In addition, I am not suggesting that we reject this belief merely because it is inconsistent with those more compelling beliefs. I am suggesting that we reject it because its rejection is entailed by a principle which has independent plausibility and which, as a whole, does a better job of accommodating our considered beliefs than any available alternative of which I am aware. I conclude that if the Population Choice Principle is acceptable, then the Oughtness Paradox is solved, and that given the balance of considerations concerning the principle itself and

302 Philosophy G. Public Affairs

given the absence of even roughly equally plausible alternatives to it, accepting the Population Choice Principle is rationally preferable to rejecting it.

I began by presenting Parfit’s Mere Addition Paradox, by claiming that it is neither morally trivial nor utilitarian in scope, and by arguing that it has not to this point been satisfactorily resolved. I then presented a variation on that paradox, treating the original as the Goodness Paradox and the variant as the Oughtness Paradox. If my argument subsequent to that point has been successful, I have now demonstrated that this Oughtness Paradox can be solved.

Let us suppose that my solution to the Oughtness Paradox, or at least one that turns on a principle relevantly similar to the Population Choice Principle, is accepted. What is the significance of this for the paradox with which I began? One implication has already been identified: in principle, at least, my solution to the Oughtness Paradox reveals a possible solution to the Goodness Paradox. If one is willing to limit one’s assent to the premises of that argument to the restricted sense only, and to deny the truth of what I called the Goodness Transitivity Axiom, then one can claim to have found a way to sustain all of the premises of the argument and the Original Assessment without running into contradic- tion. But denying the transitivity of the relation “is a better outcome than” would require us to accept implications far more problematic than anything entailed by my Population Choice Principle, and would seem to me to amount to little more than trading one paradox in for another. So while I do not wish to deny that some version of this general approach might be made to yield some progress in solving the Goodness Paradox, I certainly do not wish to maintain it either.

But there is a more important implication than this, and one for which I do wish to argue. For even if we still cannot solve the Goodness Paradox, my solution to the Oughtness Paradox suggests that this inability is far less important than it initially seemed. In Section 11, I considered the complaint which urges that Parfit’s paradox is morally trivial because it is unrelated to our actual practical situation, I defended Parfit from this charge by arguing that it seemed reasonable to suppose that one set of social policies could be expected to leave the future a bit more


like A than like B, while another could be expected to leave the future a bit more like B than like A. I then said that “[m]ost of us would be initially inclined to think that the first set of policies would produce the better outcome, and to think that one outcome’s being better than the other in this sense would have to count for something in its favor in our moral deliberations.” And I said that as long as we think this, then we cannot avoid being troubled by the fact that Parfit’s argument apparently shows that the first outcome is not, in fact, better than the second.

Given the terminology I have used in discussing the two paradoxes, we can recast the two-part assumption I said that most of us would initially be inclined to accept as first making a goodness claim, that A is better than B, and then making a relevance claim about the relationship of a given goodness claim to its corresponding oughtness claim, that the belief that one outcome is better than another would have to count for something in favor of the conclusion that choosing it is morally better than choosing the other. Now my solution to the Oughtness Paradox does not affect the first of these two claims, since the first is a goodness claim. But it can help to undermine the second, since it is a claim about the relevance of goodness claims to oughtness claims. And the second claim is needed in order to rescue the Goodness Paradox from the charge that it is morally trivial. If that claim is rejected, then the relation between the claims which generate Parfit’s paradox on the one hand, and our practical situation on the other, is utterly severed.

Let me put it this way The problems we confront in thinking about our moral responsibilities to future generations are practical ones to the extent that they concern questions about what we ought to do. So in the case of the problem raised by Parfit’s paradox, the problem is practical to the extent that it concerns whether we ought to try to make the future look more like A or more like B. We would initially be inclined to suppose that the answer to this question would have to depend, at least in part, on the answer to a prior question: which of the two states of affairs would be. the better state of affairs? If this second question must be answered in order to answer the first, and if the first is admitted to be of practical concern, then the second is also of practical concern. This was my reason for supposing that F’arfit’s paradox cannot be dismissed as unrelated to our actual moral practice. But if my solution to the Oughtness Paradox is sound, then it turns out that we can answer the first question without having to be able to answer the second. We can

3 04 Philosophy G Public Affairs

determine what we morally ought to do without determining which state of affairs would be better. And while this does not diffuse the fact that the second question remains a puzzling source of theoretical difficulty, it does overturn the defense of the claim that the difficulty is of practical concern.

The claim that I am relying on here, the claim that the goodness question loses its practical force when the oughtness question can be answered independently of it, might seem itself to pose some problems. It is therefore important to emphasize that it is quite limited in scope. The first way in which the claim is limited is this: in rejecting our initial assumption that answering the goodness question would be necessary in order to answer the oughtness question, I need not be committed to any strong view about this being the case in ethics as a whole. Parfit writes: “Our views about the relative goodness of different outcomes sometimes depend upon our views about what we ought to do. But such dependence often goes the other way. , . . some of our beliefs about what we ought to do depend upon our beliefs about the relative goodness of outcomes. Since these latter beliefs form the basis of some of our morality, we cannot refuse to consider an argument that is about these beliefs.”’g And if my justification for saying that solving the Oughtness Par- adox deprives the Goodness Paradox of its practical force depended on the claim that questions about goodness are never foundational in ethics, then the truth of Pafit’s claim to the contrary would suffice to defeat it.

But my argument here is consistent with Pafit’s observation. I need not insist that every moral ought question can be answered without first answering its corresponding moral goodness question. I need only claim that this turns out to be so in the case of the practical problem posed by the Mere Addition Paradox. If we can find a way to decide which future population would be the morally better one to choose, or to aim at, even if we cannot find a coherent answer to the question of which is simply the best simpliciter, then the problem as a moral problem would seem to me to have been solved. And since my solution to the Oughtness Paradox turns on features that are peculiar to it, it does not commit me to thinking that we can always answer ought questions independent of goodness questions, or even that we typically can.

The second limitation on the claim I am making use of here can perhaps best be brought out by considering a different response that might

19. Reasons and Persons, p. 430.


be made to my argument. Granted, one might say, it would be rational to accept my solution to the Oughtness Paradox as long as the Goodness Paradox remains unresolved, but a subsequent resolution of the Good- ness Paradox could nonetheless force us to revise our position. And this possibility, it might be said, is enough to warrant the conclusion that solving the Oughtness Paradox alone does not deprive the Goodness Paradox of its practical force.

This position seems plausible at first. But notice what we would have to say in order to sustain it. We would have to say: granted, for now you seem to have shown that we should choose A over B, but that is only because we have not yet been able to determine which is the better state of affairs. Once we make that determination, we will either be able to say that B is worse than A or that B is not worse than A. If B is worse than A then we will of course grant your conclusion, since you said that choosing A was morally better in the first place, but if B is not worse than A . . . well, then what? Even if we decide that B is not worse ,than A, this will still not seem much of a reason to think that it would be morally better to choose B over A. So if we already have good reason to think that choosing A is morally better than choosing B, then there is no reason to think that a subsequent resolution of the Goodness Paradox will effect this.2o And so we might put the further limit on the claim I am relying on here as follows: if the prima facie support for an answer to a given oughtness question is greater than the prima facie opposition which would be generated by either answer to the corresponding goodness question, then answering the goodness question has no further practical significance. I do not claim that this is true of all oughtness questions or even of all of those oughtness questions about which we can generate prima facie answers independent of their corresponding goodness questions. I claim only that it is true of the particular answer I have defended in response to the oughtness question posed by the choice between A and B.

Let me note one final concern which may also be raised. I have argued that the Goodness Paradox loses its practical force because we can answer the oughtness question associated with it without having to ad-

20. The one exception is the argument above for choosing resulting state A over resulting state B within the Population Choice Principle because the Goodness Paradox remains unresolved. Clearly that argument will be dislodged by a subsequent resolution of the paradox. But that argument was offered only as added support to the claim which was also defended on independent grounds.


dress the paradox itself. But it might be objected that there are many oughtness questions associated with the Goodness Paradox, and that the fact that we can answer one of them independently of the paradox does not mean that we can answer them all. In Reasons and Persons, for example, Parfit presents a case he refers to as Down EscuZutor Case, which compares the possible results of steady population growth with those of a replacement rate in which each two-person couple produces only two offspring.*l In this example, because growth rather than replacement produces some transitory good effects but cumulative bad effects, it turns out that this rate of growth would always be in the inter- ests of existing people and their children, even though it will ultimately produce a much larger group of people much less well off than would have resulted from the replacement rate. As in the case of our original paradox, most of us would initially be inclined to believe that the second outcome would be worse than the first, but if the Goodness Paradox remains unsolved, we will again prove unable to endorse this claim. And assuming that the growth option does not violate any deontological or other norms, we would seem to be in need of a solution to the Goodness Paradox all over again. For how could we answer this oughtness question without first answering the corresponding goodness question? In this case, people are not choosing between one of two future populations where one may or may not be able to do the morally better thing at some cost to some of its citizens, with the attending features that made my solution to the Oughtness Paradox possible. They are simply deciding how many children to have. No comparable strategy seems likely to answer this oughtness question without first answering the corresponding goodness question, and such an answer will remain unavail- able so long as Parfit’s original Goodness Paradox remains unresolved.

But this view of the situation is misleading. If contributing to a rate of growth rather than of replacement contributes to the future’s looking more like B than like A, then such people, in asking what morally they ought to do, are, in effect, asking which future population it would be morally better to choose to aim at. So if my solution to the Oughtness Paradox is accepted, and if the Down Escalator Case generates the sort of choice which again prompts the Goodness Paradox, then it seems to me that I will already have solved the oughtness problem associated

21. Reasons and Persons, pp. 382-83.


with the Down Escalator Case as well. Without being able to say that the state of affairs resulting from growth would be worse than the state of affairs resulting from replacement, that is, I will be able to say that the latter is the one that it would be morally better to choose, and thus to guide one’s choices by. And the same, it seems to me, will be true of any oughtness question which arises from the concern that one can exercise some influence over whether the future looks more like A or like B. The Down Escalator Case, of course, adds the extra twist that choosing one of the courses of action is more in your interest than is the other, but I could equally have said that you would receive some benefit for choosing B rather than A in the original example, and that would not have effected the argument for the claim that it would nonetheless be morally better for you to choose A, and the pull of self-interest would remain even if you were to become convinced that A really is a better state of affairs than B. So long as my solution to the Oughtness Paradox is accepted, then, any claims about how we should act with respect to the future which initially seemed to be threatened by our inability to solve Parfit’s Mere Addition Paradox can be vindicated.

I began by defending Parfit’s paradox from the charge that it is morally trivial, and I end by claiming that, if my solution to the Oughtness Paradox is sound, then this defense is no longer adequate. But I should emphasize, in conclusion, that in claiming that Parfit’s paradox has been deprived of its moral force, I do not mean to be claiming that it is without force. The Goodness Paradox remains theoretically unsettling in its own right, as a problem about our evaluations of competing states of affairs, and it remains worthy of further attention for this reason. Nor do I mean to insist that answering the practical challenge created by Parfit’s paradox through the indirect route I have followed is better than doing so directly by resolving the paradox itself. The state of affairs in which we have successfully responded to Parfit’s paradox indirectly is not better than the state of affairs in which we have simply solved it outright. But perhaps, as in Parfit’s claim about B and A, it is not a worse state of affairs either. And perhaps it is the only one that is possible.

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Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: Two Paradoxes About Duties to Future Generations