On the irrelevance of future persons

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

On the last line of his post, Will Wilkinson brings up a deeper problem with intergenerational justice:

The institutions chosen now don't simply determine how things will be for people later. They determine who will exist later. That makes everything incredibly confusing. We runs smack into metaphysics. Is existence a perfection? If next generation's worst off are the children of this generation's worst off, can we make next generation's worst off better off simply by sterilizing this generation's? Etc.

The following post is copied almost verbatim from the most recent revision of a paper I wrote on justice between generations. The discussion was prompted by Charles Larmore's misgivings about my treatment of future persons in my M.A. paper, and expanded while writing a review of Axel Gosseries' Penser la justice entre les générations: De l'affaire Perruche a la réforme des retraites (Éditions Flammarion, 2004).

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The "non-identity problem"—most famously discussed by Derek Parfit in Part Four of Reasons and Persons (Clarendon Press, 1984)—arises because many of our present actions will not only have an effect on the conditions of life of future persons, but will also determine who those persons will be. (Parfit 359) If the morality of our actions depends on their consequences on particular individuals (i.e. if it is identity-dependent), it becomes impossible to compare the effects of two different actions when two different people exist because of them. Axel Gosseries has recently proposed that the concept of harm entails a counterfactual comparison: the situation of the victim after the action that caused the harm must be worse than it would have been had the action not occurred. (Gosseries 52) Take a child with born with a genetic ailment, Gosseries argues. The handicap suffered by that child is intrinsically tied to her existence: the two possibilities given to her are to exist with the ailment or not to exist at all. Her handicap cannot be considered a harm without abusing the concept, as there is no counterfactual to which to compare her present state. (Gosseries 53-54) Her life could only count as a harm if it was absolutely bad, not at all worth living, if it fell "below a threshold of dignity, for example if it was made of nothing but atrocious suffering". (Gosseries 72-73, my translation)

From this, Gosseries concludes that our ordinary identity-dependent concept of harm cannot be applied to issues of intergenerational justice. (Gosseries 85) If we allow that future generations have claims against present ones, he argues, we must find a way around the non-identity problem. Given that attention that this problem has received in the literature on intergenerational justice it is not surprising that Gosseries should take up its discussion. But, we should ask, is it truly essential to an argument about intergenerational social justice that we address this issue? The answer to this question depends, to a great degree, on who we take to be the subject of justice. Rawls famously took the principles of social justice to apply to institutions, and not directly to individual action. In defining the subject of justice, Rawls says the that "the primary subject of justice is the basic structure of society, or more exactly, the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation." (TJ, 6) He later adds that "the principles of justice for institutions must not be confused with the principles which apply to individuals and their actions in particular circumstances. These two kinds of principles apply to different subjects and must be discussed separately." (TJ, 47)

A result of Rawls's institutional account of justice is the shift from an identity-dependent concept of obligation, harm and benefit, to an identity-independent perspective that looks not to particular individuals but to what Rawls referred to as "relevant social positions." (TJ, 81f)

The primary subject of justice, as I have emphasized, is the basic structure of society. The reason for this is that its effects are so profound and pervasive, and present from birth. This structure favors some starting places over others in the division of the benefits of social cooperation. It is these inequalities which the two principles are to regulate. Once these principles are satisfied, other inequalities are allowed to arise from men's voluntary actions in accordance with the principle of free association. Thus the relevant social positions are, so to speak, the starting places properly generalized and aggregated. By choosing these positions to specify the general point of view one follows the idea that the two principles attempt to mitigate the arbitrariness of natural contingency and social fortune. ¶ I suppose, then, that for the most part each person holds two relevant positions: that of equal citizenship and that defined by his place in the distribution of income and wealth. (TJ, 82)

This "positional" perspective is not far from our everyday moral conceptions; most laws, for instance, are not written with specific, identifiable individuals in mind but rather in generic language which is not identity-dependent. We may not know whether Anna or Ben has bought the house on the corner but we can be sure that whoever is now the owner is equally obligated to pay taxes on the property.

The social position of a "future person" is a relevant starting place in society. It is also not entered into voluntarily, but results from the "arbitrariness of natural contingency and social fortune." There is no reason in Rawls's theory not to consider it relevant, or at least as a special case when discussing intergenerational justice. The benefit of this approach is to render the "non-identity problem" irrelevant. To contemplate harm to a future person, why must we identify the particular individual who will actually exist in the future? We need only point out that there will be at least one such individual in that relevant social position, i.e. that the category of "future person" will not be an empty set.