Killing and the Time-relative Interest Account Nils Holtug Received: 7 July 2009 / Accepted: 11 June 2010 / Published online: 22 July 2010 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 Abstract Jeff McMahan appeals to what he calls the ‘‘Time-relative Interest Account of the Wrongness of Killing’’ to explain the wrongness of killing individuals who are conscious but not autonomous. On this account, the wrongness of such killing depends on the victim’s interest in his or her future, and this interest, in turn, depends on two things: the goods that would have accrued to the victim in the future; and the strength of the prudential relations obtaining between the victim at the time of the killing and at the times these goods would have accrued to him or her. More precisely, when assessing this interest, future goods should be discounted to reflect reductions in the strength of such relations. Against McMahan’s account I argue that it relies on an implausible ‘‘actualist’’ view of the moral importance of interests according to which satisfactions of future interests only have moral significance if they are satisfactions of actual interests (interests that will in fact exist). More precisely, I aim to show that the Time-relative Interest Account (1) does not have the implications for the morality of killing that McMahan takes it to have, and (2) implies, implausibly, that certain interest satisfactions which seem to be morally significant are morally insignificant because they are not satisfactions of actual interests. Keywords Abortion Á Jeff McMahan Á Killing Á Time-relative interest account 1 Introduction Jeff McMahan appeals to what he calls the ‘‘Time-relative Interest Account of the Wrongness of Killing’’ to explain the wrongness of (wrongful) killings of N. Holtug (&) Philosophy Unit, Department of Media Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Njalsgade 80, 2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark e-mail: [email protected]URL: cesem.ku.dk; http://www.mef.ku.dk/ 123 J Ethics (2011) 15:169–189 DOI 10.1007/s10892-010-9087-6
Transcript
Killing and the Time-relative Interest Account
Nils Holtug
Received: 7 July 2009 / Accepted: 11 June 2010 / Published online: 22 July 2010
� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
Abstract Jeff McMahan appeals to what he calls the ‘‘Time-relative Interest
Account of the Wrongness of Killing’’ to explain the wrongness of killing individuals
who are conscious but not autonomous. On this account, the wrongness of such killing
depends on the victim’s interest in his or her future, and this interest, in turn, depends
on two things: the goods that would have accrued to the victim in the future; and the
strength of the prudential relations obtaining between the victim at the time of the
killing and at the times these goods would have accrued to him or her. More precisely,
when assessing this interest, future goods should be discounted to reflect reductions in
the strength of such relations. Against McMahan’s account I argue that it relies on an
implausible ‘‘actualist’’ view of the moral importance of interests according to which
satisfactions of future interests only have moral significance if they are satisfactions
of actual interests (interests that will in fact exist). More precisely, I aim to show that
the Time-relative Interest Account (1) does not have the implications for the morality
of killing that McMahan takes it to have, and (2) implies, implausibly, that certain
interest satisfactions which seem to be morally significant are morally insignificant
because they are not satisfactions of actual interests.
individuals who are conscious but not autonomous.1 On this account, the wrongness
of such killing depends on the victim’s interest in his or her future, and this interest,
in turn, depends on two things: the goods that would have accrued to the victim in
the future; and the strength of the prudential relations obtaining between the victim
at the time of the killing and at the times these goods would have accrued to him or
her. More precisely, when assessing this interest, future goods should be discounted
to reflect reductions in the strength of such relations.
My aim is to critically assess this account. I shall argue that it relies on an
implausible ‘‘actualist’’ view of the moral importance of interests according to
which satisfactions of future interests only have moral significance if they are
satisfactions of actual interests (interests that will in fact exist). More precisely,
I shall try to show that the Time-relative Interest Account (1) does not have the
implications for the morality of killing that McMahan takes it to have, and (2)
implies, implausibly, that certain interest satisfactions which seem to be morally
significant are morally insignificant because they are not satisfactions of actual
interests.
I build a case for holding that the Time-relative Interest Account of the
Wrongness of Killing should be purged of its actualist bias. Specifically, the account
should be biased towards neither actual interests nor actual individuals. McMahan
worries that the impartiality this revision introduces would undermine the case for a
liberal view on abortion. In the final section of the article I consider this worry.
I want to emphasise that I shall be concerned with the Time-relative Interest
Account only. McMahan’s full account of the ethics of killing incorporates, in addition
to the Time-relative Interest Account, a requirement of respect for individuals
satisfying the conditions of autonomy.
2 The Time-Relative Interest Account
The Deprivation Account of the Badness of Death states that an individual’s death is
bad for her to the extent that, had she not died, she would have enjoyed benefits
(welfare units) in the future (Feldman 1992, Ch. 8–9; McMahan 1988, 1998, 2002,
Ch. 2; Nagel 1979; Quinn 1993; Williams 1973). These are the benefits of which
death deprives her. The harm of death therefore consists simply in the fact that
certain benefits that would otherwise have accrued to the victim do not accrue to
her. In many ways, this is an attractive account of the badness of death. First, it
explains, in a clear and intuitively credible way, why death is bad. Second, it
plausibly implies that the more an individual stands to lose by dying, the worse her
death is for her. Therefore, it will usually be worse to die as a teenager than it is to
die at (say) 80 years old. Third, this explanation of the badness of death does not
rely on the existence of some property that the dead are supposed to somehow
mysteriously possess, such as the experience of suffering. More precisely, it does
not commit us to the claim that death is intrinsically bad for the person who dies;
1 I write ‘‘wrongful’’ killings because not all killings are necessarily wrong. However, for brevity, I shall
simply discuss ‘‘killings’’ in what follows.
170 N. Holtug
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rather it is extrinsically bad, in the sense that it prevents certain intrinsic goods from
accruing to this individual. Finally, the Deprivation Account entails a proposition
many find compelling, namely that death need not always be bad for the individual
who dies. If an individual’s future would hold more bad than good for her, it may
indeed benefit her to die.
If we further assume that killing is wrong to the extent that it harms the victim,
we arrive at the Deprivation Account of the Wrongness of Killing. On this account,
killing an individual is wrong because, and to the extent that, this harms her—
because, and to the extent that, she is deprived of benefits. Of course, it might be
claimed that other factors, including the impact on third parties, can make a killing
more (or less) morally objectionable—or, as it were, more (or less) wrong. We need
not go into this here, however. We can focus on wrong-making features that are due
to the loss of the individual killed.
McMahan argues that we should reject the Deprivation Account of the
Wrongness of Killing. Even if we claim that it is usually worse to kill a younger
individual than an older one, and it is more generally usually worse to kill one
individual than another when the net future benefits of the former are greater than
those of the latter, we should acknowledge that this is not always the case
(McMahan 2002, 232–223).2 For example, it is usually not worse to kill an infant or
foetus than it is to kill a 20-year-old, according to McMahan. This is so even though,
usually, an infant or foetus will have more benefits in store than a 20-year-old.
Of course, there is an issue here of whether a foetus is numerically identical to the
child and adult to whom the benefits of life will eventually accrue, but let us leave
that out for now. I shall return to this complication in Sect. 6.
The underlying problem with the Deprivation Account, according to McMahan
(2002, 233), is that it implicitly assumes that identity is what prudentially matters in
survival. To clarify, the relation that prudentially matters in survival is the relation
that gives an individual a reason for special concern regarding the person he will be
in the future—that is, a reason to try to ensure that this person (especially) fares well
(Unger 1990, 92–97). However, as Derek Parfit (1984, Ch. 12) has persuasively
argued, identity is not what prudentially matters. Consider the case of division. a is
one of three identical triplets. His brain is removed from his head, and one of his
cerebral hemispheres is inserted into each of his brothers’ skulls, from which their
cerebral hemispheres have been removed. The division results in the existence of
two persons, b and c, who are (by assumption) equally psychologically continuous
with a. As Parfit argues, the most plausible response to the case of division is to hold
that, while a is identical to neither b nor c, his relation to them nevertheless contains
what prudentially matters. Therefore, identity cannot be what prudentially matters.
For this reason, McMahan (2002, 66–94) gives an alternative account of what
prudentially matters: the Embodied Mind Account of Egoistic Concern. Essentially,
what prudentially matters, on this account, is the continuous physical realization by
2 I should emphasise, again, that I am here assuming that the wrongness of killing should be explained
entirely in terms of the badness of death. Apart from considerations of the interest in surviving, McMahan
also accepts a requirement of respect, according to which it is equally wrong to kill (autonomous)
persons. I briefly return to this requirement and its importance for the present discussion at the end of the
Section.
Killing and the Time-relative Interest Account 171
123
the brain of both core and distinctive psychology, where ‘‘core psychology’’ refers
to psychological capacities such as the ability to remember, form intentions, reason
and so on; and ‘‘distinctive psychology’’ refers to the defining content of an
individual’s mind (e.g. his memories, intentions and character traits). Clearly, since
both b and c have one of a’s cerebral hemispheres, and since these continue to
realize a’s psychology, a stands in the relation that prudentially matters to both
b and c.
On the Embodied Mind Account the relation that prudentially matters will be
stronger if, besides core psychology, it includes distinctive psychology; if more
distinctive psychology is continuously realized; and if there is more physical
continuity of the parts of the brain that realize the relevant psychology. However,
for present purposes, the precise nature of the relation that prudentially matters need
not detain us. The important point is that this relation may obtain to different
degrees, depending on how much of the relevant psychology is continuously
realised. If it may obtain to different degrees, then, arguably, the stronger the
relation is between the individual now and herself at a time in the future when a
benefit will befall her, the stronger is her present interest in obtaining the benefit.
Because the relation that gives her reason to care (especially) about this benefit is
stronger, the benefit presently matters more to her.3
On this basis, McMahan (2002, 65–74) develops what he calls the ‘‘Time-relative
Interest Account of the Badness of Death.’’ This account is similar to the
Deprivation Account, except that it takes an individual’s present interest in survival
to be not just a function of the benefits contained in her future, but also of the
strength of the relation that prudentially matters between her now and her at the
times these benefits will accrue to her. Like the Deprivation Account, it implies that
everything else being equal, it is worse to die as a teenager than it is to die at
80 years of age (because the future of a teenager will normally hold more benefits
than that of an 80-year-old).4 But it further implies that death is less bad where the
prudentially significant relations that link us to our future selves, and hence our
future benefits, are weak. To the extent these relations are weak, the value of the
relevant future benefits should be discounted.
The Time-relative Interest Account and the Deprivation Account have impor-
tantly different implications when we compare the interests of an infant or foetus
and those of a 20-year-old. While the infant or foetus will usually have more
benefits in store than the 20-year-old, the relations that prudentially tie them to these
benefits are much weaker. After all, foetuses and infants usually have rather simple
psychologies and thus few of the preferences, memories and character traits they
will acquire later in life. Assuming an appropriately large discount rate, then, the
3 Elsewhere, I defend an account of what prudentially matters that is quite similar to McMahan’s. Like
him, I argue that an individual’s present interest in a future benefit is a function both of the size of the
benefit and of the degree of continuous physical realization of relevant psychology between this
individual now and the beneficiary at the time the benefit falls. See Holtug (2007a, 2010, Ch. 4).4 Apart from future benefits and the relations that prudentially matter, McMahan allows that the badness
of death may depend on factors such as narrative unity, retroactive effects, desert and desires
(independently of the contributions these make to benefits and the relations that prudentially matter).
However, in the present context, we can ignore these further factors. See McMahan (2002, 174–185).
172 N. Holtug
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Time-relative Interest Account implies that the 20-year-old will actually have a
stronger interest in survival than the infant or foetus has.
If we combine the Time-relative Interest Account of the Badness of Death with
the claim that killing is wrong to the extent that it is contrary to the interest of the
individual killed, we arrive at McMahan’s Time-relative Interest Account of the
Wrongness of Killing (2002, 194). Like the Deprivation Account, this account is too
simple. Further factors, as McMahan points out, may contribute to the wrongness of
killing, including effects on others and forms of agency. But again, we can ignore
this complication here.
According to the Time-relative Interest Account of the Wrongness of Killing, it
becomes worse to kill an individual as her time-relative interest in not being killed
becomes stronger, where her time-relative interest in not being killed is her interest,
at the time of her death, in the appropriately discounted benefits that would
otherwise have been hers in her future. Thus, the interest that determines the wrong-
ness of killing is the individual’s interest in her future at the time of her death.
This interest may vary over time: an individual’s interest at t1 in a benefit at t3 may
not coincide with her interest at t2 in this benefit at t3. After all, the prudential
relations that obtain between t2 and t3 may be stronger than those that obtain
between t1 and t3. This is the sense in which the Time-relative Interest Account is
time-relative.
Given certain plausible empirical assumptions about psychological development,
this account of the wrongness of killing will imply that it is normally worse to kill a
20-year-old than it is to kill an infant or foetus, for (granted these assumptions) at
the time of his death the 20-year-old will normally have the stronger interest in his
future. Therefore, according to McMahan (2002, 233), the Time-relative Interest
Account ‘‘is a superior account of the morality of killing’’ in comparison to the
Deprivation Account.
Now, as McMahan is well aware, it is implausible to claim that quite generallyonly present interests are relevant to the moral assessment of present acts. Consider
the following case. Suppose a woman, knowing what the consequences are likely to
be, takes thalidomide during her pregnancy, and her child is subsequently born
with impaired limb development. According to the Time-relative Interest Account,
the foetus will at most have a very weak (and so readily overridden) interest in
not being exposed to this drug, because even if it is old enough to possess
consciousness, it will only be very weakly related, in the relevant ways, to the child
and adult who will later suffer the consequences of his mother’s choice. Thus, to
fully explain the wrongness of her behaviour, we need to invoke not only the foetus’
present interests, but also his future interest in not having the disability.
To handle cases like this McMahan acknowledges that future interests may be
relevant to the moral assessment of present acts:
If our concern is with individuals’ time-relative interests, we must take
account of all the time-relative interests affected by our action. The important
consideration is whether one’s action frustrates a time-relative interest; it does
not matter whether the act is done before the time-relative interest exists.
(McMahan 2002, 283)
Killing and the Time-relative Interest Account 173
123
Thus, we must take account of the foetus’ future interest in being healthy because
this is an interest that is affected (indeed frustrated) by his mother’s decision to take
thalidomide (McMahan 2002, 280–288). Crucially, even if his mother takes
thalidomide, the foetus’ future interest in being healthy is an actual interest, and this
introduces a contrast with the case in which the infant is killed. When the infant is
killed, his future interests in benefits should not be taken into account, because he
has no such future interests: his death prevents them from existing. In other words,
his future interests are not actual but merely possible.5
So what McMahan is proposing, if I understand him correctly, is an actualistaccount of the moral importance of interests. A future interest is relevant to the
moral assessment of a present act only insofar as it is an actual interest and is
affected (satisfied or frustrated) by the act. An interest is actual if, and only if, it
makes an appearance in the actual history of the world (whether it be past, present or
future).
Importantly, if an individual is killed, her future interests are not actual, and so
they are not relevant to the moral status of the killing. Furthermore, as a result of
this, McMahan’s account of the wrongness of killing is time-relative in the sense
that it is an individual’s interest, at the time of her death, in her future that should be
taken into account when we try to explain the wrongness of killing her (as well as
when we try to explain the badness, to her, of dying then).
Incidentally, by rendering the moral status of acts sensitive to future actual
interests McMahan is able to deflect an objection to his account made by John
Broome (2004, 251). Broome argues that the time-relativity of McMahan’s account
renders it incoherent. Consider the following case. A doctor can treat either an
infant or a young adult, but only one of them. Each will die in 30 years if she is not
treated. According to Broome, McMahan’s account implies that the doctor should
now treat the adult. This is because, while she will gain fewer extra years by living
beyond the 30 years both patients have in front of them, the psychological relations
that tie her to these extra years are much stronger than the psychological relations
that tie the infant to the extra years she would gain. Thus, the adult now has the
strongest time-relative interest in being treated. However, in 30 years, the person
who is now an infant will be much better linked to the extra years she can gain and
since she can gain many more years than the person who is now an adult, it will then
be her who has the stronger time-relative interest in being treated. So if the doctor is
in a position to do so, she should then reverse her decision. But this is incoherent.
However, if my interpretation of McMahan is correct, it is far from obvious that
the doctor now has most reason to treat the adult. This is because the time-relative
interest the infant will have in 30 years is an actual one (we are assuming that it will
in fact exist because, regardless of who the doctor treats, both the infant and the
adult will live for another 30 years). Therefore, it is relevant to the decision the
doctor now makes, contrary to what Broome suggests.
5 The distinction between actual and merely possible interests should not be confused with a different
modal distinction, namely that between necessary and contingent interests. An interest is necessary,
relative to a particular comparison of outcomes, if and only if it exists in all the outcomes compared, and
contingent if and only if it exists in only some of these outcomes. For further (critical) discussion of
actualist and necessitarian accounts of interests, see Holtug (2010, Ch. 2).
174 N. Holtug
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But there is another problem here. The doctor’s choice determines whether the
infant or the adult will survive 30 years from now. It therefore determines who
will have actual time-relative interests that exist more than 30 years ahead. Below,
I shall suggest that acts of this sort—those that determine which interests will be
actual—pose a problem for McMahan’s account.
It is important to appreciate that the Time-relative Interest Account is only a
partial account of the wrongness of killing. This is not just because effects on others
and forms of agency need to be taken into account in a fuller picture, but also
because McMahan takes this account to apply to the morality of killings in a limited
class of individuals only. That is, it applies exclusively to killings where the victim
lacks the psychological attributes that make him worthy of others’ respect—such
worth being based on the capacity for autonomy. It holds that in these cases the
wrongness of the killing consists in the frustration of time-relative interests.
McMahan argues that the wrongness of killing beings that are worthy of respect
(are autonomous) is to be explained in terms of the Intrinsic Worth Account—an
account that requires us to respect the worth of autonomous beings. He holds that
killings of autonomous beings remain equally wrong regardless of differences in the
victims’ time-relative interests in survival (assuming they have an interest in
survival). More generally, McMahan adopts what he calls the ‘‘Equal Wrongness
Thesis,’’ according to which the wrongness of killing ‘‘does not vary with such
factors as the degree of harm caused to the victim, the age, intelligence,
temperament, or social circumstances of the victim, whether the victim is well
liked or generally despised, and so on’’ (2002, 235). Thus he proposes a two-tiered
account of wrongful killing that relies on both time-relative interests and respect for
autonomous individuals (McMahan 2002, Ch. 3).
According to McMahan, then, there are two reasons why, everything else being
equal, it is worse to kill the 20-year-old than it is to kill the infant. It is worse
because only the 20-year-old is a being worthy of respect (which, of course, does
not mean that there are no direct moral reasons not to kill the infant); and it is worse
because the 20-year-old has a stronger present interest in his future than does the
infant. But note that there is an important respect in which these reasons are not
additive: McMahan would deny that the wrongness of killing a 20-year-old
increases, beyond the level set by her intrinsic worth, as her interest in her future
becomes stronger. That would be incompatible with the claim that it is equallywrong to kill autonomous persons. However, as I have already pointed out, my
concern here is with the Time-relative Interest Account only. Nevertheless, since
my critique is directed at the implications of the Time-relative Interest Account with
respect to non-autonomous beings, it equally applies to McMahan’s full account.
3 Against Actualism
I now want to argue that the Time-relative Interest Account does not quite have the
implications with respect to killing McMahan takes it to have. In view of the
actualist nature of McMahan’s account, we cannot simply assume that it would be
worse to kill the 20-year-old than it would be to kill the infant, even on the
Killing and the Time-relative Interest Account 175
123
assumption that the 20-year-old has the stronger present interest in survival. The
matter will depend on what in fact happens. It will depend on which world is the
actual world.
Thus, suppose we have to choose between the killing of a 20-year-old and the
killing of an infant. Perhaps we are heading towards the 20-year-old in our car and
will kill him if we do not turn. However, if we turn, we will run over and kill the
infant. As it turns out, we do not turn, so we kill the 20-year-old. The 20-year-old
still has a strong actual interest in surviving, namely the interest he has at the time of
the killing. But the infant also has such an interest. Since he is not killed, the infant
has a strong actual future interest in surviving. Furthermore, this is an interest that
will exist and be fulfilled, because we allow the car to head towards the 20-year-old,
and, in McMahan’s words, ‘‘we must take account of all the time-relative interests
affected by our action’’ (2002, 283). So it is by no means clear why concern for the
actual interests of the infant, and the actual interests of the 20-year-old, should
render our act of killing the 20-year-old worse or, given the alternative, even wrong.
Of course, McMahan’s second explanation of why it is worse to kill the 20-year-old
(appealing to that fact that he alone is worthy of respect) is still in play, but that is a
different matter.
Now, I do not believe that this is a decisive objection to the Time-relative Interest
Account. In fact, the account I develop in Sect. 6 has a similar implication.
Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out that, even if we assume that the 20-year-old
has a stronger present interest in surviving, the account does not necessarily lead to
the conclusion that it is worse to kill the 20-year-old than it is to kill the infant (or,
for that matter, a foetus). After all, the claim that it is worse to kill the 20-year-old is
heavily drawn upon by McMahan in making the case for the view that the Time-
relative Interest Account is superior to the Deprivation Account.
Other implications of the Time-relative Interest Account of the Wrongness of
Killing seem to me far more worrying. These implications are connected, again,
with the sort of modal partiality the account involves. First, note that the account has
the peculiar effect of making the moral status of an act depend upon whether or not
one in fact performs the act. Thus, one can make an act that would otherwise have
been wrong right simply by performing it (or, in the same manner, make an act
wrong that would otherwise have been right). This is because, by performing it, one
can affect the actuality of the interests on whose basis the act should be assessed.
For instance, by killing the 20-year-old rather than the infant, we render that act of
killing him—which would otherwise have been impermissible—permissible (again,
I am ignoring the requirement of respect here). While his interest in surviving is
actual, so is the future interest of the infant, precisely because he is then not killed.
And so the future interest of the infant should be weighed against the interest of the
20-year-old. Had the infant been killed, on the other hand, his future interest in
surviving would not be actual and so should not be taken into account. Therefore,
assuming that the infant is killed, it would have been impermissible to kill the
20-year-old. But this account of killing seems puzzling. Intuitively, the permissi-
bility of killing the 20-year-old should be settled on the basis of the interests that
exist in each of the possible outcomes, and the extent to which these are satisfied or
frustrated in these outcomes, not on the basis of whether we in fact kill him.
176 N. Holtug
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Second, the Time-relative Interest Account implies that by acting in particular
ways, we can ensure the non-actuality, and hence the moral insignificance, of what in
fact seem to be morally important interests. To illustrate, suppose an infant has an
unusually rich and rewarding future waiting ahead. But now, knowing what will
follow, someone gives him a pill that will cause him never to develop psychologically
beyond his present stage. He does not now have a very strong interest in the bright
future he would otherwise have had, because he is only weakly related to himself in
that possible future. Furthermore, because he is given the pill, his interest in this
bright future will always remain weak. Therefore, according to the Time-relative
Interest Account, the pill’s effect on the infant does not render the act of giving it to
him seriously wrong. This is counterintuitive.
Consider another example. Suppose that, sadly, an infant has an incurable disease
that invariably causes its victims to experience a great deal of excruciating pain in
their short lives. For the infant in question, these pains will begin a few months from
now and continue until he dies at the age of five. Unless, that is, the doctor decides
not to treat the pneumonia that the infant has just developed, in which case the
infant will die painlessly within a week. This is the only chance the doctor will have
to bring about the infant’s death, one reason being that the law does not permit
active euthanasia. Knowing how miserable the child’s short life would otherwise be,
the doctor decides not to treat him.
Because, at the time of his death, the infant is only weakly psychologically
related to the individual he will be at the time the pain is expected to begin, he has,
at the earlier time, only a weak time-relative interest in being spared the misery of
his disease. And while, if he were to live long enough to experience the pain, he
would have a strong interest in being spared it, this interest is non-actual and so does
not affect the moral acceptability of allowing the infant to die. Thus, in McMahan’s
account, the misery that the child would experience gives rise only to a rela-
tively weak, and readily overridden, reason to let the child die. Again, this is
counterintuitive.
4 The Value of Satisfied Future Interests
McMahan considers a case in which someone is weakly psychologically related to
the individual she will be at some future time when she will experience significant
misery. He argues that the difficulty this scenario presents for his account is an
instance of a more general problem we will in any case have to deal with (2002,
485–493). It seems plausible to allow that frustrated non-actual future interests can
affect the moral status of acts, as happens in the case where an infant has an
incurable disease that invariably causes its victims to experience a great deal of
excruciating pain in their short lives. However, in the case of satisfied non-actual
future interests, McMahan believes that this concession does not seem plausible.
More precisely, he suggests that while, intuitively, the existence of a frustrated non-
actual future interest in an outcome may provide a pro tanto reason not to bring that
outcome about, the existence of a satisfied non-actual future interest in an outcome
cannot provide a pro tanto reason to bring that outcome about. Thus, McMahan
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123
points out that, amongst other things, it would threaten his argument for the
permissibility of aborting sentient foetuses if he were to accept that satisfied non-
actual future interests affect the moral status of acts. After all, by aborting a foetus
we render the world in which (many of) its future interests are satisfied non-actual,
but if these interests are nevertheless relevant to the moral status of the abortion this
may provide a strong pro tanto reason not to perform it.
According to McMahan, then, the intuitive view is that while frustrated non-
actual future interests may indeed contribute to the moral status of present acts,
satisfied non-actual future interests do not so contribute. Note, however, that this
asymmetry between satisfied and frustrated non-actual future interests does not fully
resolve the problems I set out in the last section. We can still make an act right
(wrong) that would otherwise have been wrong (right) simply by performing it. And
by acting in particular ways, we can ensure the non-actuality and so moral
insignificance of what in fact seem to be morally significant satisfied future interests
(for example, an infant’s satisfied strong future interest in a bright future).
Furthermore, as McMahan also points out, this asymmetry between frustrated
and satisfied interests seems hard to justify. One possibility, which he briefly
considers but rejects, is that of claiming that, while the frustration of an interest has
negative value, the satisfaction of an interest has zero value (and so is axiologically
equivalent to the non-existence of the interest).6 This manoeuvre would give us a
reason to allow the infant with the miserable future to die (since by doing so we
would block the anticipated development of frustrated interests) while not providing
a reason, deriving from the interests of the foetus or child, to prevent an abortion
(since even if, postnatally, the resulting person would have a ‘‘good’’ life, the
existence of her satisfied interests would have zero value).
Whatever one might think about that theoretical gain, the manoeuvre is dubious.
For it implies, preposterously, that we always have reason to kill a foetus or an
infant, everything else being equal. While such a being may have a weak pro tanto
interest in not being killed (due to its interest in not having its present interests
frustrated), this interest will surely be outweighed by the fact that if it is killed, it
will have no future frustrated interests. Nor, of course, will it have any future
satisfied interests, but by assumption these will in any case have zero value.
McMahan ends his discussion of the importance of non-actual satisfied and
frustrated future interests by saying that he knows of ‘‘no satisfactory solution to the
problem’’ (2002, 491). Nevertheless, he suggests that it precisely parallels a problem
in population ethics with a similarly elusive solution. This is the problem of
convincingly characterising the reasons we have to cause individuals to come into
existence. On one view—a view McMahan dubs ‘‘the Asymmetry’’—we have reason,
everything else being equal, to prevent the existence of individuals who will have a
negative welfare, but no reason to cause happy individuals to come into existence.7
McMahan takes this view to be intuitively plausible, but also very difficult to defend.
6 Christoph Fehige defends such a ‘‘frustrationist’’ account with respect to preferences in his (1998).
See also Singer (1993, 128–131).7 McMahan (1981, 100). This view has famously been defended by Jan Narveson; see his (1967, 69–71).
For a powerful critique of Narveson, see Sprigge (1968, 338).
178 N. Holtug
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5 Population Ethics
In this section, I shall consider McMahan’s analogy between satisfying and frustrating
the future interests of existing individuals and causing happy and miserable
individuals to come into existence in greater detail. Can this analogy somehow be
used to justify the claim that while frustrated non-actual future interests are (intrin-
sically) relevant to the moral assessment of present acts, satisfied non-actual future
interests are not?
One problem with the Asymmetry to which McMahan refers, is its implication
that, because prospective positive welfare does not give us a pro tanto reason to
cause an individual to exist, whereas prospective negative welfare does give us a pro
tanto reason not to cause an individual to exist, implausibly, there will always be a
strong moral presumption against causing people to exist. However, this does not
seem to me to amount to a decisive objection. The Asymmetry can be interpreted in
two ways. On a ‘‘local’’ interpretation, which is the one McMahan adopts, the claim
that negative welfare generates a pro tanto reason against procreation whereas
positive welfare does not generate a pro tanto reason for procreation should be
applied separately to each unit of welfare in a life. On this interpretation, the mere
existence of negative welfare in a life, no matter how limited, will outweigh any
positive welfare contained in this life, because the positive units do not generate
reasons. On a ‘‘global’’ interpretation, on the other hand, what matters is the net
welfare contained in a life. Where that is positive, there will be neither reason to
cause the individual to exist nor reason not to cause him to exist (confining
ourselves to reasons linked to the individual’s welfare). But where the net quantum
is negative, there will be a pro tanto reason not to bring the individual into existence.
While the global interpretation of the Asymmetry does not imply that there is
always a strong moral presumption against procreation, it nevertheless faces another
severe difficulty. This is because, everything else being equal, it would imply that
there is a strong moral presumption in favour of ending the existence of human (or
sentient) beings in the universe. Surely, among the billions of people who will exist
in the future, a few will have lives that are worth not living; and while their misery
gives rise to a strong pro tanto reason not to create them, the happiness of the
majority of future people counts for nothing.8 Again, this is highly counterintuitive.
This does not necessarily mean that we should assume a perfect moral symmetry
between creating happy people and not creating miserable ones. I have elsewhere
defended a ‘‘weak asymmetry,’’ according to which it is morally better to prevent
the existence of an individual who has a welfare level of -l than it is to bring about
the existence of an individual at level l (Holtug 2007b, 2010, 255–256). I have
argued that this asymmetry follows from a plausible account of justice: prioritar-
ianism. McMahan does briefly consider (and reject) a ‘‘local’’ version of this idea
according to which interest-frustration weighs more than interest-satisfaction when
we evaluate the reasons we have to cause an individual to exist. However, he rejects
8 I elaborate this objection to the Asymmetry further in Holtug (2004, 138–140, 2010, 249–251). There,
I also point out that the Asymmetry is incompatible with a plausible person-affecting solution to the
so-called non-identity problem.
Killing and the Time-relative Interest Account 179
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this idea because he takes it to imply that it is generally objectionable to cause
people to exist, though procreation may be required if the lives in question would be
unusually good (2002, 492).
Nevertheless, note, first, that the extent to which interest-satisfaction contained in
a life must exceed interest-frustration in order for us to have reason to create this life
will depend on the particular weights we assign to interest-frustration and interest-
satisfaction. Second, notice that there is also a ‘‘global’’ version of the weak
asymmetry, according to which these weights should be applied, not to each
particular frustration and satisfaction of interest that occurs in a life, but to the overall
prudential value of that life (judged in terms of frustrations and satisfactions). On this
global approach, if a life is worth living, no matter how slight the excess of
satisfaction over frustration, we have a reason to create that life, everything else
being equal. Of course, questions about how, precisely, to fix the weights will
remain; and certainly the notion that these should be fixed in a way that is compatible
with our having a reason to ensure the continued existence of human (sentient) beings
in the universe is worth trying to protect. What this means, surely, is that there can be
quite weighty reasons to cause happy individuals to exist.
The upshot of all this is that the Asymmetry (unlike its weak counterpart) is very
difficult to defend (in either version). In particular, we cannot plausibly deny the
existence of powerful moral reasons to bring individuals into existence that derive
from a concern for their (overall positive) welfare; and so the analogy between the
future interests of presently existing individuals and the future interests of possible
future individuals does not suggest that future satisfactions of the interests of presently
existing people cannot give rise to moral reasons. Rather, if anything, it suggests that
future satisfactions do give rise to such reasons. It seems to me, therefore, that
McMahan’s analogy does not generate the results it was intended to generate.
At this point it may be suggested that granting the moral significance of satisfied
(even non-actual) future interests, including the satisfied future interests of future
individuals, has a number of implausible implications. Thus, apart from the issue of
killing the 20-year-old versus killing the infant and the issue of abortion already
mentioned, there is the issue of whether we have an obligation to procreate, possibly
even at the expense of our own welfare. At any rate, it seems likely that we could
bring about a great deal of interest-satisfaction by bringing new individuals into
existence, which suggests that we have a weighty moral reason to do so.
The question of what reasons we have (if any) to bring (happy) individuals into
existence is one of the most difficult in ethics, and I cannot possibly do it justice
here. Let me briefly point out in passing, however, that even if we allow the satisfied
interests of possible future individuals to matter morally, it does not automaticallyfollow that we have a very demanding obligation to procreate. Various social
welfare functions and other ‘‘devices’’ have been suggested that allow us to deny
this implication, including critical level theories (Blackorby et al. 1997; Broome
Note that unlike the Time-relative Interest Account, however, it does not oblige us to
deny the significance of satisfied non-actual interests. In fact it is perfectly
compatible with that significance, as long as the interests are those of actual people
(and hence are interests that actual people might have had, but in fact do not have).
To see why this may be an advantage consider again the case of the infant who is
deprived of a bright future by being given a pill that will cause him never to develop
psychologically beyond his present stage. Suppose that, had he not been given the
pill, he would have developed all sorts of sophisticated preferences and would have
had the good fortune of having them all satisfied. Since he does not in fact develop
these preferences, the interests to which they give rise are non-actual; so, according to
the Time-relative Interest Account, they cannot be invoked to explain the wrongness
of giving him the pill. If, on the other hand, we may legitimately invoke satisfied non-
actual interests of actual individuals, there is no such barrier to explaining the serious
wrongness of feeding the pill to him.
Furthermore, this actualist person-affecting view offers a way of taking into
account the interests of (actual) future individuals without committing us to the
claim that we are morally required to bring about the existence of (happy) people.
After all, their interests will only count if, in fact, we do cause them to exist. This
also implies that we are not morally required to bring about an outcome, such as that
envisaged by Parfit (1984, 388) in his so-called repugnant conclusion, where an
enormous number of people exist and live lives barely worth living. For the interests
of these people matter only on the assumption that we do in fact create them.
Despite these attractions, the actualist person-affecting view under consideration
is flawed.9 In fact, because of its actualist bias, it suffers from problems similar to
those encountered by the Time-relative Interest Account. Thus, it shares the peculiar
feature that the rightness of an act depends crucially upon whether or not the act is
in fact performed; and as it turns out, this feature is connected with a number of
further counterintuitive implications. Suppose we can either create one group of
people in which each person has a welfare level of -1, or another group in which
each person has a level of -100 (and, for some reason, we cannot avoid creating
one of them). Suppose that we in fact create the first group. Everything else being
equal, we have then done something wrong. Since it is only members of the first
group that are actual, only their interests count, and they each have net negative
welfare.
Note also that person-affecting actualism does not, in itself, fully accommodate
our intuitions about the repugnant conclusion. If we create an enormous population
in which each person leads a life that is barely worth living rather than a (non-
overlapping) population of, say, 10 billion people all of whom have extremely good
lives, only the first population will be actual. This means that the much higher
9 I argue this in greater detail in Holtug (2004, 146–148, 2010, 270–272).
Killing and the Time-relative Interest Account 181
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average welfare of the second population becomes irrelevant when the two
populations are compared. All in all, then, it seems that just as we have reason to
reject the actualism of the Time-relative Interest Account, we have reason to reject
person-affecting actualism.
6 Killing and Prudential Concern
I have argued that, while McMahan’s Time-relative Interest Account does not
assign intrinsic significance to satisfied non-actual future interests, we should in fact
do so. However, McMahan believes that his argument for the permissibility of
aborting sentient foetuses would be undermined if he were to accept that such
interests affect the moral acceptability of acts. After all, there may be a great deal of
interest satisfaction waiting in the future of a sentient foetus, assuming that it is not
aborted, and so, everything else being equal, there is a weighty moral reason not to
perform an abortion. Thus, by stressing the moral significance of satisfied non-
actual future interests, we approach the Deprivation Account of the Wrongness of
Killing. While the Deprivation Account fully accommodates the value of future
benefits by claiming that they are on a par with present benefits in the assessment of
present interests, the suggested revision of McMahan’s view accommodates the
value of future benefits by treating (all) future interests (actual and non-actual,
satisfied and frustrated) as relevant to the ethics of killing.
Furthermore, if killing is wrong to the extent that it deprives the victim of future
welfare, it would seem that abortion is a very serious wrong indeed (Marquis 1989).
In this section I consider this apparent convergence between a non-actualist version
of McMahan’s account and the Deprivation Account. In the next, I consider the
implications of the former vis-a-vis the liberal view of abortion.
While the inclusion of satisfied non-actual future interests in the class of reason-
giving interests would certainly narrow the gap between McMahan’s account and
the Deprivation Account of the Wrongness of Killing, it would not bridge it. The
Deprivation Account relies on the claim that identity is what prudentially matters.
Assuming this claim is correct, it may be argued (and indeed has been argued) that
in order for a foetus to have an interest in a future benefit it must be identical with
the beneficiary (Lockwood 1994, 68; Quinn 1993, 51). In fact, although McMahan
explicitly rejects the claim that identity is what prudentially matters, he himself
seems to assume that a foetus must be identical with a future beneficiary to have an
interest in her benefits. Thus he writes: ‘‘It is…essential to determine whether, in
killing an embryo, a foetus, or an individual in an irreversible coma, one would be
killing an entity of the sort that you and I once were, or might become’’ (2002, 3).
This is essential because, if (say) a foetus is not essentially the same sort of entity as
a future (or past) beneficiary, it cannot be numerically identical with her.
However, the Embodied Mind Account of Egoistic Concern implies that identity
is not what prudentially matters. Hence, if we accept that account, the question of
whether a foetus has an interest in a future benefit cannot, in itself, depend upon
whether it is identical with the beneficiary. Rather, it will depend upon whether or
not a relation of continuous physical realization of relevant psychology obtains.
182 N. Holtug
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This means that when we address the abortion issue we can legitimately sidestep the
notoriously intractable issue of personal identity.10
Even so, McMahan (2002, 51–5) suggests that any account of what matters
should be as closely aligned as possible to an account of personal identity. Hence
being identical to a future beneficiary may be sufficient to generate an interest in this
individual’s benefits. Furthermore, setting fictional cases such as that of brain
division aside, an individual will have an interest in what happens to a future
beneficiary only if she is identical to her. Given this, answers to the question ‘‘Does
a foetus have an interest in a future benefit?’’ will not depend on whether or not we
assume that identity is what prudentially matters. This may be why McMahan
claims that it is important to determine whether, in killing a foetus, we would be
killing an entity of the kind we ourselves essentially are, even though he does not
take identity to be what matters.
It seems to me that there is no principled reason to want our account of identity
and our account of what matters to converge in this manner. McMahan observes that
it is hardly an accident that we have hitherto assumed that identity is what matters,
considering the range of cases in which we are confident in our judgements about
personal identity, including ordinary cases of survival from 1 day to the next.
But our confidence that in such cases both identity and prudential relations obtain
does not preclude the possibility that these relations come apart in more difficult
cases at the margins of life. While between me today and me tomorrow there obtain
strong relations of psychological connectedness and even of continued self-
consciousness, such relations do not obtain between a foetus and a 5-year-old child.
Furthermore, insofar as our judgements about identity and what matters coincide,
this may to some extent reflect our commonsense, but mistaken, belief that identity
is what prudentially matters. Thus, we may be inclined to settle identity issues by
asking who we are prudentially concerned about, as indeed we do in philosophy
when we approach such issues by considering how important it is to us to avoid an
outcome in which a future continuer is horribly tortured (Williams 1973, 48). But,
in fact, such ‘‘pain-avoidance tests’’ are only reliable guides to our views about
identity if we further assume that identity is what prudentially matters (Unger 1990,
231). And this is an assumption McMahan and I agree is dubious. Given this,
we have to ask why we should accept the claim that accounts of identity and of what
matters should converge.
Even on the assumption that not only the present but also the possible future
(frustrated and satisfied) interests of the foetus count, our considered views about
what matters may make a difference with respect to the abortion issue. After all,
some will want to argue that even if we take future interests into account when
assessing the case for or against abortion, it is only the future interests of the present
foetus, not the future interests of some numerically distinct future being that may
eventually emerge from this foetus, that should be taken into account. Thus, if, for
example, we hold a view of personal identity according to which we are essentially
rather sophisticated psychological beings—say, self-conscious beings (Kuhse and
10 Therefore, I also believe McMahan should reject the claim that the abortion issue hinges on identity.
I propose an account of abortion that has just this implication in Holtug (2010, 103–111, 330–334).
Killing and the Time-relative Interest Account 183
123
Singer 1985, 134; Tooley 1983, 146)—we will believe that we are not identical with
the simple-minded but conscious foetuses from which we once developed; so when
considering aborting (even) conscious foetuses we should not take the interests of
such possible future sophisticated beings into account.
If, on the other hand, we hold that what prudentially matters is something other
than identity, surely we cannot reasonably insist that only the future interests of the
present foetus should be taken into account. At a minimum, the future interests of
any being to which the present foetus stands in the relation that prudentially matters
will count.
There is a further issue of whether the class of interests relevant to the assessment
of abortion includes not only the interests of individuals to whom present foetuses
are prudentially related, but also, more generally, the possible future interests of
possible future individuals, irrespective of whether these future individuals are
prudentially related to any presently existing beings. This will be especially
important in the case of non-conscious foetuses, because these will not stand in the
relation that prudentially matters to the conscious individuals who may later emerge
from them. Therefore, such foetuses will give rise to morally relevant interests only
if we assume that the future interests of the persons that may emerge from them, but
to whom they do not stand in the relation that prudentially matters, generate moral
reasons.
In fact, as I argued in the last section, accounts of population ethics should be
sensitive to both the frustration and satisfaction of the interests of future individuals
(and be so whether those interests are actual or merely possible). This demand may
make it seem that it no longer makes any difference whether we take identity to
matter. After all, it now matters not at all whether the foetus is identical to a future
interest-holder or stands in the relation that prudentially matters when we ask
whether these interests are relevant to the moral assessment of the abortion.
Whether identity is what matters may still make a difference, however. And
therefore, it may still make a difference whether we hold the Deprivation Account
or a version of the Time-relative Interest Account that is modified to accommodate
the significance of satisfied non-actual future interests. First, even if we take the
interests of future individuals to be morally relevant, it does not follow that their
interests have equal weight irrespective of whether they are identical with, and/or
prudentially related to, presently existing individuals. And if they do not have equal
weight, the relation in which a foetus must stand to a future beneficiary in order for
benefits to the latter to be especially weighty will matter.
Second, there is a further question about how to weigh different interests, even on
the assumption that it is the same individual that holds them, but at different times.
Consider a particular benefit that falls at time t in the future of a foetus (or if we
assume that the foetus is not identical with the future beneficiary, in the future of
the person who will eventually emerge from the foetus). Since, according to the
Embodied Mind Account of Egoistic Concern, future benefits should be discounted
to the extent that the relation that prudentially matters holds to a reduced degree, the
interest of the foetus (or person) in gaining the benefit will vary over time. In fact,
the closer to t she is, the stronger her interest in gaining it, everything else being
equal. This is because, the closer to t she is, the greater the degree of psychological
184 N. Holtug
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continuity and connectedness between her now and the individual at t. To assess the
moral impact of the interests affected by an abortion, then, we need to know how to
weigh the interests the foetus (or person) has at different times. If we simply assume
that the relevant strength of an interest in a benefit at t is the strength of the interest
at t, our assessment will coincide with the assessment dictated by the Deprivation
Account. After all, there will then be no weakening of psychological relations
between the time of the interest and the time of the benefit, and so the benefit should
not be discounted. However, there are other possible ways of weighing the interests
in a benefit held at different times. We could, for example, be impartial between
these interests. These alternative weightings generate assessments that differ from
that dictated by the Deprivation Account.
Third, there is an issue of justice to be considered in relation to killing. On the
Deprivation Account, it is worse to kill a 20-year-old than it is to kill an 80-year-old,
if everything else is equal. This is because the 20-year-old is deprived of more
benefits. But there is a further respect in which, it might be argued, it worse to kill
the 20-year-old. Everything else being equal, at the time of the hypothetical killing
the 20-year-old will have received fewer benefits in his life than the 80-year-old will
have received in his life. Hence with respect to life-time welfare, the 20-year-old
victim is worse off. We may believe that we should give priority to the worse off,11
so there is a clear enough sense in which considerations of justice could suggest that
it is worse to kill the 20-year-old.
The thought that justice requires us to give priority to those who are worse off in
terms of life-time welfare relies on the notion of inter-temporal compensation in a
life: we can compensate an individual for having been worse off in one part of his
life by rendering him better off in another part of his life. More precisely, what
matters is not how well off an individual is at particular points in his life, but how
well off he is across his life as a whole (the life-time sum).12
The Embodied Mind Account of Egoistic Concern leads to serious doubts about
this view of compensation. Suppose an individual suffers a misfortune. We can
compensate her either in 5 min or in 5 years. From her present perspective—her
perspective at the time of the misfortune—it is better to be compensated in 5 min,
everything else being equal. This is because the relation that prudentially matters is
stronger between her now and her in 5 min than it is between her now and her in
5 years. Plainly, this suggests that an account of justice should be sensitive to the
timing of the compensation.13
11 I develop and defend such a prioritarian view of justice in Holtug (2006, 2010, Ch. 8). But note that the
claim that we should give priority to the 20-year-old is equally compatible with, for example,
egalitarianism, leximin and sufficientarianism. Thus, everything else being equal, saving the 20-year-old
rather than the 80-year-old will promote equality, the welfare of the worst off, and the welfare of the
worse off below the sufficiency threshold (assuming that the 20-year-old is indeed below the threshold).12 Thus, it is usually assumed that ‘‘whole lives’’ are the appropriate temporal units in a theory of justice;
see, for example, Arneson (1989, 85); Daniels (1996, 256–264); Dworkin (1981, 304–305); Nagel (1991,
69); and Rawls (1971, 78).13 I consider the idea that because identity is not what prudentially matters, justice is sensitive to the
timing of compensation—and its implications—in much greater detail in Holtug (2010, Ch. 10). Parfit
also considers this idea but concludes, in my view mistakenly, that the resulting principle of justice will
roughly coincide with negative utilitarianism (Parfit 1984, 344).
Killing and the Time-relative Interest Account 185
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Suppose, then, that an individual has suffered in the past and is now killed.
Suppose also that, had he not been killed, he would have enjoyed a benefit some
time in the future. Then, everything else being equal, his death is (morally) worse
the temporally closer the benefit is to the time of his death. For, with respect to
justice, his death prevents greater degrees of compensation for his past misfortune
the temporally closer the benefit is. Thus justice is a further respect in which an
account of what prudentially matters, and therefore the Embodied Mind Account,
may constrain accounts of the wrongness of killing. In other words, it is a further
respect in which the implications of the Deprivation Account and the modified
version of the Time-relative Interest Account, discussed in this section, may come
apart.
Of course, in his Equal Wrongness Thesis McMahan proposes a different
conception of justice. According to this thesis, it is equally wrong to kill persons
irrespective of, for example, their social circumstances. But first, as I have pointed
out, I am setting aside McMahan’s account of respect and focusing exclusively on
his Time-relative Interest Account. Second, McMahan’s requirement of respect
applies only to autonomous beings. It therefore imposes no restrictions on accounts
of killing, for example, foetuses and infants. So, with respect to such beings at least,
concerns about justice may well contribute to an unequal wrongness of killing
thesis.
7 Abortion
Let me now briefly consider McMahan’s worry that if we take satisfied non-actual
future interests to generate moral reasons it will be difficult to maintain a liberal
view on abortion. In fact, I shall make the further assumption that the class of
interests generating moral reasons also contains the satisfied interests of possible
future individuals, as argued in Sect. 5. This means that the abortion issue cannot be
settled independently of a more general theory of population ethics. That is, it
cannot be settled without an answer to the question how many people there should
be. While obviously I cannot defend a theory, or an answer, of that sort here, I want,
briefly, to outline some pragmatic pro-abortion arguments that are compatible with
the claim that the non-actual satisfied future interests of present and future
individuals are morally significant.
As I pointed out in the last section, various social welfare functions and other
‘‘devices’’ may significantly mitigate the case for large-scale population growth.
Furthermore, within even a ‘‘growth-friendly’’ theory like total utilitarianism, there
will be limits to how much growth we should want. First, large-scale population
growth would presumably lead to a significantly lower average standard of living
than we have today. Thus, it is plausible that many of the lives we would create
would be below the level where life ceases to be worth living. Second, since the
goods that determine today’s standard of living are rather unevenly spread (to say
the least), many presently existing individuals are likely to fall below the level
where life ceases to be worth living. Third, a significant decrease in the average
standard of living is likely to lead to various kinds of conflict and human misery,
186 N. Holtug
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including rebellion, theft, violence and war. Thus, large-scale population growth
may not be a very good idea even in (total) utilitarian terms.
If what can be justified is at most a limited increase in population size, it is far
from clear that this would best be accomplished, or partially accomplished, by a ban
on abortion. There are a number reasons for this. First, if women are forced to go
through with their pregnancies, severe psychological costs for many women and
couples will probably follow. Second, other policies may increase population size
where and when it is most needed, including of course the provision of various
(positive) incentives. Third, a ban on abortion is likely in many cases to cause
parents to have children at a time when they are less inclined to have them for
social, emotional or other reasons, and then not to have children at a later time when
they would in fact be more inclined and better equipped to do so (Hare 1975, 221).
For example, a couple may be prepared to have only, say, two children and may
come to have them at a very young age if they do not have access to abortion.
Fourth, it is well known that in practice the outlawing of abortion does not prevent
(although it may reduce the number of) abortions. However, it does significantly
lower the safety of this procedure. And finally, in developed nations, a ban on
abortion will enlarge the workforce and so reduce the need for immigrant labour
from developing nations, where such migration tends to significantly increase the
standard of living both of the migrants and the people to whom they send money at
home (such ‘remittances’ are huge and even today exceed global development aid to
Developing Nations; Pritchett 2006; World Bank 2006). Clearly, then, the value of
such migration may be substantial.
It may be objected that in rehearsing these pragmatic arguments for the
legalisation of abortion I have simply assumed that the interests of foetuses, and of
the future persons they are identical with and/or prudentially related to, can be
traded off against the interests of other people, including possible future people. For
example, I have assumed that it may be better if a couple has a child at a time when
they are emotionally and socially well equipped to do so, even if this involves
having an abortion and then conceiving another child later. I have not engaged with
the argument that the interests of the foetus give rise to an agent-relative constraintagainst killing it.
However, this does not seem to me to be a strong objection. It remains weak even
if we assume that we are dealing with a conscious foetus, given the presumed
simplicity of its psychology (and so lack of the basis for respect, in McMahan’s
sense), and given that an individual’s present interest in a future benefit is a function
not only of the size of the benefit but also of the strength of the prudential relation
between this individual now and at the time the benefit accrues. Granting the latter
assumption, the foetus has at most a relatively weak present interest in not being
killed. And while the foetus may have much stronger future interests in survival, to
the extent the relations that prudentially matter, between the foetus now and at this
later time, are weak, it will be as if, metaphorically speaking, the future interests
belong to someone else. They will not reflect the foetus’ prudential concerns.
Therefore, it seems to me dubious to claim that there is a constraint against killing
the foetus, whatever plausibility a constraint against killing may have with respect
to more ‘‘mature’’ persons.
Killing and the Time-relative Interest Account 187
123
We should observe, briefly, that some may wish to combine moral concern about
the possible future interests of the foetus (or the person that may emerge from it)
with a concern about parental autonomy. Such autonomy may, for example, involve
an agent-relative option for potential parents not to promote the good (in the present
case, by having children) in cases where this would be sufficiently costly to them.
On this assumption, prospective parents would be entitled to allow their own
interests to count for more than their actual strength suggests, and more specifically
more than the present and future interests of a foetus (or person who may later
emerge from it). On certain moral views, this possibility may further strengthen the
case against a ban on abortion.
8 Conclusions
I have argued that the Time-relative Interest Account of the Wrongness of Killing
relies on an actualist moral conception of interests that is implausible. More
specifically, I have argued that satisfied future non-actual interests, and even the
future non-actual interests of non-actual future individuals, are relevant to the moral
assessment of acts, including acts of killing. Furthermore, I have argued that even if
we strip McMahan’s account of the wrongness of killing of its bias towards actual
interests, and towards future frustrated interests, it differs from the Deprivation
Account. It does so as a result of its commitment to the Embodied Mind Account of
Egoistic Concern—a commitment that has implications for the issue of abortion, for
example. Finally, I have argued that even if we take a temporally and modally
impartial view of interests, pragmatic arguments are available on the basis of which
a liberal view on abortion can be defended.
Acknowledgements I would like to thank S. Matthew Liao, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Christian
Munthe, Ingmar Persson, Thomas Søbirk Petersen, participants at the International Society for Utilitarian
Studies conference in Berkeley 2008, and two anonymous referees for The Journal of Ethics for helpful
comments on an earlier version of this article.
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