The Benefits of Coming into Existence

Abstract

This paper argues that we can benefit or harm people by creating them, but only in the sense that we can create things that are good or bad for them. What we cannot do is to confer comparative benefits and harms to people by creating them or failing to create them. You are not better off (or worse off) created than you would have been had you not been created, for nothing has value for you if you do not exist, not even neutral value.

On the Social and Personal Value of Existence

“…For example, Krister Bykvist (2007Bykvist ( , 2013 endorses the aforementioned three conditions but holds that a life may be good for an individual even though it is not better for her than never existing. Similarly, Elizabeth Harman (2004) argues that one can harm someone by creating her if her life contains particular bad features, where it is not necessary for the existence of such harm that leading the life in question is worse for her than never existing.…”

Why ‘Nonexistent People’ Do Not Have Zero Wellbeing but No Wellbeing at All

“…10 Thus, if Q does not exist in some world then Q neither has any properties nor stands in any relation in that world. Actualism, therefore, disallows ascribing any properties whatsoever -including zero well-being -to "nonexistent people.…”

The Asymmetry: A Solution

“… Krister Bykvist's argument that creating a person does not harm or benefit that person in any comparative sense, and that leaving a person out of existence does not harm or benefit that person in either a comparative or an absolute sense, appears to be based on a very strict form of modal actualism. See Bykvist (2007, pp. 339–345).…”

“…342–343) takes this approach. According to Bykvist, failing to create a person cannot harm or benefit a person because, he writes, “there is no one who would have been directly affected for worse or better” if we fail to create that person (Bykvist, 2007, p. 335). This rule holds, according to Bykvist, for both the senses of harm and benefit that he recognizes – that is, the comparative and the absolute sense.…”