The Moral Significance of Merely Possible Persons

Abstract

2.1.1 It is a matter of dispute whether persons who count as existing or future, relative to a particular circumstance, or possible future or world, have a moral status that merely possible persons lack. Are persons who do or will exist the only persons who matter morally? Are they the only persons whose needs and interests we must take into account in calculating what we ought to do? Can only their losses bear on – count against – the permissibility of acts that impose those losses? Can only their losses, in a roundabout way, count in favor of alternative acts that avoid those losses?