The Benefits of Coming into Existence

Philosophical Studies 135 (3):335-362 (2007)
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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.

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Krister Bykvist
Stockholm University

References found in this work

Reasons and Persons.Derek Parfit - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Weighing lives.John Broome - 2004 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Action and purpose.Richard Taylor - 1966 - New York,: Humanities Press.
A Theory of Human Action.Alvin Ira Goldman - 1970 - Englewood Cliffs, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press.

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