Abstract

Parfit (2017) proposed a novel principle for outcome betterness in different people and different number choices. It is claimed to solve the Non-Identity Problem while avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion, and it shall do so in person-affecting rather than in impersonal terms. According to this Wide Dual Person-Affecting Principle, one of two outcomes would be (i) in one way better if this outcome would together benefit people more, and (ii) in another way better if this outcome would benefit each person more. I argue that a plausible construal of this principle has two features that make it vulnerable to objections. First, the most plausible interpretation of the second part of the principle turns out to incorporate an average function. Although this helps to avoid the Repugnant Conclusion, it implausibly implies that it can be better to add further people with less bad but still miserable lives to populations consisting only of lives full of suffering. Second, the principle is not based on a comparative but on an intrinsic notion of benefit. This allows to solve the Non-Identity Problem, yet it accounts only for a weak sense of person-affecting rather than for the more substantive person-affecting intuition that it is morally significant that particular people are made better (or worse) off. Eventually, I highlight what we can, nevertheless, learn from Parfit’s idea of combining different ways in which outcomes might be better