On Our Duties Towards Our Descendants: Non-Identity and The Time Dependence Claim

According to Parfit’s Time Dependence Claim it is the case that had any particular person not been conceived when he was conceived, it is the case that he would never have existed. (Parfit,1982,p.351). This claim is a major premise of the non-identity problem when used in the form of an argument either to deny the idea that we have specific duties not to bring into the world persons that will lead limited but still worthwhile lives, or, in the way Parfit intended, to question the efficacy of person-affecting principles to determine our duties towards future generations. Within this paper I will look to recent attempts to circumvent the non-identity problem such as those which question the Time Dependence Claim either by proposing a more coarse grained account of identity or couching parental and societal duties regarding future persons in terms of role morality or de dicto as opposed to de re harms. I will argue that such types of argument have been unfairly dismissed and offer promise in both scenarios where de dicto goodness or badness is paired with de dicto duties such as in the roles of government officials and in making sense in micro cases of our preferences regarding procreation. However, I will note finally that whilst the de re de dicto distinction allows us to talk sensibly in both macro and micro non-identity cases it does not offer compelling reasons in scenario’s relating to the duties of prospective parents to ensure the health of their children, due, in main, to the limited nature of parental responsibilities towards their offspring, real or prospective. I shall thus propose that regarding prospective parents the only way to evaluate the moral status of procreative decisions is to look to the impact such decisions will have on already existing persons.