The Moral Status of Possible Persons

Abstract This chapter addresses the question of modal moral status. Do the interests of those who could exist, but do not, matter morally? The leading view, moral actualism, states that only the interests of actual people matter in assessing our actions. But moral actualism faces devastating objections. This chapter proposes that a more attractive theory is moral counterfactualism, the view that the interests of people who would be actual under a certain act, as well as those who would have been actual had an accessible alternative been chosen, all matter morally. The chapter discusses objections to moral counterfactualism, including its inability to capture the procreative asymmetry, the view that there is reason to not create miserable people but no reason to create happy people. These objections are not fatal for moral counterfactualism, for although it counterintuitively allows for a reason to create happy people, this reason is relatively weak and defeasible.