Alex Voorhoeve: Equality for Possible People: A Defence.

Lecture by Alex Voorhoeve, organized by The Centre for Philosophy, Politics and Economics

Marc Fleurbaey and I have proposed a form of egalitarianism for possible people, on which we should be concerned with people’s expected well-being, conditional on their existence. (An example might be what a possible person’s healthy life expectancy would be if they were created.) Critics, including Jake Nebel and Toby Handfield, have argued that a person's expected well-being, conditional on their existence, does not have the importance we attribute to it. Against their challenges, I argue that the quality of a potential person's prospects at the moment of our choice to create them is an essential element in justifying decisions to them, should we choose to create them. I also argue it is especially important to avoid creating people with poor prospects.