The person-affecting restriction, comparativism, and the moral status of potential people

Abstract

I discuss a number of different interpretations of the restriction and in particular one interpretation which I call ‘comparativism’. According to this view, we should draw a distinction between uniquely and nonuniquely realizable people. The former people only exist in one out of two possible outcomes, whereas the latter exist in both of the compared outcomes. The idea is that we should give more weight to the well-being of nonuniquely realizable people or take it into account in a different way as compared to the well-being of uniquely realizable people. I argue that the different versions of the ‘person affecting restriction’ and ‘comparativism’ either have counterintuitive implications of their own or are compatible with traditional theories such as utilitarianism.