Design is a future-oriented activity. How can we best care for/minimise harm to others in the future? The Non-Identity problem draws our attention to the complexity of attempts to make judgements about the future consequences of our actions today.
Philosopher Derek Parfit’s Non-Identity problem forces us to think carefully about how we conceive of our responsibilities to future humans. Parfit starts with the case of a prospective mother faced with the choice either to conceive a child now, whose life will be negatively affected by a certain disability, or to wait and conceive a child at a future date who would be born without this impairment. At first glance this seems like a relatively straightforward calculation. The situation of the baby conceived now would be inferior to that of the baby conceived later. From a consequentialist perspective the optimal outcome can be achieved by waiting. However, the scenario becomes much more complex when we realise that we are talking about two entirely different children, neither of whom yet exists. To choose one is to deny the other existence. It is difficult to argue that the mother would be harming the child conceived now by giving it life, even if this life is slightly impaired. Surely a good, though perhaps imperfect, life is better than no life at all?
To fully illustrate the counter-intuitive insights afforded by this thinking device, Parfit develops the scenario to consider the implications of contemporary global resource use on future populations. Parfit’s thought experiment problematically and provocatively demonstrates an argument that no specific person is actually harmed when we make decisions today which negatively impact the imagined lives of potential future populations. A major policy shift, for example the decision to rapidly increase use of fossil fuels, would change working patterns, relationships, children conceived. Within a few generations the future population will be a completely alternative set of humans. These new future humans’ living conditions may be worse than they might have otherwise been due to environmental damage and resource scarcity but it can be argued that these specific humans have not themselves technically been harmed. Surely a good, though perhaps imperfect, life is better than no life at all?
The Non-Identity problem raises difficult questions and does not provide simple answers. Can a course of action still be said to be wrong, even if it is not wrong in relation to anyone in particular? What do we do when our intuitions are strongly opposed to logical reasoning?
What it does offer is a critique of the use of simplistic consequentialist reasoning in our attempts to consider the implications of activity which aims to influence the future. Trying to calculate total or average levels of happiness in a hypothetical future population may be a fools errand. For designers, whose work is to bring the future into being, how are we to proceed?
In the design context, the Non-Identity Problem challenges us to consider the nature of design’s responsibility towards future humans: whether this is a responsibility to not-harm, or to care, and what the difference and implications of this might be.
*Further Reading
Parfit, D. (1976). On doing the best for our children. In M. Bayles (Ed.), Ethics and Population (pp. 100–115). Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman.
Roberts, M. A., “The Nonidentity Problem”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = plato.stanford.edu
Podcast Episode: Future People. The Philosopher’s Arms
(BBC Radio 4), Series 5, Episode 4.