Conclusion

Abstract

Consider the choice not to bring a new person into existence. Suppose that choice creates additional wellbeing for some people but does not destroy wellbeing for any person who does or will exist. A plus for Variabilism is that it enables us to explain why that choice is permissible, or indeed obligatory, without washing our hands of that possible person – that merely possible person, relative to any world at which the choice is in fact performed – entirely. We can still say that person matters morally – that losses that person suffers, at still other worlds where that person does or will exist, bear on the acts that are performed at those other worlds and their alternatives. They count against the acts that impose those losses and, in a roundabout way, in favor of the acts that avoid them.