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Why procreative preferences may be moral – and why it may not matter if they aren’t

Why procreative preferences may be moral – and why it may not matter if they aren’t
Why procreative preferences may be moral – and why it may not matter if they aren’t
There has been much argument over whether procreative selection is obligatory or wrong. Rebecca Bennett has recently challenged the assumption that procreative choices are properly moral choices, arguing that these views express mere preferences. This article challenges Bennett's view on two fronts. First, I argue that the Non-Identity Problem does not show that there cannot be harmless wrongs – though this would require us to abandon the intuitively attractive ‘person-affecting principle’, that may be a lesser cost than abandoning some more firmly-held intuition. But, even if we accept Bennett's claim that these choices are not moral, that does not show them to be mere personal preferences. I argue that there is a class of non-moral ‘categorical preferences’ that have much the same implications as moral preferences. If a moral preference for able-bodied children is problematic (as Bennett claims), then so is a non-moral categorical preference. Thus, showing that these preferences are not moral does not show that they are not problematic, since they may still be categorical
procreative beneficence, julian savulescu, rebecca bennett, non-identity problem, person-affecting principle
0269-9702
499-506
Saunders, Ben
aed7ba9f-f519-4bbf-a554-db25b684037d
Saunders, Ben
aed7ba9f-f519-4bbf-a554-db25b684037d

Saunders, Ben (2015) Why procreative preferences may be moral – and why it may not matter if they aren’t. Bioethics, 29 (7), 499-506. (doi:10.1111/bioe.12147).

Record type: Article

Abstract

There has been much argument over whether procreative selection is obligatory or wrong. Rebecca Bennett has recently challenged the assumption that procreative choices are properly moral choices, arguing that these views express mere preferences. This article challenges Bennett's view on two fronts. First, I argue that the Non-Identity Problem does not show that there cannot be harmless wrongs – though this would require us to abandon the intuitively attractive ‘person-affecting principle’, that may be a lesser cost than abandoning some more firmly-held intuition. But, even if we accept Bennett's claim that these choices are not moral, that does not show them to be mere personal preferences. I argue that there is a class of non-moral ‘categorical preferences’ that have much the same implications as moral preferences. If a moral preference for able-bodied children is problematic (as Bennett claims), then so is a non-moral categorical preference. Thus, showing that these preferences are not moral does not show that they are not problematic, since they may still be categorical

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More information

e-pub ahead of print date: 6 February 2015
Published date: September 2015
Keywords: procreative beneficence, julian savulescu, rebecca bennett, non-identity problem, person-affecting principle
Organisations: Faculty of Social, Human and Mathematical Sciences

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 370378
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/370378
ISSN: 0269-9702
PURE UUID: 7b2664a3-5493-4ca6-b1df-478dcf2cd993
ORCID for Ben Saunders: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-5147-6397

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 22 Oct 2014 13:43
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:50

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