The Non-Identity Problem

Brian YS Wong July 24, 2024 21:58

One of the most fascinating puzzles I enjoy teaching in philosophy is the Non-Identity Problem. Consider the following:

A bureaucrat is deliberating over whether to construct a dam near a village in a remote rainforest. If he proceeds with the dam construction… in 30 years’ time, the river will dry up and a nearby village will be deprived of access to clean water, thereby precipitating illnesses arising from consumption of unsafe water. On the other hand, if he opts not to construct the dam… there would be a slight reduction in the quality and quantity water supply to a remote village 10km away. Term this the Dam Construction case.

At first glance, this decision seems to be a no-brainer: building the dam is fundamentally unethical, for it contravenes the interests of the individuals residing in the nearby village – in 30 years’ time. Assume further that no precaution could be implemented to improve water access, and that the deleterious health effects are both significant and long-lasting.

Yet we should remember the following premise: existence is an innately fragile matter. Indeed, had a different egg encountered a different sperm at a different time, a wholly distinct individual would be born (despite being of the same genetic material), with different life experiences, choices, and decisions down the way. A slight difference in the initial conditions of a sequential system, could give rise to substantial divergences later down the line. That’s the Butterfly Effect.

In the Dam Construction case, suppose the bureaucrat opts to not build the dam, then perhaps the very villagers who would have relocated elsewhere would have chosen instead to stay behind; alternatively, the occupations taken up by the two villages’ occupants could have been altered in slight but significant ways. The end results are clear: in 30 years’ time, a partially, if not wholly, different group of individuals would come into existence – in the world where the dam is not built. In short, when comparing between World A (where the dam is built) and World B (where the dam is not built), we are in fact comparing two distinct batches of people.

Let us grant that even in the case of individuals inflicted with serious water poisoning (or toxins in the water), life is broadly worth living and hence more valuable than its absence. This seems pretty intuitive – many individuals suffer from debilitating diseases and chronic pain yet would still prefer to have lived than not at all. Let us further grant that individuals can only be harmed if they are rendered worse off than they otherwise would have been.

We thus arrive at the following tentative conclusion – none amongst the residents of the villages across Worlds A or B born after the dam’s construction (or non-construction), in 30 years’ time, could claim that they have been harmed by the initial decision, whichever choice the bureaucrat makes. In particular, the younger residents (<30yo) in B cannot complain about the slight deprivation of access to water that their parents and they suffered from – for they would not have been alive had the bureaucrat decided to proceed with the dam; residents in A, similarly, cannot complain about the construction of the dam, given that they appear to have benefited – as opposed to been harmed – by the bureaucrat’s decision.

What’s going on here? In philosophy, this is an archetypal case of a Non-Identity Problem. This problem can be reduced into five distinct premises: first, that existence is fragile and identities of individuals can be easily altered through slight, subtle changes to the environs in which they are conceived (and subsequently) born; second, that individuals are better-off having lived than not having lived, even if their lives are ‘subpar’ by some absolute metric or as compared with some idealised metric; third, that harm is a distinctly person-centric concept – only persons, as opposed to abstract entities, can be said to be harmed by (or benefit from) particular events; fourth, that harm is best understood as a comparative notion – individuals are harmed by X if they are worse-off than they otherwise would have been without X, and fifth, perhaps most importantly, cases like the Dam Construction case are normatively troubling. We find them problematic. We intuit that the bureaucrat does something wrong when he opts to build the dam.

The Non-Identity Problem refers to the seeming incompatibility between these five premises.
A solution that has been proposed – and has been widely accepted to be plausibly efficacious – is to argue that we can grant all of the above premises, whilst also endorsing the further premise, that wrongness should not be equated with harm. This way, we can resolve the seeming tension. More precisely, per what philosophers term a utilitarian theory of rightness, the bureaucrat behaves wrongly when he builds the dam, because his action brings about a worse state-of-affairs – all-things-considered – irrespective of the exact identities of individuals involved. In other words, because the benefits of avoiding the nearby villagers catching serious diseases arising from unclean water outweighs the benefits of the remote villagers having slightly better access to clean water, the bureaucrat should favour the latter.

Yet this theory is not without its flaws. Utilitarianism, as with all ethical theories that prioritise maximising the ‘greatest good’, could lead to certain rather morally counterintuitive and unpalatable conclusions – such as the authorisation, the permitting, of torturing and even killing innocents in order to ‘achieve the seemingly better outcome’. Even if it works as a theoretically sound approach to personal ethics, we may hold our officials and bureaucrats to higher – or different – standards, especially as they must balance between what Max Weber terms their ethics of conviction, and ethics of responsibility. Tradeoffs are hard to justify, and hence cannot be easily or flippantly committed. Utilitarian prescriptions may be one set of considerations – but should by no means be construed to be the only germane considerations, when it comes to the right thing to do.
The Non-Identity Problem hence rages on – with a myriad of possible solutions, proposals, and counterproposals. Long live Philosophy!

Brian YS Wong

Assistant Professor, HKU