Hare And Parfit: Can We Harm Possible People?

Hare and Parfit both argue about the rights that possible people have or do not have. Possible people are people that will exist if people follow a certain set of actions. For example, people who are not conceived yet would be considered possible people. It takes people to attempt to conceive the person. There is no guarantee that that person will be born. That is what causes the debate about if we can harm them and if they have rights. Hare argues that we can harm possible people by preventing their conception. His reasoning behind this idea is that what is morally right is what is in the best interest of those concerned. Since the possible person is directly impacted by the outcome of his conception his best interests need to be considered. Parfit argues against Hare’s ideas by saying that we can can not harm people that are not conceived. One of his main points was that we cannot benefit a possible person so therefore how can we do harm to a possible person. Parfit presents three principles that we can use to decide whether a decision is moral or not …show more content…
Now putting this through case 1 of the family not wanting to conceive a child that would have a normal healthy life, principle 3 would say that it is a moral decision because there is no person that is failing to receive the benefits. Now for case 2 this new principle refutes the idea of “wrongful conception.” It is viewed as immoral for the parents to knowingly have a child with abnormalities since they are making that person worse off than they would have been had they not gone through with the conception. In conclusion, the third principle is the best principle to use when deciding the ethical decisions regarding possible people because its goal is to not make people worse off as opposed to making people better