What is the harm in harmful conception? On threshold harms in non-identity cases

Reading Traumatized Bodies in Margaret Atwood’s Bodily Harm

Contemporary literary traumatheory indicates that experiencing trauma creates a fear that destroys identity. In fact, experiencing trauma creates a new identity for the victim. The representation of the trauma and the formation of the new identity for the victim are the building blocks of trauma novels. Due to the nature of trauma, it seems impossible to fully describe traumatic experiences by ...

How useful is the concept of the ‘harm threshold’ in reproductive ethics and law?

In his book Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit suggests that people are not harmed by being conceived with a disease or disability if they could not have existed without suffering that particular condition. He nevertheless contends that entities can be harmed if the suffering they experience is sufficiently severe. By implication, there is a threshold which divides harmful from non-harmful conce...

On the Concept of a Morally Relevant Harm

On the Concept of a Morally Relevant Harm In this paper I explicate and defend the concept of a morally relevant harm. This concept figures prominently in common-sense and contractualist moral reasoning concerning cases where an agent can prevent harm to members of a large group or a small one, but not both. When the two harms to which members of these groups are exposed are morally relevant to...

The Non - Identity Problem , Collective Rights , and the Threshold Conception of Harm Discussion Paper No . 2011 – 04 October 15 , 2011

Creation Ethics and the harms of existence.

David DeGrazia’s Creation Ethics is a fascinating effort to present a consistent account of creation in many contexts— from reproduction, to self-creation through genetic enhancement, to the creation of entire future generations. For reasons of space, this comment addresses the related discussions of bearing children in wrongful life cases (chapter 5) and bearing children with disadvantages (ch...