The better chance puzzle

Abstract

Abstract A better chance of existence sometimes converts an otherwise wrong choice into a permissible choice. Consider, for example, a fertility treatment that mildly adversely affects any child whose chances of existence are improved by that treatment. But if the better chance of existence can make things better, doesn’t the actual fact of existence also make things better? Doesn’t the “hard mathematical logic” of taking probabilities into account entail that the basic existential intuition is false? This chapter argues that it doesn’t. In addition, it’s proposed that the troubled concept of expected value gives way to the concept of probable value. Either way, the principle faces extremely challenging probabilistic forms of the nonidentity problem (Parfit’s depletion case, historical injustice cases, Kavka’s pleasure pill case). In response, this chapter identifies a fallacy (the nonidentity fallacy) that has long tricked theorists into abandoning—in trying to abandon—the deeply held, widely shared, basic existential intuition.