The Parent Trap: Why Choice-Dependent Moral Theories Fail to Deliver the Asymmetry

According to the asymmetry, creating a miserable person is morally impermissible but failing to create a happy person is morally permissible, other things being equal. Some attempt to underwrite the asymmetry by appealing to a choice-dependent moral theory according to which the deontic status of an act depends on whether the agent performs it. We show that all choice-dependent moral theories in the literature are vulnerable to what we call ‘The Parent Trap’. These theories imply that the presence of morally impermissible options can generate a moral requirement to create happy people, even at the cost of the procreator’s well-being. We consider two new choice-dependent theories that avoid this result but show that they generate an implausible moral permission to create miserable people. Choice-dependent theories therefore fail to do justice to the intuitions that motivate the asymmetry.