Well-being, procreative reasons and normative background conditions.

This article focuses on a novel approach to population ethics, arguing that the well-being of potential offspring does not directly generate moral reasons for or against procreation but instead functions as normative background conditions that enable, disable, or intensify independent procreative reasons. This view offers an alternative explanation for the Procreation Asymmetry—the intuition that there is a moral reason not to create a person whose life would not be worth living, but no corresponding reason to create someone whose life would be worth living—by treating well-being as a condition affecting other reasons rather than as a reason itself. The account also explains why additional well-being intensifies procreative reasons without constituting new reasons and acknowledges that it does not fully establish a moral reason against creating miserable lives, though it suggests possible extensions. Overall, the paper highlights the underappreciated role of background conditions in ethical deliberations about procreation.