In Inclusive Ethics Persson integrates many of the ideas he has developed over the years into a cohesive ethical vision. The volume is extremely rich in ideas, painstakingly reasoned, and radical in several respects. It defends a type of consequentialism in which principles of beneficence and justice are to be balanced. The writing, although always clear, is very dense, so it is important that the book's introductory chapter provides a helpful, detailed overview.

Part I, ‘The Inclusiveness of Benefiting and Reasons of Beneficence’, contends that all possible conscious beings, including those who never exist, matter morally in themselves – a radical departure from many leading views for including merely possible conscious beings. By contrast, the inclusion of conscious or sentient animals within the scope of moral concern is now widely accepted.

Part II, ‘Extreme Egalitarianism’, argues that ‘justice requires everyone to be equally well off, unless some autonomously choose to be worse off [e.g., because they voluntarily sacrifice themselves for others’ benefit]’ (p. 19). The equality demanded by justice is not equality of opportunity, equal liberal rights, equal consideration in a utilitarian framework, or equal access to some decent minimum. Rather, it is equality of welfare, representing another departure from widely shared views. At the same time, this demand of justice is to be balanced with – rather than taking lexical priority over – beneficence, making the thesis about justice somewhat less revisionary in its implications than one might initially think. And because one can generally do more good by helping individuals who have already been born than by making merely possible individuals actual, Persson's view – despite including merely possible conscious beings and despite its radical egalitarianism – implies neither an obligation to procreate nor a prohibition against abortion. It does, however, include animals within the scope of egalitarian justice (rather than merely granting them some moral status), thereby calling for a profound departure from prevailing attitudes and practices regarding animals.

Part III, ‘Philosophical Thinking about How to Live’, reflects pessimistically about the usefulness of this approach – given both the uncertainties inherent in balancing the two principles and their clash with widely shared, biologically rooted biases that animate much of common morality – and even about whether moral philosophy has any point. The book ends on the somewhat more hopeful note that a stoical, materially modest approach to life – for those capable of it – may help to mitigate some of the biggest problems of life on earth, improving the prospects for human survival.

A proper review of this book would require a full-length article. Persson addresses numerous important issues in an original way: the scope of moral status and beneficence; the nature of individual welfare; the nature of harm; the relationship between personal and impersonal values; leading puzzles in population ethics such as the procreative asymmetry and the ‘repugnant conclusion’; the nature of human death; the demands of justice; and others. (Some large topics – such as his rejection of deontological constraints and his claim that personal identity is unimportant to ethics – are assumed rather than addressed here. The reader is directed to earlier-published works.) I will confine the remainder of my discussion to these topics: (1) the nature of individual welfare; (2) the inclusion of potential conscious individuals within the scope of beneficence; (3) the non-inclusion of the formerly conscious; (4) Persson's remarks about the foundation of ethics; and, relatedly, (5) his pessimism about moral philosophy.

In Persson's view, our welfare – that is, for us to fare well or for things to go well for us – consists in the satisfaction of our intrinsic desires. Because all sentient beings have intrinsic desires for (at least the continuation of) pleasurable experiences, there is a felt aspect of welfare that Persson calls well-being. Because persons also characteristically have trans-experiential desires – for example, to have real friends or to achieve something meaningful (not merely to have the experiences typically associated with these states of affairs) – our welfare also has a ‘factual’ aspect: the actual satisfaction of our trans-experiential desires (provided they are informed, rational, and free). In brief, Persson conceptualizes welfare as having an experiential aspect – well-being – and (for beings with trans-experiential desires) an additional aspect, which he terms ‘autonomy’.

As someone who, with a collaborator, has arrived at a similar understanding of welfare (although we use the term ‘well-being’ to cover both aspects and conceptualize them a bit differently), I find Persson's account very congenial (DeGrazia and Joseph Millum, A Theory of Bioethics (in preparation)). Moreover, Persson's discussion of this topic is a model of lucidity.

The principle of beneficence concerns the promotion of welfare. Whose welfare counts? It is common among progressive philosophers to reply: the welfare of every being who has a welfare. This answer would take us to the set of sentient beings, which would include nearly all postnatal human beings, late (sentient) fetuses, and many non-human animals. But Persson's more inclusive view holds that the beings falling within the scope of beneficence range beyond those for whom some things have intrinsic value or disvalue – that is, beyond sentient beings. Beneficence must also take into account beings for whom some things have extrinsic (instrumental) value or disvalue, even if nothing at a given time – or ever – turns out to matter intrinsically for them. In Persson's view:

So, if a possible being, once actualized, would have an overall-good life, then never coming into existence is less good, extrinsically, than coming to be. Conversely, if a possible being would, if actualized, have an overall-bad life, then ‘failure to launch’ is extrinsically better for this being.

Having strongly resisted the idea that merely possible beings could have interests (e.g. in Creation Ethics (2012)), I am happy to acknowledge that Persson has opened my mind to this possibility. Against the argument that it is indeterminate who among zillions of possible individuals would come into being, seemingly eliminating any intelligible subject of extrinsic benefit or harm, Persson's view seems to be that there are zillions of possible individuals who could be affected by our procreative decisions – each of them determined by the possible union of a single egg and a single sperm. Against the objection that to speak of any (merely) possible individual as a ‘being’ is to reify something that doesn't exist, he cogently points out that existing in flesh and blood and existing as a logical possibility are two different things, so that there is no reification or contradiction.

Thus Persson's inclusive view of beneficence includes both conscious beings and potential conscious beings within its scope. But it excludes formerly conscious beings, even ones who continue to exist in living flesh and blood. In the author's words, ‘The irreversible cessation of consciousness is a moral turning point at which reasons of beneficence by and large cease to apply’ (p. 18); and, more fully,

Yet Persson's dual-aspect account of welfare guarantees that someone in an irreversible coma or persistent vegetative state could still be in a state in which things can be intrinsically valuable for her, because the trans-experiential aspect applies if the individual had desires about how things might go for her after losing consciousness. Persson appears to acknowledge the possible relevance of such desires in a note but brackets the point, adding: ‘[S]uch a state of non-consciousness does not in itself provide a ground for moral standing’ (p. 128, n. 6). Well, of course, a state of non-consciousness is not itself a ground for moral standing, interests, or inclusion under the scope of beneficence, but having exercised one's autonomy earlier with respect to how things go for one is. To my mind, this point does not deserve bracketing. Many who (unlike Persson) defend a higher-brain definition of death – according to which we die upon irreversibly losing the capacity for consciousness – appeal, in part, to the claim that such loss entails an irreversible loss of interests. The dual-aspect account of welfare undermines this claim.

As stated earlier, Persson's consequentialism requires an agent to balance the principles of beneficence and justice. These coequal principles constitute the moral foundation of the system. But what underlies or motivates them? That is, what, if any, metaethical foundation provides the reason for being moral in the first place? Persson doesn't think ethics has much of a foundation: ‘I take it that morality rests on no firmer ground than the fact that desires oriented at beneficence and justice are widespread among us’ (p. 22).

While I cannot disprove this extremely spare metaethical picture, I certainly hope it is incorrect. After all, how can one expect a moral agent who happens not to have one or both of these desires to act in accordance with the corresponding principles? Prima facie, unless there is a more robust foundation than this, it would seem unfair to maintain this expectation of such individuals. An alternative would be to think of the foundation of ethics as the human capacity to be reasonable in light of moderate scarcity, a need to coordinate activities and coexist peaceably, and (yes) certain widely shared, if not quite universal, moral sentiments. The needs to coordinate and coexist might explain why it's not unfair to expect compliance with certain principles that not quite everyone will endorse.

In Part III Persson expresses pessimism about the usefulness of his proposed ethical system and about whether moral philosophy has a point. The major obstacle to usefulness is the difficulty of complying with his system given hard-wired prejudices that are part of our natural inheritance from early humans who lived in small groups with low technology. The major obstacle to moral philosophy's having a point is the unlikelihood of consensus on the structure of normative ethics and metaethics.

In response to both challenges, I hold out for somewhat greater optimism. Yes, human prejudices – for example, against the importance of the needs of distant, faceless strangers and against non-human animals’ interests – are formidable. Nevertheless, humanity is gradually making moral progress in the expansion of moral concern and the erosion of prejudice against various ‘outgroups’. In my lifetime, acceptance of gays has grown enormously and concern for the welfare of animals significantly. As far as moral philosophy goes, I perceive a tendency of leading accounts representing consequentialism and deontology to moderate and reach in each other's direction; this tendency is consonant with widespread acceptance of reflective equilibrium as the appropriate methodology in ethics, and the growing realization that this methodology obviates ‘thick’ metaethical commitments such as acceptance of a particular metaphysics of morals. Historically, moreover, philosophy sometimes has a felicitous practical impact. Hobbes and Locke helped demolish the idea that kings enjoy a divine prerogative to rule. Locke and others helped to establish the idea of human rights. Today, several philosophers are helpfully influencing mainstream thinking about effective altruism and animal protection. Two principal tasks of moral philosophy, in my view, are to combat prejudice in ethical thinking and to unmask rationalizations of cynicism, abuse of power, greed, and the like. I believe moral philosophy performs these tasks fairly well.

Disclaimer: This work was supported in part by intramural funds from the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. The opinions expressed here are the author's own and do not reflect the policy or position of the NIH or any other part of the US federal government.