Values are incommensurable when they cannot be measured on a single cardinal scale. Many philosophers suggest that incommensurability can help us solve the problems of population ethics. I agree. But some philosophers claim that populations bear incommensurable values merely because they contain different numbers of people, perhaps within some range. I argue that mere differences in how many people exist, even within some range, do not suffice for incommensurability. I argue that the intuitive neutrality of creating happy people is better (...) captured by a version of average utilitarianism. But this view is problematic. So I suggest a version of total utilitarianism that avoids the repugnant conclusion by appealing to incommensurable dimensions of wellbeing. (shrink)

It appears to have been established that it is not possible for us to harm distant future generations by failing to adopt long-range welfare policies which would conserve resources or limit pollution. By exploring a number of possible worlds, the present article shows, first, that the argument appears to be at least as telling against Aristotelian, rights-based and Rawlsian approaches as it seems to be against utilitarianism, but second, and most importantly, that it only holds if we fail to view (...) moral agents as individuals. The article also concludes that the argument has profoundly counter-intuitive implications. (shrink)

It has been argued that there is an irreconcilable difference between those advocating animal liberation or animal rights, on the one hand, and those preferring a wider environmental ethic, which includes concern for non-sentient life-forms and species preservation, on the other. In contrast, I argue that it is possible to provide foundations for both seemingly environmentalist positions by exploring some of the potential of a 'collective-projectivist' reading of Hume – one that seems more consistent with Hume's texts than other readings. (...) In short, this article seeks to advance our understanding of some of the possibilities within Humean moral theory, while simultaneously providing new foundations for both animal welfare and a wider environmental ethic. (shrink)

Response to Ernest Partridge's paper 'The Future - For Better or Worse' in this issue of Environmental Values.

This article examines several families of population principles in the light of a set of axioms. In addition to the critical-level utilitarian, number-sensitive critical-level utilitarian, and number-dampened utilitarian families and their generalized counterparts, we consider the restricted number-dampened family and introduce two new ones: the restricted critical-level and restricted number-dependent critical-level families. Subsets of the restricted families have non-negative critical levels, avoid the `repugnant conclusion' and satisfy the axiom priority for lives worth living, but violate an important independence condition.

I shall briefly evaluate the common claim that ethically acceptable population policies must let individuals to decide freely on the number of their children. I shall ask, first, what exactly is the relation between population policies that we find intuitively appealing, on the one hand, and population policies that maximize procreative freedom, on the other, and second, what is the relation between population policies that we tend to reject on moral grounds, on the one hand, and population policies that use (...) coercive methods such as laws or economic incentives and deterrents, on the other. I shall argue that when changing a population policy, it may be morally desirable to affect people's procreative decisions more rather than less, and that sometimes it may be morally desirable to prefer a population policy that does not maximize procreative freedom to a population policy that does maximize it. I shall also point out that indirect population policies that use incentives and deterrents are not necessarily incompatible with liberal principles. Finally, I try to show what is assumed by those who defend the view that coercive population policies are morally wrong in all circumstances. (shrink)

There has been a process of moral extensionism within environmental ethics from anthropocentrism, through zoocentrism, to ecocentrism. This article maps key elements of that process, and concludes that each of these ethical positions fails as a fully adequate, environmentalist ethic, and does so because of an implicit assumption that is common within normative theory. This notwithstanding, each position may well contribute a value. The problem that then arises is how to trade off those values against each other when they conflict. (...) The solution here proposed is to employ multidimensional isovalue-contours along with a multidimensional practicability-frontier. This would result in a rich, value-pluralist environmentalist ethic that enjoined different outcomes to those enjoined by purely anthropocentric, zoocentric or ecocentric ethics. (shrink)

On the basis of our apparent obligations to future generations, it would seem that we are morally obliged to reduce the risk our environmentally destructive behaviour poses for their well-being. But if, rather than choosing to destroy the environment, we are in fact driven to do so, then any obligation to reduce our environmental impact requires an understanding of the mechanism driving our behaviour. This article argues that the State-Primacy Theory provides a plausible explanation for the nature of that mechanism, (...) and concludes that the most common strategies offered as a response to our environmental impact are most likely to be insufficiently radical to meet our seeming obligations effectively. (shrink)