abstract Some day, perhaps soon, we may have genetic enhancements enabling us to conquer aging. Should we do so, if we can? I believe the topic is both interesting and important, and that it behoves us to think about it. Doing so may yield important insights about what we do care about, what we should care about, and how we should seek to live our lives, both individually and collectively. My central question is this: Is living longer, living better? My (...) paper does not offer a sustained argument for a single, considered, thesis. Rather, it offers a number of snippets of often-unconnected thoughts relevant to the issues my question raises. The paper contains seven sections. Part one is introductory. Part two comments on some current longevity research. Part three indicates the attitudes towards death and science with which I approach these questions. Parts four and five, respectively, discuss some worries about immortality raised by Leon Kass and Bernard Williams. Part six points to some practical, social, and moral concerns that might arise if society's members lived super long lives. Part seven concludes by suggesting that we should favour living well over living longer, and ongoing reproduction over immortality; correspondingly, I suggest that we should think long and hard before proceeding with certain lines of longevity research. (shrink)

Is it fair to leave the next generation a public debt? Is it defensible to impose legal rules on them through constitutional constraints? From combating climate change to ensuring proper funding for future pensions, concerns about ethics between generations are everywhere. In this volume sixteen philosophers explore intergenerational justice. Part One examines the ways in which various theories of justice look at the matter. These include libertarian, Rawlsian, sufficientarian, contractarian, communitarian, Marxian and reciprocity-based approaches. In Part Two, the authors look (...) more specifically at issues relevant to each of these theories, such as motivation to act fairly towards future generations, the population dimension, the formation of preferences through education and how they impact on our intergenerational obligations, and whether it is fair to rely on constitutional devices. (shrink)

The procreation asymmetry is a widely held view in ethics, claiming that one should make existing people happy but has no reason to make happy people. Here, I shall present a new objection demonstrating from modest premises that one has a reason to take a sequence of actions that simply creates a happy person; yet this judgment in combination with plausible principles about sequences of actions entails that one has some reason to simply create a happy person. Additionally, I will (...) argue that one's reasons to create a happy person are quite strong. (shrink)

On person-affecting views in population ethics, the moral import of a person’s welfare depends on that person’s temporal or modal status. These views typically imply that – all else equal – we’re never required to create extra people, or to act in ways that increase the probability of extra people coming into existence. -/- In this paper, I use Parfit-style fission cases to construct a dilemma for person-affecting views: either they forfeit their seeming-advantages and face fission analogues of the problems (...) faced by their rival impersonal views, or else they turn out to be not so person-affecting after all. In light of this dilemma, the attractions of person-affecting views largely evaporate. What remains are the problems unique to them. (shrink)

Según el largoplacismo, los efectos a largo plazo de nuestras acciones son un aspecto crucial de las mismas. Esto se debe a que el futuro, dada su extensión, presumiblemente contendrá a la mayor parte de los seres que alguna vez existan. Hay, sin embargo, distintas objeciones que cuestionan la viabilidad de la propuesta largoplacista, señalando que tendríamos razones para priorizar el corto plazo. Estas objeciones apuntan a problemas relacionados con la representación de individuos que todavía no existen, la situación de (...) las generaciones futuras o la incertidumbre acerca de lo que ocurrirá en el largo plazo. Este artículo examina dichas objeciones y argumenta que ninguna de ellas supone una razón decisiva para rechazar el largoplacismo. (shrink)

Since its proposal in 1984, Derek Parfit’s ‘Non-Identity Problem’ has significantly influenced how social choice theorists understand existential harms and benefits. The ‘problem’ raises the question of whether parents act wrongly when they choose to create a child with a life barely worth living. It suggests that if the alternatives would have either resulted in a life not worth living or non-existence, then the parents are not liable for moral criticism. This article challenges Parfit’s premise by advocating for a Minimal (...) Concern Clause that is generated through the parental relation. The Clause operates under the assumption that non-existence is not a valanced experiential state and is thus not comparable to any positive state of existence. The argument unfolds in two main steps: firstly, it disputes the premise in Same-Number Cases by proposing an alternative semantic distinction between objects of reference, particularly, the status of a merely possible person. Secondly, it contends that in Different-Number Cases, parents are obligated to exercise minimal prudence under conditions of uncertainty, and that the moral weight of the Minimal Concern Clause must be compounded to reflect the replicable nature of procreation. (shrink)

Pareto principles are at the core of ethics and decision theory. The Strong Pareto principle says that if one thing is better than another for someone and at least as good for everyone else, then the one is overall better than the other. But a host of famous figures express it differently, with ‘not worse’ in place of ‘at least as good.’ In the presence of parity (or incommensurability), this results in a strictly stronger Pareto principle, which I call Super‐Strong (...) Pareto. Super‐Strong Pareto, however, yields cyclic betterness and is therefore false. I point out a number of influential arguments—concerning population ethics, collective action problems, and decision‐making in the face of parity and uncertainty—that crucially rely on Super‐Strong Pareto and are therefore unsound. I then turn to the most influential argument against the possibility of parity—Broome's collapsing argument—and argue that it likewise relies on Super‐Strong Pareto reasoning and is therefore question‐begging. Finally, I turn to the much‐neglected question of how to justify Strong Pareto. The answer I arrive at, which emphasizes tie‐breaking, yields a striking insight, namely that Super‐Strong Pareto amounts to the denial of insensitivity to mild sweetening. That is what makes it problematic in the presence of parity. (shrink)

Person-affecting views state that (in cases where all else is equal) we’re permitted but not required to create people who would enjoy good lives. In this paper, I present an argument against every possible variety of person-affecting view. The argument is a dilemma over trilemmas. Narrow person-affecting views imply a trilemma in a case that I call ‘Expanded Non-Identity.’ Wide person-affecting views imply a trilemma in a case that I call ‘Two-Shot Non-Identity.’ One plausible practical upshot of my argument is (...) as follows: we individuals and our governments should be doing more to reduce the risk of human extinction this century. (shrink)

There are a number of assumptions made in our accepted psychology of moral decision-making that consequentialism seems to violate:: value connectionism, pluralism and dispositionalism. But consequentialism violates them only on a utilitarian or similar theory of value, not on the rival sort of theory that is sketched here.

In this paper, we argue that our moral concern for future well-being should reduce over time due to important practical considerations about how humans interact with spacetime. After surveying several of these considerations (around equality, special duties, existential contingency, and overlapping moral concern) we develop a set of core principles that can both explain their moral significance and highlight why this is inherently bound up with our relationship with spacetime. These relate to the equitable distribution of (1) moral concern in (...) a universe that we can only causally affect in one temporal direction; (2) access to the benefits from using spacetime as a resource; and (3) the burdens of care given (1) and (2). We conclude by considering the practical implications of our argument and find that, while it is often assumed that a preference for present over future well-being weakens the case for existential risk mitigation, this likely is not the case. (shrink)

A background assumption in much contemporary political philosophy is that justice is the first virtue of social institutions, taking priority over other values such as beneficence. This assumption is typically treated as a methodological starting point, rather than as following from any particular moral or political theory. In this paper, I challenge this assumption. To frame my discussion, I argue, first, that justice doesn’t in principle override beneficence, and second, that justice doesn’t typically outweigh beneficence, since, in institutional contexts, the (...) stakes of beneficence are often extremely high. While there are various ways one might resist this argument, none challenge the core methodological point that political philosophy should abandon its preoccupation with justice and begin to pay considerably more attention to social beneficence—that is, to beneficence understood as a virtue of social institutions. Along the way, I also highlight areas where focusing on social beneficence would lead political philosophers in new and fruitful directions, and where normative ethicists focused on personal beneficence might scale up their thinking to the institutional case. GPI Working Paper No. 11-2022. (shrink)

In this critique of longtermism, I attack its Heart, the idea that there is intrinsic value in the addition of each new happy being to the world. I provide new responses to longtermists' two main arguments for the Heart (The Argument from Extinction and The Argument from Miserable Beings). I then sketch an alternative view to longtermism, which I call Future Sentimentalism, a view that does a better job of explaining our future-regarding reasons. Finally, I consider an important objection to (...) my critique. (shrink)

Population policy has taken two divergent trajectories. In the developing part of the world, controlling population growth has been a major tune of the debate more than a half-century ago. In the more developed part of the world, an inverse pattern results in the discussion over the facilitation of population growth. The ethical debates on population policy have primarily focused on the former and ignored the latter. This paper proposes a more comprehensive account that justifies states’ population policy interventions. We (...) first consider the reasons that support pro-natalist policies to enhance fertility rates and argue that these policies are ethically problematic. We then establish an ethics of population policy grounded on account of self-sustaining the body politic, which consists of four criteria: survival, replacement, accountability, and solidarity. We discuss the implications of this account regarding birth-control and pro-natalist policies, as well as non-procreative policies such as immigration, adoption, and unintended baby-saving strategies. (shrink)

Here I will re-purpose Nozick’s (1974) “Experience Machine” thought experiment against hedonism into an argument against Veritic Epistemic Consequentialism. According to VEC, the right action, epistemically speaking, is the one that results in at least as favorable a ratio of true to false belief as any other action available. A consequence of VEC is that it would be epistemically right to outsource all your cognitive endeavors to a matrix-like “True Belief Machine” that uploads true beliefs through artificial stimulation. Rather than (...) reflecting, inferring or inquiring, all of your beliefs would be the product of updates coming from the machine. This implication of VEC is counter intuitive. I will spend much of the paper considering defensive maneuvers and showing them to be lacking. The problem with going in for the True Belief Machine seems to be that the subject forfeits her autonomy. There has been much work lately on the virtue of intellectual autonomy and some of it has the potential to explain what is epistemically amiss about plugging into the machine. However, I will argue that the proponent of VEC cannot appeal to it without abandoning her preferred order of explanation. (shrink)

According to the person-affecting view, the ethics of welfare should be cashed out in terms of how the individuals are affected. While the narrow version fails to solve the non-identity problem, the wide version is subject to the repugnant conclusion. A middle view promises to do better – the Interpersonal Comparative View of Welfare (ICV). It modifies the narrow view by abstracting away from individuals’ identities to account for interpersonal gains and losses. The paper assesses ICV’s merits and flaws. ICV (...) solves the non-identity problem, avoids the repugnant conclusion, and seems to accommodate the person-affecting intuition. But it cuts too many things along the way: ICV obstructs the advantage of the wide view to account for all future individuals’ welfare, abandons the intuitions that underlie the narrow view, and even violates its own presuppositions by turning out to be merely pseudo person-affecting. (shrink)

According to the procreation asymmetry, we have strong pro tanto reason to do what prevents someone from coming into a miserable existence—an existence so bad that it would be rational to prefer having never been born—solely because it prevents them from coming into a miserable existence, but we do not have strong pro tanto reason to do what allows someone to come into a happy existence solely because it allows them to come into a happy existence. At best, the fact (...) that an act would create a happy person merely offsets the reasons we have to avoid that act—i.e., an act that would be impermissible because it brings a miserable person into existence could be rendered permissible if it also brought into existence enough happy people. In this paper, I first argue that there is an intuitive asymmetry in the offsetting weight of happy humans and the offsetting weight of happy animals: the offsetting weight of happy animal lives vis-à-vis miserable animal lives appears to be greater than the offsetting weight of happy human lives vis-à-vis miserable human lives. This is the Procreation Asymmetry Asymmetry. I then argue that there is no Procreation Asymmetry Asymmetry. The best explanation of why happy human lives have only weak offsetting weight implies that happy animal lives also have only weak offsetting weight. (shrink)

According to Longtermism, our acts’ expected influence on the expected value of the world is mainly determined by their effects in the far future. There is, given total utilitarianism, a straightforward argument for Longtermism due to the enormous number of people that might exist in the future, but this argument does not work on person-affecting views. In this paper, we will argue that these views might also lead to Longtermism if Prudential Longtermism is true. Prudential Longtermism holds for a person (...) if and only if our acts’ overall influence on that person’s expected well-being is mainly determined by the acts’ effects in the far future. We argue that (due to a small chance of anti-ageing and uploading) there could be an enormous amount of prudential value for some contemporary person in the far future and that value may be so large that it dominates their overall expectation of lifetime well-being. (shrink)

This thesis consists of a series of papers in population ethics: a subfield of normative ethics concerned with the distinctive issues that arise in cases where our actions can affect the identities or number of people of who ever exist. Each paper can be read independently of the others. In Chapter 1, I present a dilemma for Archimedean views in population axiology: roughly, those views on which adding enough good lives to a population can make that population better than any (...) other. In Chapter 2, I extend Gustaf Arrhenius’s famous impossibility theorems in population axiology into the domain of choices under risk. My risky impossibility theorems dispense with the assumption that welfare levels are finitely fine-grained, and so tell against lexical views in population axiology. In Chapter 3, I present objections to critical-level and critical-range views in population axiology. I then sketch out what I call the ‘Imprecise Exchange Rates View’ and argue that it is an attractive alternative. In Chapter 4, I address critical-level and critical-range views again. This time, I note that they are vulnerable to objections from biographical identity: identity between lives. I suggest that these objections give us reason to reject critical-level and critical-range views and embrace the Total View. In Chapter 5, I argue that objections of the same form – objections from personal identity – tell against person-affecting views in population ethics. In Chapter 6, I draw out some counterintuitive implications of two recent complaints-based theories of the procreation asymmetry. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a fundamental but under-appreciated distinction between two ways of understanding the desire-satisfaction theory of well-being. According to proactive desire satisfactionism, a person is benefited by the acquisition of new satisfied desires. According to reactive desire satisfactionism, a person can be benefited only by the satisfaction of their existing desires. I first offer an overview of this distinction. I then canvass several ways of developing a general formulation of desire satisfactionism that would capture the reactive view, (...) and argue that all come with significant costs. (shrink)

Population ethics is widely considered to be exceptionally important and exceptionally difficult. One key source of difficulty is the conflict between certain moral intuitions and analytical results identifying requirements for rational (in the sense of complete and transitive) social choice over possible populations. One prominent such intuition is the Asymmetry, which jointly proposes that the fact that a possible child’s quality of life would be bad is a normative reason not to create the child, but the fact that a child’s (...) quality of life would be good is not a reason to create the child. This paper reports a set of questionnaire experiments about the Asymmetry in the spirit of economists’ empirical social choice. Few survey respondents show support for the Asymmetry; instead respondents report that expectations of a good quality of life are relevant. Each experiment shows evidence (among at least some participants) of dual-process moral reasoning, in which cognitive reflection is statistically associated with reporting expected good quality of life to be normatively relevant. The paper discusses possible implications of these results for the economics of population-sensitive social welfare and for the conflict between moral mathematics and population intuition. (shrink)

According to an intriguing though somewhat enigmatic line of thought first proposed by Jonathan Bennett, if humanity went extinct any time soon this would be unfortunate because important business would be left unfinished. This line of thought remains largely unexplored. I offer an interpretation of the idea that captures its intuitive appeal, is consistent with plausible constraints, and makes it non-redundant to other views in the literature. The resulting view contrasts with a welfare-promotion perspective, according to which extinction would be (...) bad because it would come at a massive opportunity cost in terms of feasibly achievable welfare over the lifetime of our species. (shrink)

Is there a pro tanto moral reason to create a life merely because it would be good for the person living it? Proponents of the procreation asymmetry claim there is not. Defending this controversial no reason claim, some have suggested that it is well in line with other phenomena in the moral realm: there is no reason to give a promise merely because one would keep it, and there is no reason to procreate merely to increase the extent of justice (...) in the world. Allegedly, some analogs extend so far as to support a unified theory of the no reason claim and the nonidentity thesis, that is, the view that of two persons leading lives of positive wellbeing, there is a reason to create the person with higher wellbeing. I dismantle the proposed analogs and show that they fail to meet various desiderata. Moreover, I refute Johann Frick's argument that the no reason claim follows from the assumption that reasons of beneficence are reasons to act for the sake of people. By criticizing attractive defenses for the no reason claim, I weaken its plausibility. (shrink)

This chapter makes the case for strong longtermism: the claim that, in many situations, impact on the long-run future is the most important feature of our actions. Our case begins with the observation that an astronomical number of people could exist in the aeons to come. Even on conservative estimates, the expected future population is enormous. We then add a moral claim: all the consequences of our actions matter. In particular, the moral importance of what happens does not depend on (...) when it happens. That pushes us toward strong longtermism. We then address a few potential concerns, the first of which is that it is impossible to have any sufficiently predictable influence on the course of the long-run future. We argue that this is not true. Some actions can reasonably be expected to improve humanity’s long-term prospects. These include reducing the risk of human extinction, preventing climate change, guiding the development of artificial intelligence, and investing funds for later use. We end by arguing that these actions are more than just extremely effective ways to do good. Since the benefits of longtermist efforts are large and the personal costs are comparatively small, we are morally required to take up these efforts. (shrink)

This paper develops a form of moral actualism that can explain the procreative asymmetry. Along the way, it defends and explains the attractive asymmetry: the claim that although an impermissible option can be self-conditionally permissible, a permissible option cannot be self-conditionally impermissible.

This paper develops transfinite extensions of transitivity and acyclicity in the context of population ethics. They are used to argue that it is better to add good lives, worse to add bad lives, and equally good to add neutral lives, where a life's value is understood as personal value. These conclusions rule out a number of theories of population ethics, feed into an argument for the repugnant conclusion, and allow us to reduce different-number comparisons to same-number ones. Challenges to these (...) arguments are addressed, including the issue of comparing existence and non-existence in terms of personal value, the possibility of minimal quanta of time and life, and the meaningfulness of measuring closeness between outcomes with different population sizes. An asymmetry is uncovered between transfinite cycles of worseness and betterness, supporting a version of the weak procreative asymmetry. Transfinite transitivity principles are also favourably compared to the better-known principles of continuity. (shrink)

Animal welfare is a concept that plays a role within both our moral deliberations and the relevant areas of science. The study of animal welfare has impacts on decisions made by legislators, producers and consumers with regards to housing and treatment of animals. Our ethical deliberations in these domains need to consider our impact on animals, and the study of animal welfare provides the information that allows us to make informed decisions. This thesis focusses on taking a philosophical perspective to (...) answer the question of how we can measure the welfare of animals. Animal welfare science is an applied area of biology, aimed at measuring animal welfare. Although philosophy of animal ethics is common, philosophy focussing on animal welfare science is rare. Despite this lack, there are definitely many ways in which philosophical methods can be used to analyse the methodologies and concepts used in this science. One of the aims of the work in this thesis is to remedy this lack of attention in animal welfare. Animal welfare science is a strong emerging discipline, but there is the need for conceptual and methodological clarity and sophistication in this science if it is to play the relevant informative role for our practical and ethical decision-making. There is thus is a strong role here for philosophical analysis for this purpose. The central aim of this thesis is to provide an account of how we can measure subjective animal welfare, addressing some of the potential problems that may arise in this particular scientific endeavour. The two questions I will be answering are: what is animal welfare, and how do we measure it? Part One of the thesis looks at the subjective concept of animal welfare and its applications. In it, I argue for a subjective welfare view - that animal welfare should be understood as the subjective experience of individuals over their lifetimes - and look at how the subjective welfare concept informs our ethical decision-making in two different cases in applied animal ethics. Part Two of the thesis looks more closely at the scientific role of welfare. Understanding welfare subjectively creates unique measurement problems, due to the necessarily private nature of mental states and here I address a few of these problems, including whether subjective experience is measurable, how we might validate indicators of hidden target variables such as welfare, how we can make welfare comparisons between individual animals and how we might compare or integrate the different types of experience that make up welfare. I end with a discussion of the implications of all these problems and solutions for the practice of welfare science, and indicate useful future directions for research. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have claimed that we should take not just empirical uncertainty but also fundamental moral uncertainty into account in our decision-making, and that, despite widespread moral disagreement, doing so would allow us to draw robust lessons for some issues in practical ethics. In this article, I argue that, so far, the implications for practical ethics have been drawn too simplistically. First, the implications of moral uncertainty for normative ethics are far more wide-ranging than has been noted so (...) far. Second, one can't straightforwardly argue from moral uncertainty to particular conclusions in practical ethics, both because of ‘interaction’ effects between moral issues, and because of the variety of different possible intertheoretic comparisons that one can reasonably endorse. (shrink)

De-extinction is the process through which extinct species can be brought back into existence. Although these projects have the potential to cause great harm to animal welfare, discussion on issues surrounding de-extinction have focussed primarily on other issues. In this paper, I examine the potential types of welfare harm that can arise through de-extinction programs, including problems with cloning, captive rearing and re-introduction. I argue that welfare harm should be an important consideration when making decisions on de-extinction projects. Though most (...) of the proposed benefits of these projects are insufficient to outweigh the current potential welfare harm, these problems may be overcome with further development of the technology and careful selection of appropriate species as de-extinction candidates. (shrink)

Despite the recent backlash against epistemic consequentialism, an explicit systematic alternative has yet to emerge. This paper articulates and defends a novel alternative, Epistemic Kantianism, which rests on a requirement of respect for the truth. §1 tackles some preliminaries concerning the proper formulation of the epistemic consequentialism / non-consequentialism divide, explains where Epistemic Kantianism falls in the dialectical landscape, and shows how it can capture what seems attractive about epistemic consequentialism while yielding predictions that are harder for the latter to (...) secure in a principled way. §2 presents Epistemic Kantianism. §3 argues that it is uniquely poised to satisfy the desiderata set out in §1 on an ideal theory of epistemic justification. §4 gives three further arguments, suggesting that it (i) best explains the objective normative significance of the subject's perspective in epistemology, (ii) follows from the kind of axiology needed to solve the swamping problem together with modest assumptions about the relation between the evaluative and the deontic, and (iii) illuminates certain asymmetries in epistemic value and obligation. §5 takes stock and reassesses the score in the debate. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that benevolence is not the whole of the moral life, but it is not as widely appreciated that benevolence is an irreducible part of that life. This paper argues that Kantian efforts to characterize benevolence, or something like it, in terms of reverence for rational agency fall short. Such reverence, while credibly an important part of the moral life, is no more the whole of it than benevolence.

Discussions about the possible consequences of creating superintelligence have included the possibility of existential risk, often understood mainly as the risk of human extinction. We argue that suffering risks (s-risks) , where an adverse outcome would bring about severe suffering on an astronomical scale, are risks of a comparable severity and probability as risks of extinction. Preventing them is the common interest of many different value systems. Furthermore, we argue that in the same way as superintelligent AI both contributes to (...) existential risk but can also help prevent it, superintelligent AI can both be a suffering risk or help avoid it. Some types of work aimed at making superintelligent AI safe will also help prevent suffering risks, and there may also be a class of safeguards for AI that helps specifically against s-risks. (shrink)

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)

Rights-based approaches and consequentialist approaches to ethics are often seen as being diametrically opposed to one another. In one sense, they are. In another sense, however, they can be reconciled: a ‘global’ form of consequentialism might supply consequentialist foundations for a derivative morality that is non-consequentialist, and perhaps rights-based, in content. By way of case study to illustrate how this might work, I survey what a global consequentialist should think about a recent dispute between Jeff McMahan and Henry Shue on (...) the morality and laws of war. (shrink)

Population axiology is the study of the conditions under which one state of affairs is better than another, when the states of affairs in ques- tion may differ over the numbers and the identities of the persons who ever live. Extant theories include totalism, averagism, variable value theories, critical level theories, and “person-affecting” theories. Each of these the- ories is open to objections that are at least prima facie serious. A series of impossibility theorems shows that this is no coincidence: (...) it can be proved, for various sets of prima facie intuitively compelling desiderata, that no axiology can simultaneously satisfy all the desiderata on the list. One’s choice of population axiology appears to be a choice of which intuition one is least unwilling to give up. (shrink)

In this essay I describe how contractarianism might approach interspecies welfare conflicts. I start by discussing a contractarian account of the moral status of nonhuman animals. I argue that contractors can agree to norms that would acknowledge the “moral standing” of some animals. I then discuss how the norms emerging from contractarian agreement might constrain any comparison of welfare between humans and animals. Contractarian agreement is likely to express some partiality to humans in a way that discounts the welfare of (...) some or all animals. While the norms emerging from the contract might be silent or inconsistent in some tragic or catastrophic cases, in most ordinary conflicts of welfare, contractors will agree to norms that produce some determinate resolution. What the agreement says can evolve depending upon how the contractors or the circumstances change. I close with some remarks on contractarian indeterminacy. (shrink)

Recently, in his Rolf Schock Prize Lecture, Derek Parfit has suggested a novel way of avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion by introducing what he calls “imprecision” in value comparisons. He suggests that in a range of important cases, populations of different sizes are only imprecisely comparable. Parfit suggests that this feature of value comparisons opens up a way of avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion without implying other counterintuitive conclusions, and thus solves one of the major challenges in ethics. In this article, I (...) try to clarify Parfit's proposal and evaluate whether it will help us with the paradoxes in population ethics. (shrink)

This thesis in an invistigation into the concept of "harm" and its moral relevance. A common view is that an analysis of harm should include a counterfactual condition: an act harms a person iff it makes that person worse off. A common objection to the moral relevance of harm, thus understood, is the non-identity problem. -/- This thesis criticises the counterfactual condition, argues for an alternative analysis and that harm plays two important normative roles. -/- The main ground for rejecting (...) the counterfactual condition is that it has unacceptable consequences in cases of overdetermination and pre-emption. Several modifications to the condition are considered but all fail to solve this problem. -/- According to the alternative analysis to do harm is to perform an act which is responsible for the obtaining of a state of affairs which makes a person’s life go worse. It is argued that should be understood in terms of counterfactual dependence. This claim is defended against counterexamples based on redundant causation. An analysis of is also provided using the notion of a well-being function. It is argued that by introducing this notion it is possible to analyse contributive value without making use of counterfactual comparisons and to solve the non-identity problem. -/- Regarding the normative importance of harm, a popular intuition is that there is an asymmetry in our obligations to future people: that a person would have a life worth living were she to exist is not a reason in favour of creating that person while that a person would have a life not worth living is a reason against creating that person. It is argued that the asymmetry can be classified as a moral option grounded in autonomy. Central to this defence is the suggestion that harm is relevant to understanding autonomy. Autonomy involves partly the freedom to pursue one’s own aims as long as one does no harm. (shrink)

Seemingly every theory of population ethics is confronted with unpalatable implications. While various approaches to the subject have been taken, including non-consequentialist approaches, this area has been dominated by utilitarian thought. The two main approaches to population ethics have been total utilitarianism () and average utilitarianism (). According to TU, we should seek to bring about the state of affairs that maximizes the total amount of happiness. According to AU, we should seek to bring about the state of affairs that (...) maximizes average per capita happiness. Both theories have been afflicted by seemingly strong objections, and as a result, numerous variations and hybrids have been introduced. Despite the widespread disagreement in the field, though, a near consensus has developed in rejecting AU as an absurd view. In this article, however, I will go against the grain and argue that AU is the theory of population ethics that we should endorse. (shrink)

Ethical theory faces a group of difficult puzzles concerning populations. Here is one: would it be right to maximize utility by causing the number of people existing in the further future to be very, very large, even if this means that each of their lives is barely worth living? Derek Parfit concludes that standard utilitarianism yields the result that it would be right to create such a world. He calls this conclusion "repugnant." I begin with an examination of the objection, (...) in which I argue that the problem is axiological, not normative. I present my interpretation of the problem, and consider and reject the most popular and plausible responses in the literature. ;Many people agree with Parfit that the repugnant conclusion is unacceptable. They see this as a strong objection to impersonalism, and conclude that only person-affecting utilitarianism solves the population problems in question. I argue that the most credible person-affecting theories incorrectly answer simple population questions and are deficient in other respects. ;Need we accept Parfit's objection? I advance my own view---that there are totalistic axiologies that do not imply the repugnant conclusion, and defeat the mere addition paradox. I show that these theories have much in common with classical totalism, and they give the intuitively correct result in the crucial cases under consideration. (shrink)

In this article I argue that governments are justified in addressing the potential for human induced climate damages on the basis of future generations' rights to bodily integrity and personal property. First, although future generations' entitlements to property originate in our present entitlements, the principle of self-ownership requires us to take 'reasonable care' of the products of future labour. Second, while Parfit's non-identity problem has as yet no satisfactory solution, the present absence of an equilibrium between theory and intuitions justifies (...) a precautionary approach, i.e. treating climate damage as a wrongful harm. In addition, a supplementary consideration is described as arising from transcendental needs. (shrink)

Rawls's theory of political obligation attempts to avoid the obvious flaws of a Lockean consent model. Rawls rejects a requirement of consent for two reasons: First, the consent requirement of Locke’s theory was intended to ensure that the liberty and equality of the contractors was respected, but this end is better achieved by the principles chosen in the original position, which order the basic structure of a society into which citizens are born. Second, "basing our political ties upon a principle (...) of obligation would complicate the assurance problem." Instead, Rawls offers a duty-based account, whereby we are duty-bound to support and comply with just institutions that apply to us. A. John Simmons argues that Rawls cannot meet the particularity requirement of establishing political obligation to only one state. I assess the response that this requirement can be met by the political constructivist element of Rawls's theory. I conclude that there are fatal flaws in this response. (shrink)

-/- I start from three premises, roughly as follows: (1) that if possible world x is better than world y for every individual who exists in either world, then x is better than y; (2) that if x has a higher average utility, a higher total utility, and no more inequality than y, then x is better than y; (3) that better than is transitive. From these premises, it follows that benefits given to the worse off contribute no more to (...) the world’s value than equal-sized benefits given to the better off. (shrink)

A common intuition is that there is a moral difference between ‘making people happy’ and ‘making happy people.’ This intuition, often referred to as ‘the Asymmetry,’ has, however, been criticized on the grounds that it is incoherent. Why is there, for instance, not a corresponding difference between ‘making people unhappy’ and ‘making unhappy people’? I argue that the intuition faces several difficulties but that these can be met by introducing a certain kind of reason that is favouring but non-requiring. It (...) is argued that there are structural similarities between the asymmetry and moral options and that the asymmetry can be defended as an instance of a moral option. (shrink)

Ultimately this book provides a theory of intergenerational justice that is both intellectually robust and practical with wide applicability to law and policy.