-/- 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)

In Reasons and Persons, Parfit (1984) posed a challenge: provide a satisfying normative account that solves the Non-Identity Problem, avoids the Repugnant and Absurd Conclusions, and solves the Mere-Addition Paradox. In response, some have suggested that we look toward person-affecting views of morality for a solution. But the person-affecting views that have been offered so far have been unable to satisfy Parfit's four requirements, and these views have been subject to a number of independent complaints. This paper describes a person-affecting (...) account which meets Parfit's challenge. The account satisfies Parfit's four requirements, and avoids many of the criticisms that have been raised against person-affecting views. (shrink)

I defend the 'Repugnant' Conclusion that for any possible population of happy people, a population containing a sufficient number of people with lives barely worth living would be better. Four lines of argument converge on this conclusion, and the conclusion has a simple, natural theoretical explanation. The opposition to the Repugnant Conclusion rests on a bare appeal to intuition. This intuition is open to charges of being influenced by multiple distorting factors. Several theories of population ethics have been devised to (...) avoid the Repugnant Conclusion, but each generates even more counterintuitive consequences. The intuition opposing the Repugnant Conclusion is thus among the best candidates for an intuition that should be revised. (shrink)

In Derek Parfit's original formulation the Repugnant Conclusion is characterized as follows: “For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better even though its members have lives that are barely worth living” (Parfit 1984). The Repugnant Conclusion highlights a problem in an area of ethics which has become known as population ethics . The (...) last three decades have witnessed an increasing philosophical interest in questions such as “Is it possible to make the world a better place by creating additional happy creatures?” and “Is there a moral obligation to have children?” The main problem has been to find an adequate theory about the moral value of states of affairs where the number of people, the quality of their lives, and their identities may vary. Since, arguably, any reasonable moral theory has to take these aspects of possible states of affairs into account when determining the normative status of actions, the study of population ethics is of general import for moral theory. As the name indicates, Parfit finds the Repugnant Conclusion unacceptable and many philosophers agree. However, it has been surprisingly difficult to find a theory that avoids the Repugnant Conclusion without implying other equally counterintuitive conclusions. Thus, the question as to how the Repugnant Conclusion should be dealt with and, more generally, what it shows about the nature of ethics has turned the conclusion into one of the cardinal challenges of modern ethics. (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)

Three views of sustainability are juxtaposed with four views about who the members of the moral community are. These provide points of contact for understanding the moral issues in sustainability. Attention is drawn to the preferred epistemic methods of the differing factions arguing for sustainability. Criteria for defining membership in the moral community are explored; rationality and capacity for pain are rejected as consistent criteria. The criterion of having interests is shown to be most coherent for explaining why all living (...) humans belong to the moral community. This criterion allows inclusion of future generations as well, and extends to animals and plants membership in the moral community. Inferences are drawn that food sufficiency advocates hold only presently living persons to be full-fledged members of the moral community, but that this view is internally inconsistent. Stewards should agree that all living things are members of the moral community. A distinction between welfare interests and ulterior interests allows the steward to include the aims of those who argue for sustainability as community without committing some of their errors. Community advocates argue that essential values and virtues will be lost is the culture of agriculture is transformed. I argue that community advocates may fail to pass on our most important virtue — justice — without such a transformation. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the various possible nuclear power production methods from an ethical perspective. The production and consumption of nuclear power give rise to the problem of intergenerational justice; in other words, we are depleting a nonrenewable resource in the form of uranium while the radiotoxic waste that is generated carries very long-term potential burdens. I argue that the morally desirable option should therefore be to seek to safeguard the interests of future generations. The present generation has at least (...) two duties with regard to posterity: not to jeopardize the safety and security of future generations or impose any harm upon them and to sustain future well-being insofar as that is possible with the available energy resources. These duties are presented as pluralist prima facie duties thus implying that they could well be overruled by morally more compelling duties. If we are unable to fulfill both these prima facie duties simultaneously, it should be particularly the duty not to impose harm on posterity that should be the leading incentive behind nuclear power production. This supports the arguments in favor of the introduction of a new fuel cycle that can substantially reduce the waste lifetime and therefore also potential future burdens. However, the further development and application of this scientifically proven but not yet industrialized fuel cycle give rise to additional burdens for contemporaries. This paper examines the extent of the moral stringency of the no harm duty sought for situations in which future interest should guide us in our choosing of a certain technology. (shrink)

Advances in technology have made it possible for us to take actions that affect the numbers and identities of humans and other animals that will live in the future. Effective and inexpensive birth control, child allowances, genetic screening, safe abortion, in vitro fertilization, the education of young women, sterilization programs, environmental degradation and war all have these effects. Although it is true that a good deal of effort has been devoted to the practical side of population policy, moral theory has (...) not dealt adequately with the new possibilities. The dilemma faced by moral theory is that traditional theories cannot answer moral questions involving the creation of people. Two related problems arise. The first concerns numbers: how many people should there be? The second asks what sort of people should live and what their levels of well-being should be. Conventional social-contract theories, including the work of Rawls (1971), are restricted to situations with a fixed number of individuals. Sumner (1978) attempts to extend a Rawlsian veil-of-ignorance approach to possible people but is aware of the difficulties involved. The main problem is that possible people must be thought to benefit when they move from non-existence to existence, a view that we reject (see Section 1, Heyd, 1992, Chapter 1; McMahan, 1996a; Parfit, 1984, Appendix G). Rights-based and duty-based theories suffer from a similar problem; there must be a person who has the right or a person to whom the duty is owed (see McMahan, 1981). (shrink)

The nuclear community frequently refers to the concept of “future generations” when discussing the management of high-level radioactive waste. However, this notion is generally not defined. In this context, we have to assume a wide definition of the concept of future generations, conceived as people who will live after the contemporary people are dead. This definition embraces thus each generation following ours, without any restriction in time. The aim of this paper is to show that, in the debate about nuclear (...) waste, this broad notion should be further specified and to clarify the related implications for nuclear waste management policies. Therefore, we provide an ethical analysis of different management strategies for high-level waste in the light of two principles, protection of future generations—based on safety and security—and respect for their choice. This analysis shows that high-level waste management options have different ethical impacts across future generations, depending on whether the memory of the waste and its location is lost, or not. We suggest taking this distinction into account by introducing the notions of “close future generations” and “remote future generations”, which has important implications on nuclear waste management policies insofar as it stresses that a retrievable disposal has fewer benefits than usually assumed. (shrink)

Democracy is prone to what may be called presentism – a bias in the laws in favor of present over future generations. I identify the characteristics of democracies that lead to presentism, and examine the reasons that make it a serious problem. Then I consider why conventional theories are not adequate to deal with it, and develop a more satisfactory alternative approach, which I call democratic trusteeship. Present generations can represent future generations by acting as trustees of the democratic process. (...) The general principle is that present generations should act to protect the democratic process itself over time. They should try to make sure that future citizens continue to have competent control over their collective decision‐making. (shrink)

The question I address in this paper is whether and under what conditions it is morally right to bring a person into existence. I defend the commonsensical thesis that, other things being equal, it is morally wrong to create a person who will be below some threshold of quality of life, even if the life of this potential person, once created, will nevertheless be worth living. However commonsensical this view might seem, it has shown to be problematic because of the (...) so-called 'Non-Identity Problem'. Both utilitarian and rights-based approaches have been unable to provide a solution to this problem. I rest my thesis on two premises: that causing a disability or impairment in a future person is prima facie wrong, so long as we can avoid causing such a disability to that very person; and that reproduction, under normal conditions, is prima facie morally indifferent. From these two premises, I conclude that it is prima facie wrong to bring into existence a person with a non-trivial disability or impairment (which might be, nonetheless, compatible with a worthwhile life), even if the only available alternative is to remain childless. (shrink)

We can morally compare possible alternative states of affairs, judging that various actual historical occurrences were bad, overall—the Holocaust, World War I, and slavery, for example. We should prefer that such events had not occurred, and regret that they had occurred. But the vast majority of people who now exist would not have existed had it not been for those historical events. A ‘package deal’ is involved here: those events, together with oneself; or, the absence of the historical calamity, and (...) the absence of oneself. So, all considered, ought one to prefer never to have existed, and to regret that one exists? Not in itself, of course, but as part of the conjunction? There seems to be a strong case for saying that morally one must wish and prefer that certain historical events had not occurred, even if that would have meant that one would never have existed. One ought to regret, all considered, that the aggregate state of affairs that includes one's existence is the one that materialized. After setting out this idea, I explore arguments against it, and attempt to reach a conclusion. (shrink)

(2001). Ethics, economics and international relations: Towards a global moral community. World Futures: Vol. 56, Values, Ethics and Econmics, Part II, pp. 337-350.

The preservationist duties that conservationists would lay upon landowners to protect the natural environment obviously interfere with what those people do with their land. That is often taken to be an equally obvious ? albeit possibly justifiable ? violation of their rights in that property. But to say that, as landowners often do, would be to imply that property rights somehow embrace a ?right to destroy?. Closer inspection suggests that they do not. That would be a further right, additional to (...) and independent of all the component rights standardly associated with the right to private property. A right to destroy is implicit neither in the concept nor in the justifications of property rights, as they are standardly conceived. Conservationist policies cannot, therefore, properly be opposed on the grounds that they would necessarily violate people's property rights. (shrink)

Even if contemporary liberal political thought fails to provide an adequate basis for environmental protection, investigating its environmental implications may be a worthy enterprise, if only to foster discussion among liberal thinkers about the obligation to protect the environment. Examination of four contemporary liberal views of distributive justice?those of Rawls, Arneson, Sen, and the libertarians?shows that in these theories, environmental protection turns either on obligations to future generations or on the rights of individuals. The extent of environmental protection the four (...) views implicitly require may be quite extensive, and is probably far beyond what proponents of each view might have imagined. (shrink)

Few moral arguments have been made against vegetarian diets. One exception is the “Logic of the Larder:” We do animals a favor by purchasing their meat, eggs, and milk, for if we did not purchase these products, fewer animals would exist. This argument fails because many farm animals have lives that are probably not worth living, while others prevent a significant number of wild animals from existing. Even if this were not so, the purchase of animal products uses resources that (...) could otherwise be used to bring a much greater number of animals into existence. (shrink)

Contemporary theories of justice fail to recognize that the concepts constitutive of our political practices ? including ?justice? itself? have historically mutable meanings. To recognize the fact of conceptual change entails an alteration in our understanding of justice between generations. Because there can be no transhistorical theory of justice, there can be no valid theory of intergenerational justice either ? especially where the generations in question are distant ones having very different understandings of justice. The upshot is that an earlier (...) generation cannot aspire to act justly toward a later distant generation whose members? understanding of justice differs radically from theirs. Conceptual change and incommensurability render the very idea of intergenerational justice incoherent. Even so, such radical relativism need not entail moral nihilism. (shrink)