It is plausible that current generations owe something to future generations. One possibility is that we have a duty to not harm them. Another possibility is that we have a duty to protect them. In either case, however, to satisfy the duties to future generations from environmental or political degradation, we need to engage in widespread collective action. But, as we are, we have a limited ability to do so, in part because we lack the (...) self-discipline necessary for successful collective action. Given that having an obligation hinges on being able to satisfy it, the apparent duty to future generations is at odds with our apparent inability to satisfy it. Thus, we either need to rethink our duties to future generations or rethink the nature of our abilities. I argue in this chapter that we should rethink the nature of our abilities. Specifically, we should enhance our self-discipline, which is distinct from enhancements of motivation, judgment, or emotion. Even the most intelligent, motivated, and empathetic actor is likely to slip up, which encourages others to withdraw their cooperation. Without the necessary self-discipline to sustain our public cooperative behavior, collective action is likely to fail, leaving us with one alternative: to abandon our duties to future generations. (shrink)

The paper argues that members of future generations have an entitlement to natural resources equal to ours. Therefore, if a currently living individual destroys or degrades natural resources then he must pay compensation to members of future generations. This compensation takes the form of “primary goods” which will be valued by members of future generations as equally useful for promoting the good life as the natural resources they have been deprived of. As a result (...) of this policy, each generation inherits a “Commonwealth” of natural resources plus compensation. It is this inherited “Commonwealth” which members of that generation must then pass on to members of the next generation. Once this picture is accepted, the standard bundle of property rights is problematic, for it takes the owner of a constituent of the Commonwealth to have the right to “waste, destroy or modify” that item at will. This paper therefore presents a revised set of property rights which takes seriously the idea that each generation has an equal claim on the resources that nature has bequeathed us, whilst allowing certain effects on those natural resources by each generation, and a degree of exclusive use of those natural resources owned by an individual. (shrink)

Political short-termism costs the global economy hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars annually, and leads to many millions of deaths from disasters and suboptimal spending. In this paper, I propose a futures assembly explicitly incentivised to promote the interests of future generations as a promising strategy to ameliorate short-termism. The assembly I propose is governed by citizens randomly selected from among the populace, who are rewarded in the future to the extent that they successfully promote the (...) welfare of future generations. The most initially promising such retrospective accountability mechanism is an iterated mechanism, in which each generation of policymakers rewards the previous generation for their policy choices and for their own evaluation of the previous generation. Such an assembly, supplemented with the duties, powers, and tools that I describe, and with appropriate support from archivists and experts, may manage to represent generations many years into the future. (shrink)

In times of climate change and public debt, a concern for intergenerational justice should lead us to have a closer look at theories of intergenerational justice. It should also press us to provide institutional design proposals to change the decision-making world that surrounds us. This book provides an exhaustive overview of the most important institutional proposals as well as a systematic and theoretical discussion of their respective features and advantages. It focuses on institutional proposals aimed at taking the interests of (...) future generations more seriously, and does so from the perspective of applied political philosophy, being explicit about the underlying normative choices and the latest developments in the social sciences. It provides citizens, activists, firms, charities, public authorities, policy-analysts, students, and academics with the body of knowledge necessary to understand what our institutional options are and what they entail if we are concerned about today's excessive short-termism. (shrink)

One of the most difficult issues to sort out morally is our obligation to future generations. Most individuals feel that they do indeed have some kind of obligation, but face difficulty in explaining the exact nature of the obligation. For one, it seems impossible to know the wants and desires of future generations, and furthermore the existence of the persons we are obligated to is entirely dependent upon the choices that we in fact make. In essence, (...) we could shape future generations so that they desire exactly what we provide for them. It seems that no matter what principle we adopt that is based upon these potential individuals we are led to absurd conclusions. Gregory Kavka calls this moral grappling the Paradox of Future Individuals. I believe that the ethical concerns surrounding genetic engineering should be seen as a specific instantiation of this Paradox and that by examining both we may be able to come up with some sort of working solution. Derek Parfit pleads ignorance as to a solution to this Paradox after an extensive exegesis on the issue, but as we may not be that far from shopping a genetic supermarket to determine the characteristics of our children I don’t believe we can settle for that conclusion. We will begin by examining the Paradox and suggested solutions to the Paradox. Next I will address how the Paradox relates directly to genetic engineering and discuss how rights-based arguments aimed against genetic engineering fail because of the nature of identity. Then I will consider how David Heyd’s Genero-centric principle applies to genetic engineering specifically and how a modified version of that principle may guide us out of the Paradox of Future Individuals in general. This solution may not be acceptable to utilitarian sensibilities, but it is because the numbers don’t add up that we may need to appeal to a different principle entirely. (shrink)

In A Theory of Justice, Rawls attempts to ground intergenerational justice by "virtual representation" through a thickening of the veil of ignorance. Contractors don't know to what generation they belong. This approach is flawed and will not result in the just savings principle Rawls hopes to justify. The project of grounding intergenerational duties on a social contractarian foundation is misconceived. Non-overlapping generations do not stand in relation to one another that is central to the contractarian approach.

This chapter surveys some of the issues that arise in policy making when the wellbeing of future generations must be taken into account. It analyses the discounting of future wellbeing, and considers whether it is permissible. It argues that the effects of policy on the number of future people should not be ignored, and it considers what is an appropriate basis for setting a value on these effects. It considers the implications of the non-identity effect for (...) intergenerational justice and for the Pareto principle. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I explicate some of the moral duties we have to future humans. I defend the view that (DV1) we have pro tanto duties of nonmaleficence and beneficence to and regarding at least some future humans; (DV2) in the present circumstances, this duty of nonmaleficence grounds reasons for us to refrain from damaging certain features of the natural environment; and (DV3) in the present circumstances, this duty of beneficence grounds reasons for at least some of us (...) to bring future humans into existence. I refer to the view consisting of (DV1) - (DV3) as the Duties to Future Humans View (DV). In defense of DV1, I argue that future humans have moral standing, and that their having moral standing is sufficient for our having pro tanto duties of nonmaleficence and beneficence to and regarding them. I take a duty of nonmaleficence to be a duty to refrain from harming and a duty of beneficence to be a duty to benefit. In defense of DV2, I argue that increases in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and numerous species extinctions are harms for future humans. In defense of DV3, I argue that having a life worth living is a benefit to the person who lives that life. One objection to DV is the non-identity problem. In response, I defend substantive accounts of harming and benefiting. The account of harming holds that for any individual having moral standing, S, and any state of affairs, A, (1) A is a harm for S just in case if it were true that both S existed and A did not obtain, then S would have a higher level of lifetime well-being; (2) an action or event harms S just in case it causes a harm for S to obtain; (3) other things being equal, the reason against harming S is stronger, the more similar the world would be if A did not obtain. I argue for a similar account of benefiting. I also argue for a metaphysical distinction between causes and mere conditions. (shrink)

The problem of future generations is a growing ethical issue. There are ongoing discussions about what kind of earth we are leaving and what we should leave to future generations as a result of the delayed awareness – if not ignorance – of the fact that this World does not belong to us exclusively. When we look at the example of Turkey, we can see that there is a huge conflict between environmental utilization and environmental education. (...) On the one hand, we have classes on the environment and its health; on the other hand, it is a reality that we have a not-so-eco-friendly government policy, which takes no notice of any kind of environmental issues or requirements. To mention but few, governmental insistence on real estate investments in green spaces, even by covering grade 1 natural site areas, a decline in the extent of agricultural land due to uncontrollable urbanization, and hydroelectric power plant projects are among recent events. These are the instances of conflicts between inscriptive and operative environmental policies in Turkey. The purpose of this article is to call attention to this dilemma and to assert that ecocide might be just another kind of genocide for Turkey, i.e., the genocide-yet-to-come. (shrink)

Several philosophers argue that individuals have an interest-protecting right to parent; specifically, the interest is in rearing children whom one can parent adequately. If such a right exists it can provide a solution to scepticism about duties of justice concerning distant future generations and bypass the challenge provided by the non-identity problem. Current children - whose identity is independent from environment-affecting decisions of current adults - will have, in due course, a right to parent. Adequate parenting requires resources. (...) We owe duties of justice to current children, including the satisfaction of their interest-protecting rights; therefore we owe them the conditions for rearing children adequately in the future. But to engage in permissible parenting they, too, will need sufficient resources to ensure their own children's future ability to bring up children under adequate conditions. Because this reasoning goes on ad infinitum it entails that each generation of adults owes its contemporary generation of children at least those resources that are necessary for sustaining human life indefinitely at an adequate level of wellbeing. (shrink)

I formulate a Deweyan argument for school gardening that prepares students for a specific type of gardening activism: community gardening, or the political activity of collectively organizing, planting and tending gardens for the purposes of food security, education and community development.

We find meaning and value in our lives by engaging in everyday projects. But, according to a recent argument by Samuel Scheffler, this value doesn’t depend merely on what the projects are about. In many cases, it depends also on the future generations that will replace us. By imagining the imminent extinction of humanity soon after our own deaths, we can recognize both that much of our current valuing depends on a background confidence in the ongoing survival of (...) humanity and that the survival and flourishing of those future generations matters to us. After presenting Scheffler’s argument, I will explore two twentieth century precursors—Hans Morgenthau and Simone de Beauvoir—before returning to Scheffler to see that his argument can not only show us why future generations matter, but it can also give us hope for immortality and a blueprint for embracing a changing future. (shrink)

The author examines the problem of motivation about future generations. He argues that though many philosophers think that direct motivations are problematic for future generations only, they are not unproblematic for the current generations too, and that the motivation problem can be solved if we consider the idea of “leaving the earth no worse.” He also shows why such an idea should be promoted and can motivate us to work in the best interests of current (...) and future generations. The author also contends that prioritizing the idea of “leaving the earth no worse” is not exclusively anthropocentric. (shrink)

Climate is a fundamental element of the environment. Human beings' sound living depends on a healthy and sustainable climate. However, our climate is losing its natural balance day by day. As a result, it is posing harmful effects on us through different types of natural calamities. Apart from several natural processes, anthropocentric (human-caused) activities are the main cause of it. Different types of natural disasters that are occurring in the environment—for instance, hurricanes, cyclones, earthquakes, mudslides, floods, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, and (...) weather events like extreme droughts and monsoons—are likely increasing in frequency due to climate change. On the other hand, sea level is gradually rising because of global warming, which is affecting all of us in various ways. Sea-level rise has potentially harmful consequences for the inhabitants of this surface. It will not only force the coastal population to migrate from the coastal zone to inland zones, but it will also affect the global population. Along with the sea-level rise, downpours and winter storms are also occurring in many places. These are some of the risks modeled by climate change. Therefore, climate change is a complex problem that should be addressed by the physical and life sciences, psychology, economics, and politics. Moreover, climate change also raises ethical questions, such as our obligations, rights, and duty to preserve a sound climate for future generations. The main aim of this paper is to provide arguments on behalf of our moral obligations to protect a balanced and secure climate for future generations from an ethical perspective. In this paper, I intend to discuss climate change and future generations, our moral obligations to preserve a sound climate for future generations, the rights of future generations to live in a healthy climate, as well as some ways to establish justice toward future generations regarding climate change, and finally, I will confer upon the role of present generations for sustaining a sound and healthy atmosphere of the climate. (shrink)

The importance of a healthy environment cannot be overemphasized since a healthy environment is not only fundamental to our own health but is also our life-support system. Surprisingly, the state of our environment today bears a sour testimony to destructive anthropogenic activities. It suffices us to argue that untamed human activities on the environment have led to the degradation and pollution of the air, water and land; thereby threatening the existence of life on the planet earth. In response, many environmentally (...) concerned scholars have come up with different arguments aimed at solving, as well as checking the environment from the apparent current spate of deterioration. The most noticeable argument among all is the one that anchors its vehemence of environmental sustainability on the interest of future generations. Consequently, this paper argues that the quest for environmental sustainability would be more plausible and less controversial should the efforts centre more on the present generation of all organisms. This view is predicated on the fact that, as currently advanced, the future generations’ argument is fallacious and cannot carry the burden of environmental sustainability that is predicated on it. -/- . (shrink)

The utilitarian calculators of genetic therapy would do well to reflect again on Mills' liberal democratic rules of thumb: utility will generally be maximized when people are free to make choices, with good information, good instruments of collective action (democracy), and relative equality. My rule of thumb is that if we give future generations genetic choices, they will generally choose health, happiness, intelligence, and longevity, for themselves and their descendants.

Michael Rose’s Zukünftige Generationen in der heutigen Demokratie: Theorie und Praxis der Proxy-Repräsentation (Future Generations in Today’s Democracy: Theory and Practice of Proxy Representation) is an ambitious and fascinating work. It provides a new conceptualisation of the representation of future generations and it also delivers the most extensive empirical study of institutions for the representation of future generations available to date. The book is based on Rose’s PhD thesis at the Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, (...) Germany, and is 516 pages long (excluding an extensive bibliography, list of sources and appendices). A third of the thesis is devoted to short case studies of a total of 29 institutions which are presented in a catalogue format, allowing this section to be used as an encyclopaedia. The book is written concisely and is well documented throughout. (shrink)

This chapter advocates for a naturalistic ethical framework that bases normative components in basic human functions, such as emotions, as an effective approach to address intergenerational ethics questions. Using Mencius’s ethical framework as an example, which establishes emotional pivot points to incorporate others’ concerns and worries into moral deliberation, the chapter argues that this approach provides significant theoretical advantages over frameworks that rely on a familial-role-based relational understanding of Confucian ethics and moral cultivation through rituals. The chapter also highlights the (...) flexibility and adaptability of Mencian ethics, which was redeveloped over a thousand years later during the Neo-Confucian flowering and serves as evidence of its philosophical framework’s ability to connect people emotionally and ethically across time. (shrink)

Representing unborn generations to more suitably include future interests in today's climate policymaking has sparked much interest in recent years. In this review we survey the main proposed instruments to achieve this effect, some of which have been attempted in polities such as Israel, Philippines, Wales, Finland, and Chile. We first review recent normative work on the idea of representing future people in climate governance: The grounds on which it has been advocated, and the main difficulties that (...) traditional forms of representation have encountered when applied to this particular case. We then survey existing institutional means to represent generations to come. We separate out representation in courts, in parliament, and by independent bodies, and review specific instruments including climate litigation, parliamentary commissions, future representatives, youth quotas, and independent offices for future generations. We examine the particular forms whereby each of these may suitably represent future people, including audience representation, surrogate representation, and indicative representation, and discuss the main challenges they encounter in so doing. (shrink)

Joseph Butler was an Anglican priest and later a bishop who wrote about ethics, religion, and other philosophical themes. He is not well known today. During his lifetime and into the early part of the twentieth century he was better known especially for his major work the Analogy of Religion (1736). Today he is known mostly for his sermons which are interpreted as essays on ethics and for his essay on identity. Butler had a profound effect on J. H. Newman, (...) Matthew Arnold, and W. E. Gladstone and some effect on many other popular, academic, and professional readers. This book is as much about Butler’s sources and his reception as it is about the way he arranged and presented the evidence in the first half of the 18th century. He was a good man and is recognized by the Anglican church as a divine. We have no interest in taking a nostalgic look at a quaint figure in English church history. To those who claim Butler is unknown, that he was “blown out of the water” by John Wesley or Karl Barth, or Cornelius van Til, we can only say Butler is not as well known in the 20th and 21st centuries as in the 19th, but he is certainly not unknown to those who have taken any interest in philosophy, religion, or ethics. Today there has been a revival of interest in Bishop Butler. Our concern is to build and maintain a bridge that will help to keep this momentum. He offers an ethic that is universal and clearly Christian, yet it is based on the nature of man. Kant had a similar project, but in our opinion, Butler makes more compelling arguments. What is of interest to the Christian apologist is Butler’s work in this area. The purpose of this book is to present Butler’s ideas. We believe that his ethics have a universality that is applicable to people of all religious faiths and those that have none. It is common sense way of looking at ethics for everyday interaction. This book is a narrative argument presenting in detail how Butler’s creative arrangement of the evidence served as a bridge between the ancients as known in the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew originals, and the moderns, mostly Anglophone, who constituted Butler’s work environment and his reception in the latter day down to the present. We can hardly expect everyone to agree with Butler on all points, we certainly do not. The point at issue is rather whether he merits a seat at the present-day round table of deliberation on matters pertaining to philosophy, religion, and ethics. (shrink)

The economy is based on the prevailing legal system; however, the economy could go into a tailspin if the laws lose their impartiality. A perfect worker creates infinite high value with limited cost, and the result is a perfect product, usually eternal knowledge. However, free access to their products discourages workers, causing a substantial deviation from optimal resource allocation, and thereby making the supply of perfect products seriously inadequate. This significantly hurts the interests of future society. To maximize the (...) overall interests of humankind, the best policy would be to produce perfect products expeditiously, which in turn requires correcting the value society places on perfect products to respect the interests of perfect workers and future generations. Future society should essentially buy licenses from perfect workers instead of lending money to modern society for consumption. Then, the one-way trade between the present and the future will greatly increase. New companies and services will emerge around perfect products, and long-term economic growth rates will increase significantly. (shrink)

The Internet of Things (IoT) wireless LAN in healthcare has moved away from traditional methods that include hospital visits and continuous monitoring. The Internet of Things allows the use of certain means, including the detection, processing and transmission of physical and biomedical parameters. With powerful algorithms and intelligent systems, it will be available to provide unprecedented levels of critical data for real-time life that are collected and analyzed to guide people in research, management and emergency care. This chapter provides a (...) quick overview of IoT features and how they relate to wireless discovery and technology to deploy the medical applications you need. In the world, the revolution in any industry is to connect your products and devices to the Internet and make them independent and remotely connected, so that anyone can use and view them from anywhere and anytime. The Internet of Things provides us with a home automation system that uses smart devices to overcome this obstacle, allowing us to easily manage our appliances. A smart city is a vision to integrate a variety of information and communication solutions for residents with essential services, such as smart parking on all streets. The main motivation for using the Internet for parking objects is simply collecting data to get free parking. The IoT-based RTSSPS architecture is divided into three parts: a WSN-based smart street parking module, an IoT-based smart street parking module, and an IoT-based smart street parking module. IoT-based cloud with street parking algorithm, rating and future directions. (shrink)

This chapter starts from the claim that the state is plagued with problems of political short-termism: excessive priority given to near-term benefits at the expense of benefits further in thefuture. One possible mechanism to reduce short-termism involves apportioning greater relative political influence to the young, since younger citizens generally have greater additional life expectancy than older citizens and thus it looks reasonable to expect that they have preferences that are extended further into the future. But the chapter shows that (...) this is unlikely to make states significantly less short-termist: no empirical relationship has been found between age and willingness to support long-termist policies. Instead, the chapter proposes a more promising age-based mechanism. States should develop youth citizens’ assemblies that ensure accountability to future generations through a scheme of retrospective accountability. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are good reasons to limit the scope of luck egalitarianism to co‐existing people. First, I outline reasons to be sceptical about how “luck” works intergenerationally and therefore the very grounding of luck egalitarianism between non‐overlapping generations. Second, I argue that what Kasper Lippert‐Rasmussen calls the “core luck egalitarian claim” allows significant intergenerational inequality which is a problem for those who object to such inequality. Third, luck egalitarianism cannot accommodate the intuition that it might be (...) required to leave future generations better off than we are, even if it would come at no cost to ourselves. Finally, I argue that following another, broader, version of luck egalitarianism would require us to level down future generations and possibly even ourselves, which is a problem for those persuaded by the levelling‐down objection. (shrink)

Governments are often so focused on short-term gains that they ignore the long term, thus creating extra unnecessary burdens on their citizens, and violating their responsibilities to future generations. What can be done about this? In this paper I propose a package of reforms to the ways in which policies are made by legislatures, and in which those policies are scrutinised, implemented and evaluated. The overarching aim is to enhance the accountability of the decision-making process in ways that (...) take into account the interests of persons in the future. (shrink)

Existing institutions do not seem well-designed to address paradigmatically global, intergenerational and ecological problems, such as climate change. 1 In particular, they tend to crowd out intergenerational concern, and thereby facilitate a “tyranny of the contemporary” in which successive generations exploit the future to their own advantage in morally indefensible ways (albeit perhaps unintentionally). Overcoming such a tyranny will require both accepting responsibility for the future and meeting the institutional gap. I propose that we approach the first (...) in terms of a traditional “delegated responsibility” model of the transmission of individual responsibility to collectives, and the second with a call for a global constitutional convention focused on future generations. In this paper, I develop the delegated responsibility model by suggesting how it leads us to understand both past failures and prospective responsibility. I then briefly defend the call for a global constitutional convention. (shrink)

В коллективной монографии рассматривается состояние системы образова-ния главным образом в России и Украине к концу первого десятилетия XXI сто-летия. Поднимается целый пласт проблем, связанный с непрерывным развитием общества и техносферы, а также ролью в этом процессе семьи, педагогов («хо-рошего учителя» в терминологии В. Сухомлинского) и соответствующих госу-дарственных институтов, предлагаются пути их решения. В монографии анали-зируются перспективы развития системы образования, акцентируется внимание на формировании нового типа личности – планетарно-космической, как некоего конечного идеального образа воспитательного воздействия на подрастающие поколения – образа человека (...) будущего. Для студентов, аспирантов и преподавателей учебных заведений всех уровней акредитации, а также для всех, кто хочет обеспечить полноценное счастливое будущее себе, близким и своим детям . (shrink)

Why, if at all, should we object to economic inequality? Some central arguments – the argument from decreasing marginal utility for example – invoke instrumental reasons and object to inequality because of its effects. Such instrumental arguments, however, often concern only the static effects of inequality and neglect its intertemporal conse- quences. In this article, we address this striking gap and investigate income inequality’s intertemporal consequences, including its potential effects on humanity’s (very) long-term future. Following recent arguments around (...) class='Hi'>future generations and so-called longtermism, those effects might arguably matter more than inequality’s short-term con- sequences. We assess whether we have instrumental reason to reduce economic inequality based on its intertemporal effects in the short, medium, and the very long term. We find a good short and medium-term instrumental case for lower economic inequality. We then argue, somewhat speculatively, that we have instrumental reasons for inequality reduction from a longtermist perspective too, primarily because greater inequality could increase existential risk. We thus have instrumental reasons to reduce inequality, regardless of which time-horizon we take. We then argue that from most consequentialist perspectives, this pro tanto reason also gives us all-things-considered reason. And even across most non-consequentialist views in philosophy, this argument gives us either an all-things-considered or at least weighty pro tanto reason against inequality. (shrink)

The past few years has seen a resurgence in the public interest in space flight and travel. Spurred mainly by the likes of technology billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the topic poses both unique scientific as well as ethical challenges. This paper looks at the concept of generation ships, conceptual behemoth ships whose goal is to bring a group of human settlers to distant exoplanets. These ships are designed to host multiple generations of people who will be (...) born, live, and die on these ships long before it reaches its destination. This paper takes reproductive ethics as its lens to look at how genetic enhancement interventions can and should be used not only to ensure that future generations of offspring on the ships, and eventual exoplanet colonies, live a minimally good life but that their births are contingent on them living genuinely good and fulfilling lives. The paper makes the further claim that if such a thesis holds, it also does so for human enhancement on Earth. (shrink)

David Benatar claims that everyone was seriously harmed by coming into existence. To spare future persons from this suffering, we should cease having children, Benatar argues, with the result that humanity would gradually go extinct. Benatar’s claim of universal serious harm is baseless. Each year, an estimated 94% of children born throughout the world do not have a serious birth defect. Furthermore, studies show that most people do not experience chronic pain. Although nearly everyone experiences acute pain and discomforts, (...) such as thirst, these experiences have instrumental value. For example, when a person picks up a hot object, in response to the pain, the person releases the object, thereby preventing serious harm. The standard that Benatar uses to evaluate the quality of our lives is arbitrary, as I will demonstrate. His proposal that we phase humanity out of existence by ceasing to have children is misguided and an overreaction to the problem of human suffering. The ‘threshold conception of harm’, which is a targeted approach for preventing future persons from suffering, is a more sensible approach. (shrink)

As we look beyond our terrestrial boundary to a multi-planetary future for humankind, it becomes paramount to anticipate the challenges of various human factors on the most likely scenario for this future: permanent human settlement of Mars. Even if technical hurdles are circumvented to provide adequate resources for basic physiological and psychological needs, Homo sapiens will not survive on an alien planet if a dysfunctional psyche prohibits the utilization of these resources. No matter how far we soar into (...) the stars, our psychologies for future generations will be forever tethered to the totality of our surroundings. By shaping our environment toward survival and welfare during the voyage to Mars and in a Martian colony, we indirectly shape our psyches and prepare them for a mission of unprecedented alienation and duration. Once on Mars, human factors such as leadership structure, social organization and code of conduct, group size, gender balance, developmental cycle, mobility, length of stay and the ecological settings and type and manner of subsistence, will create a novel Martian culture. The degree that settlers are severed from the Earth will affect how radically foreign this culture will be when compared with cultures on Earth. (shrink)

“Proof of concept” is a phrase frequently used in descriptions of research sought in program announcements, in experimental studies, and in the marketing of new technologies. It is often coupled with either a short definition or none at all, its meaning assumed to be fully understood. This is problematic. As a phrase with potential implications for research and technology, its assumed meaning requires some analysis to avoid it becoming a descriptive category that refers to all things scientifically exciting. I provide (...) a short analysis of proof of concept research and offer an example of it within synthetic biology. I suggest that not only are there activities that circumscribe new epistemological categories but there are also associated normative ethical categories or principles linked to the research. I examine these and provide an outline for an alternative ethical account to describe these activities that I refer to as “extended agency ethics”. This view is used to explain how the type of research described as proof of concept also provides an attendant proof of principle that is the result of decision-making that extends across practitioners, their tools, techniques, and the problem solving activities of other research groups. (shrink)

In this article, I explore the relationship between the supersession thesis and the rights of future people. In particular, I show that changes in circumstances might supersede future people’s rights. I argue that appropriating resources that belong to future people does not necessarily result in a duty to return the resources in full. I explore how these findings are relevant for climate change justice. Assuming future generations of developing countries originally had a right to use (...) a certain amount of the carbon budget, changing circumstances could result in rights-supersession. Consequently, members of future generations of industrialized countries may be allowed to use part of the share of the carbon budget belonging to developing countries. (shrink)

By providing an explicit estimate of the harms caused by personal greenhouse gas emissions, John Nolt (in his “How Harmful are the Average American’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions?”) hopes to undermine tendencies to downplay these emissions and their impacts on global climate change. He estimates that an average American would be responsible for one two-billionth of the suffering or death of two billion people (over 1000 years). He treats this as equivalent to being responsible for the suffering or death of one (...) person. In my paper I argue that these are not equivalent, and that the former is less problematic than the latter. I end with the suggestion that, in terms of personal emissions, having fewer children is more effective than merely reducing our current emissions. (shrink)

Human civilisation faces a range of existential risks, including nuclear war, runaway climate change and superintelligent artificial intelligence run amok. As we show here with calculations for the New Zealand setting, large numbers of currently living and, especially, future people are potentially threatened by existential risks. A just process for resource allocation demands that we consider future generations but also account for solidarity with the present. Here we consider the various ethical and policy issues involved and make (...) a case for further engagement with the New Zealand public to determine societal values towards future lives and their protection. (shrink)

My main concern will be to show that it makes sense to speak of the rights of unborn generations against us, and that given the moral judgment that we ought to conserve our environmental inheritance for them, and its grounds, we might well say that future generations /do/ have rights correlative to our present duties toward them. Protecting our environment now is also a matter of elementary prudence, and insofar as we do it for the next generation (...) already here in the persons of our children, it is a matter of love. But from the perspective of our remote descendants it is basically a matter of justice, of respect for their rights. My main concern here will be to examine the concept of a right to better understand how that can be. (shrink)

The first part of this article makes the case that human cognition is an intergenerational project enabled by the inheritance and bequeathal of cognitive technology (Sects. 2–4). The final two sections of the article (Sects. 5 and 6) explore the normative significance of this claim. My case for the intergenerational claim draws results from multiple disciplines: philosophy (Sect. 2), cultural evolutionary approaches in cognitive science (Sect. 3), and developmental psychology and neuroscience (Sect. 4). In Sect. 5, I propose that cognitive (...) technology should be given to future generations in accordance with principles of pluralism and transparency. In the final main section of the article, Sect. 6, I apply these principles to topics such as the preservation of information, environmental offloading of cognition, and thinking itself. (shrink)

This paper examines the intergenerational justice theory of obligations to future generations. I refer to queer temporality theory and highly evaluate its radical questioning. However, I argue that its destructive conclusions need not be accepted. Proper divisions of time spans according to the nature of the problem is important in order to reach a moderate conclusion.

Enclosed is a guidebook for philanthropists, advocates, and policymakers who want to do the most good possible. This book introduces the philosophy of “longtermism,” the idea that it is particularly important that we act now to safeguard future generations. -/- The future is vast in scale: depending on our choices in the coming centuries, the future could stretch for eons or it could dwindle into oblivion, and be inordinately good or inordinately bad. And yet future (...) generations are utterly disenfranchised in the world today: they cannot participate in our markets, our movements, or our civil society. This presents 21st Century philanthropists with a historically unprecedented opportunity to do good by protecting the long-term future. -/- The essays within are from the pioneers who have developed the intellectual foundations of longtermism, as well as the experts and advocates who are now putting it into practice. Readers will hear the case for longtermism from professors at the University of Oxford and Longview’s own founders; longtermist policy proposals from political philosophers, members of the House of Lords, and the All-party Parliamentary Group for Future Generations; the case for work on biosecurity, artificial intelligence, and climate change from leading experts; and the first ever essay on longtermist cultural change from the former Chief of Cabinet to the Finnish President. -/- Together, these essays chart the path forward toward maximising the good that we do for our grandchildren, our grandchildren’s grandchildren, and every generation beyond. (shrink)

In the future, human destiny may depend on our ethics. In particular, biotechnology and expansion in space can transform life, raising profound questions. Guidance may be found in Life-centered ethics, as biotic ethics that value the basic patterns of organic gene/protein life, and as panbiotic ethics that always seek to expand life. These life-centered principles can be based on scientific insights into the unique place of life in nature, and the biological unity of all life. Belonging to life then (...) implies a human purpose: to safeguard and propagate life. Expansion in space will advance this purpose but will also raise basic questions. Should we expand all life or only intelligent life? Should we aim to create populations of trillions? Should we seed other solar systems? How far can we change but still preserve the human species, and life itself? The future of all life may be in our hands, and it can depend on our guiding ethics whether life will fulfil its full potentials. Given such profound powers, life-centered ethics can best secure future generations. Our descendants may then understand nature more deeply, and seek to extend life indefinitely. In that future, our human existence can find a cosmic purpose. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper considers novel ethical issues pertaining to near-future artificial intelligence (AI) systems that seek to support, maintain, or enhance the capabilities of older adults as they age and experience cognitive decline. In particular, we focus on smart assistants (SAs) that would seek to provide proactive assistance and mediate social interactions between users and other members of their social or support networks. Such systems would potentially have significant utility for users and their caregivers if they could reduce the cognitive (...) load for tasks that help older adults maintain their autonomy and independence. However, proactively supporting even simple tasks, such as providing the user with a summary of a meeting or a conversation, would require a future SA to engage with ethical aspects of human interactions which computational systems currently have difficulty identifying, tracking, and navigating. If SAs fail to perceive ethically relevant aspects of social interactions, the resulting deficit in moral discernment would threaten important aspects of user autonomy and well-being. After describing the dynamic that generates these ethical challenges, we note how simple strategies for prompting user oversight of such systems might also undermine their utility. We conclude by considering how near-future SAs could exacerbate current worries about privacy, commodification of users, trust calibration and injustice. (shrink)

“The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”, are a universal call for action, covering targets to be fulfilled by the end of 2030. Many global problems such as global climate change and drought, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources and biodiversity, inclusive education have evolved into the greatest collective problem of all humanity. It is recognized that teachers, are also responsible for ensuring a sustainable life for future generations and contributing to its sustainability. At this point, there is a need (...) for educational approaches based on group dynamics that will contribute to the socialization of the individual, support them to gain new experiences, provide them with the opportunity to produce solutions to the encountered obstacles, be sensitive to human values, have a questioning perspective, support them in processes that will enable critical, collaborative, attentive and creative thinking skills, and guide them in processes that will enable them to activate their critical, collaborative, attentive and creative thinking skills. Philosophy and creative drama practices for children based on these educational approaches are among two of the methods that are thought to be effective in addressing and questioning development goals and developing solutions for individuals who are learning about the actions that can be carried out. The research, which is designed to convey this universal call for action to children through the teachers of the future and to support them to be an active part of this process, is based on three components: sustainable development goals, creative drama and philosophy for children, and a sample workshop plan is presented. (shrink)

Testimony about the future dangerousness of a person has become a central staple of many judicial processes. In settings such as bail, sentencing, and parole decisions, in rulings about the civil confinement of the mentally ill, and in custody decisions in a context of domestic violence, the assessment of a person’s propensity towards physical or sexual violence is regarded as a deciding factor. These assessments can be based on two forms of expert testimony: actuarial or clinical. The purpose of (...) this paper is to examine the scientific and epistemological basis of both methods of prediction or risk assessment. My analysis will reveal that this kind of expert testimony is scientifically baseless. The problems I will discuss will generate a dilemma for factfinders: on the one hand, given the weak predictive abilities of the branches of science involved, they should not admit expert clinical or actuarial testimony as evidence; on the other hand, there is a very strong tradition and a vast jurisprudence that supports the continued use of this kind of expert testimony. It is a clear case of the not so uncommon conflict between science and legal tradition. (shrink)

Institutions to address short-termism in public policymaking and to more suitably discharge our duties toward future generations have elicited much recent normative research, which this chapter surveys. It focuses on two prominent institutions: insulating devices, which seek to mitigate short-termist electoral pressures by transferring authority away to independent bodies, and constraining devices, which seek to bind elected officials to intergenerationally fair rules from which deviation is costly. The chapter first discusses sufficientarian, egalitarian, and prioritarian theories of our duties (...) toward future generations, and how an excessive focus on the short term in policymaking may hinder that such duties be fulfilled. It then surveys constraining and insulating devices, and inspects their effectiveness to address the epistemic, motivational, and institutional drivers of political short-termism as well as their intra- and intergenerational legitimacy. (shrink)

How do we find what is clinically significant in the swarms of data being generated by today’s diagnostic technologies? As electronic records become ever more prevalent – and digital imaging and genomic, proteomic, salivaomics, metabalomics, pharmacogenomics, phenomics and transcriptomics techniques become commonplace – fdifferent clinical and biological disciplines are facing up to the need to put their data houses in order to avoid the consequences of an uncontrolled explosion of different ways of describing information. We describe a new strategy to (...) advance the consistency of data in the dental research community. The strategy is based on the idea that existing systems for data collection in dental research will continue to be used, but proposes a methodology in which past, present and future data will be described using a consensus-based controlled structured vocabulary called the Ontology for Dental Research (ODR). (shrink)

We set out longtermist political philosophy as a research field by exploring the case for, and the implications of, ‘institutional longtermism’: the view that, when evaluating institutions, we should give significant weight to their very long-term effects. We begin by arguing that the standard case for longtermism may be more robust when applied to institutions than to individual actions or policies, both because institutions have large, broad, and long-term effects, and because institutional longtermism can plausibly sidestep various objections to individual (...) longtermism. We then address points of contact between longtermism and some central values of mainstream political philosophy, focusing on justice, equality, freedom, legitimacy, and democracy. While each value initially seems to conflict with institutional longtermism, we find that these conflicts are less clear-cut upon closer inspection, and that some political values might even provide independent support for institutional longtermism. We end with a grab bag of related questions that we lack space to explore here. (shrink)

A number of philosophers have argued that if you care about how much goodness your actions generate, or how good the state-of-affairs you actions bring about are, then your attention should be directed towards the very far future. But many don’t care about how much goodness their actions generate, nor do they care about things like “states-of-affairs”. Amongst a multitude of things, many people care about how their actions impact individuals. And they also care about the sorts of justifications (...) they are able to offer for those actions. One moral theory which captures this moral viewpoint is contractualism. In this chapter, I argue that contractualism is, in large part, incompatible with longtermism – the view that, in many contexts, we ought to do that which will most improve the prospects of future people. I then discuss what advice, if any at all, contractualism can offer to the longtermist. (shrink)

The rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the developments of Large Language Models (LLMs) like Generative Pretrained Transformers (GPTs) have significantly influenced content creation in scholarly communication and across various fields. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the content reliability between human-generated and GPT-generated scholarly articles. Recent developments in AI suggest that GPTs have become capable in generating content that can mimic human language to a greater extent. This highlights and raises questions about the quality, accuracy, and reliability (...) of such content, especially in academic contexts. Statistical evaluations and quantitative assessments conducted in this study uncover key differences in content accuracy, coherence, citation usage, and overall reliability between human and GPT-generated articles. The paper also examines the potential biases, the role of context, and the implications of AI-generated content for the future of scholarly communication. The study concludes with framework for predictive model indicating the potential future impact of GPT-driven content creation and recommendations for ensuring content quality and ethical considerations in AI usage. (shrink)