Saving Posterity from a Worse Fate

Author:

Kolodny Niko

Abstract

Suppose we must choose among different outcomes, in which people fare better or worse. Suppose different people, or different numbers of people, will ever exist in such outcomes. That is, suppose our choice affects the growth of the population, or the identities of future people. Which outcomes, if any, are wrong for us to choose? There are two ways of approaching such questions. The more familiar way might be called “Benefit Thinking.” We should make the choice that benefits people more. The less familiar way might be called “Worse-Fate Thinking.” We should make the choice that leaves fewer people to a worse fate. It is surprisingly hard to come up with non-question-begging grounds to favor Benefit Thinking over Worse-Fate Thinking: to view Benefit Thinking as the more natural extension of our concern for how people fare, as reflected in “ordinary” moral choices, which don’t affect who or how many come to exist. This chapter suggests that Worse-Fate Thinking, or a combination of Worse-Fate and Benefit Thinking, gives more intuitive answers than does Benefit Thinking to many of the questions of population ethics.

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Cited by 2 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献 订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

1. What Reasons Are Really at Play in Reproduction?;The American Journal of Bioethics;2024-08-02

2. Reply to Spears’s ‘The Asymmetry of Population Ethics’;Economics and Philosophy;2022-10-20

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