Lecture Two

Abstract

Abstract This lecture—delivered in an ending world where humanity faces unavoidable extinction in two hundred years—introduces procreative ethics. People living at the start of a slowly ending world could create future people. But would this be permissible? In particular, is it permissible to create a last generation who cannot have children of their own? Most contemporary philosophical procreative ethicists share a broad commitment to procreative liberty. This lecture asks whether this commitment to procreative liberty could survive in a world facing imminent extinction, where it is challenged both by anti-natalists who insist that procreation is now forbidden and by ‘pro-natalists’ who argue that, in an uncertain world of impending extinction, procreative obligations are the only reliable way to ensure that enough people have children. The lecture summarises contemporary procreative ethics—covering Parfit’s non-identity problem, procreative asymmetry, and puzzles in aggregation such as Parfit’s repugnant conclusion. It then presents two particular approaches and applies them to the ending world: Elizabeth Harman’s harm-based approach and Melinda Roberts’s person-affecting consequentialism. Procreative ethics is vital to the case for multigenerationalism developed across all six lectures in this book. Multigenerationalism grounds present meaning in collaborations with future people. Therefore, multigenerational projects are permissible only if procreation is permissible. However, the lecture’s central arguments stand alone, and do not presuppose arguments made elsewhere in the book.