Ethics and existence : the legacy of Derek Parfit / edited by Jeff McMahan [and three others].

Format:

Book

Contributor:

McMahan, Jeff, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethics.

Population--Moral and ethical aspects.

Population.

Parfit, Derek--Influence.

Parfit, Derek.

Genre:

Festschriften.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 579 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

Legacy of Derek Parfit

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2022.

Summary:

Derek Parfit, who died in 2017, is widely believed to have been the best moral philosopher in well over a century. The twenty new essays in this book were written in his honour and have all been inspired by his work - in particular, his work in an area of moral philosophy known as 'population ethics', which is concerned with moral issues raised by causing people to exist. Until Parfit began writing about these issues in the 1970s, there was almost no discussion of them in the entire history of philosophy. But his monumental book 'Reasons and Persons' (1984) revealed that population ethics abounds in deep and intractable problems and paradoxes that not only challenge all the major moral theories but also threaten to undermine many important common-sense moral beliefs.

Contents:

Cover

Ethics and Existence: The Legacy of Derek Parfit

Copyright

Contents

List of Figures

Contributors

Introduction

Chapter Abstracts

Ralf Bader: 'The Asymmetry'

M. A. Roberts: 'The Value and Probabilities of Existence'

Hilary Greaves and John Cusbert: 'Comparing Existence and Non-Existence'

Patrick Tomlin: 'The Impure Non-Identity Problem'

Elizabeth Harman: 'Abortion and the Non-identity Problem'

Andrew McGee and Julian Savulescu: 'A Partial Solution to the Non-Identity Problem: Regretting One Was Born and Having a Life Not Subjectively Worth Living'

Larry Temkin: 'Population Ethics Forty Years On: Some Lessons Learned from "Box Ethics"'

Jacob M. Nebel: 'Totalism without Repugnance'

Johann Frick: 'Context-Dependent Betterness and the Mere Addition Paradox'

Niko Kolodny: 'Saving Posterity from a Worse Fate'

Andreas L. Mogensen: 'Against Large Number Scepticism'

William MacAskill: 'Are We Living at the Hinge of History?'

S. J. Beard and Patrick Kaczmarek: 'On Theory X and What Matters Most'

Ruth Chang: 'How to Avoid the Repugnant Conclusion'

Wlodek Rabinowicz: 'Can Parfit's Appeal to Incommensurabilities in Value Block the Continuum Argument for the Repugnant Conclusion?'

Gustaf Arrhenius: 'Population Ethics and Conflict-of-Value Imprecision'

Teruji Thomas: 'On Evaluative Imprecision'

Theron Pummer: 'Sorites on What Matters'

Michael Otsuka: 'Prioritarianism, Population Ethics, and Competing Claims'

Shlomi Segall: 'Quarantining Prioritarianism'

PART I: CAUSING PEOPLE TO EXISTAND THE NON-IDENTITY PROBLEM

1: The Asymmetry

1.1 The Basic Account

1.1.1 The First Half

1.1.2 The Second Half

1.2 Extending the Account

1.2.1 Lives that Are Initially Worth Living

1.2.1.1 Coarse-Grained Options

1.2.1.2 Fine-Grained Asymmetry

1.2.2 Externalities.

1.2.3 Adding Groups

1.2.4 Probabilistic Cases

1.2.4.1 Time-Slice Aggregation

1.2.4.2 Initial-Segment Aggregation

1.2.4.3 Different-Number Cases

1.2.5 Absolute Harm

1.3 Conclusion

References

2: The Value and Probabilities of Existence

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Notes on Figures, Assumptions, Vocabulary

2.3 Commitments

2.3.1 The Miserable Child Case: Why PBI Must Be VeryNarrowly Formulated

2.3.2 The Three Outcome Case

2.3.3 Objection: Why PBI Must Be Understood as Expansive

2.4 Formal Statement of PBI

2.5 The Better Chance Puzzle

2.6 The Better Chance Case versus the Nonidentity Problem

2.7 Solving the Better Chance Puzzle

2.7.1 Two Proposed Solutions Based on the Concept of Expected Value

2.7.1.1 Unadulterated Expected Value Approach

2.7.1.2 Combination Approach: EVNPBI+EV

2.7.2 Probable Value Approach

2.7.3 Summing Up the Solution

Implications for Connection

2.8 Avoiding the Nonidentity Fallacy

2.9 Conclusion

3: Comparing Existence and Non-Existence

3.1 Introduction and Motivations

3.2 The Metaphysical Argument against Existence Comparativism

3.2.1 The Argument

3.2.2 Accepting Anti-comparativism

3.2.3 Denying Ontological Commitment

3.3 Variantism

3.4 Metaphysical Actualism

3.4.1 Property Actualism

3.4.2 Singular Propositions

3.4.3 Metaphysical Actualism Revisited

3.5 The Lives Account

3.5.1 Comparing Possible Lives

3.5.2 Existence Comparativism and Null Lives

3.5.3 Objections

3.5.4 Other Applications of the Lives Account

3.6 Bykvist's Argument

3.7 The Well-being Argument

3.8 Summary and Conclusions

Acknowledgements

4: The Impure Non-Identity Problem

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Two Non-Identity Cases

4.3 Impure Non-Identity: Circle Cases.

4.4 Impure Non-Identity: Overdetermination of Identity

4.5 Moral Implications

4.5.1 Impure Non-Identity Cases and the No Difference View

4.5.2 Impure Non-Identity Cases and the Difference View

4.6 Double Overdetermination Cases

4.7 Concluding Remarks and Practical Applications

5: Abortion and the Non-Identity Problem

5.1 Introduction

5.2 The Non-identity Problem and Its Solution

5.3 The No Moral Status View and the Ever Conscious View

5.4 The Full Moral Status view

5.5 The Low Moral Status View

5.6 A General Account of Non-Identity Cases

5.7 Conclusion

6: A Partial Solution to the Non-Identity Problem: Regretting One Was Born and Having a Life Not Subjectively Worth Living

6.1 Introduction

6.2 The Challenge of the Non-identity Problem

6.3 Preliminary: Some Basic Concepts

6.4 How the Notion of Regretting Being Born May Come Apart from the Notion of a Life Not Worth Living

6.4.1 Two Possible Objections

6.4.2 How Many People Born in Beisner's Circumstances Are Likely to Share Her Reaction?

6.5 Subjective Valuation as Expression of Autonomy

6.6 Conclusion

PART II: THE REPUGNANT CONCLUSION, FUTURE GENERATIONS, AND EXTINCTION

7: Population Ethics Forty Years On: Some Lessons Learned from "Box Ethics"

7.1 Introduction

7.2 The Repugnant Conclusion and Some Other "Box" Cases

7.3 The Capped Model of Ideals

7.4 Neutrality Intuitions, Dominance Principles, and the Relative Normative Significance of People, Spaces, and Times

7.5 Some Open Questions Concerning a Capped Model of Ideals

8: Totalism without Repugnance

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Well-Being

8.3 Lexical Thresholds

8.3.1 Superiority and Noninferiority

8.3.2 Multiple Thresholds

8.4 Marginal Differences, Incompleteness, and Vagueness

8.5 The Problem of Risk.

8.6 Conclusion

9: Context-Dependent Betterness and the Mere Addition Paradox

9.1 Introduction

9.2 The Mere Addition Paradox

9.3 Temkin on the Mere Addition Paradox and the Non-transitivity of "Better Than"

9.4 A Crucial Ambiguity

9.5 Doubts about the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives

9.6 A Digression: The Fine-Grained Individuation Gambit

9.7 Why Injustice Makes an Outcome Worse

9.8 Comparison-Dependent vs Context-Dependent Goodness

9.9 Dynamic Choice and Worries about Money-Pumping

9.10 Conclusion

Appendix: Extending the Solution to "Non-Overlapping" Cases

10: Saving Posterity from a Worse Fate

10.1 Introduction

10.2 Taxonomy

10.3 Same-People Choices

10.3.1 Trade-off Rules

10.3.2 Zero Embargo

10.3.3 Sufficiency

10.3.4 Equality and "Leveling Down"

10.3.5 Ties

10.3.6 Levels Not Losses

10.4 Contingent Same-Number Cases

10.5 Mixed Cases

10.6 Contingent Different-Number Cases Below Zero

10.7 Contingent Different-Number Cases Above Zero

10.8 Contingent Different-Number Cases Above and Below Zero

10.9 Conflicts with Benefit Thinking

10.9.1 Benefit Requires

10.9.2 Benefit Permits

10.9.3 The Sadistic Choice

10.10 Arguments for Benefit Thinking

10.10.1 Same-Number Cases

10.10.2 The End of Humanity

10.10.2.1 Interests of Non-contingent People

10.10.2.2 Impersonal Values

10.10.2.3 Agent-Relative Reasons

10.11 Incoherence

10.11.1 Separation

10.11.2 Negative Transitivity

10.11.3 Choice-Set Independence

10.11.4 Acyclicity

10.11.5 The Deontic and the Axiologic

10.12 Do We Need a Principle?

10.13 Ignoring the Unaffected

10.14 Comparison with Frick

10.15 Who Can Complain?

10.15.1 Complaint although Benefitted

10.15.2 Worse-Fate-as-Answer

11: Against Large Number Scepticism.

11.1

11.2

11.3

11.4

11.5

11.6

11.7

11.8

12: Are We Living at the Hinge of History?

12.1 Introduction

12.2 Two Worldviews

12.3 Making the Hinge of History Claim Precise

12.4 The Base Rates Argument against HH

12.5 The Inductive Argument against HH

12.6 Some Arguments for HH

12.6.1 Living on a Single Planet

12.6.2 Unusually Fast Economic and Technological Progress

12.6.3 Summing Up

12.7 Conclusion

13: On Theory X and What Matters Most

13.1 Background

13.1.1 The Absurd Conclusion

13.1.2 The Repugnant Conclusion

13.2 Parfit's Final Papers

13.2.1 The Non-Identity Problem

13.2.2 The Mere Addition Paradox

13.3 Applying Theory X

13.3.1 Ensuring Humanity's Survival

13.3.2 Managing Global Catastrophic Risk

13.3.3 Alleviating Poverty and Suffering

13.4 Conclusion

PART III: EVALUATIVE IMPRECISION, INCOMMENSURABILITY, AND VAGUENESS IN VALUE

14: How to Avoid the Repugnant Conclusion

14.1 The Continuum Argument for the Repugnant Conclusion

14.2 Three Standard Structural Solutions to Continua Arguments

14.2.1 Incommensurability

14.2.2 Incomparability

14.2.3 Indeterminacy

14.3 Parfit's Solution: Imprecise Lexicality

14.4 Parity

14.5 Conclusion

15: Can Parfit's Appeal to Incommensurabilities in Value Block the Continuum Argument for the Repugnant Conclusion?

15.1 Introduction

15.2 Preparing the Ground-Informal Discussion

15.3 Preparing the Ground-Formal Framework

15.4 Enter Incommensurability

15.5 Assessing the Costs

15.6 Accounting for Persistence

15.7 Are We Home Then?

Appendix

16: Population Ethics and Conflict-of-Value Imprecision

16.1 Introduction

16.2 Imprecision and Conflict-of-Value Imprecision.

16.3 The Quantity Sequence.

Notes:

This edition also issued in print: 2022.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: McMahan, Jeff Ethics and Existence

ISBN:

0-19-264665-6

0-19-191531-9

0-19-264666-4

9780192646668

OCLC:

1293240882