Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-11T14:06:35.283Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Human Extinction and Moral Worthwhileness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2021

Elizabeth Finneron-Burns Open the ORCID record for Elizabeth Finneron-Burns [Opens in a new window]
Elizabeth Finneron-Burns*
Affiliation:
Western University, London, Canada Institute for Futures Studies, Stockholm, Sweden
*
Email: Efinnero@uwo.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article I make two main critiques of Kaczmarek and Beard's article ‘Human Extinction and Our Obligations to the Past’. First, I argue that there is an ambiguity in what it means to realise the benefits of a sacrifice and that this ambiguity affects the persuasiveness of the authors’ arguments and responses to various objections to their view. Second, I argue that their core argument against human extinction depends on an unsupported assumption about the existence and importance of existential benefits.

Type
Reply
Information
Utilitas , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , March 2022 , pp. 105 - 112
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Benatar, David (2006) Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finneron-Burns, Elizabeth (2016) Contractualism and the Non-Identity Problem, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19, 1151–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finneron-Burns, Elizabeth (2017) What's Wrong with Human Extinction? Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 47, 327–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaczmarek, Patrick and Beard, S. J. (2020) Human Extinction and Our Obligations to the Past, Utilitas 32, 199–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keay, Douglas (1987) Interview with Margaret Thatcher for Women's Own (1987), https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106689 [accessed 22 July 2021].Google Scholar
Narveson, Jan (1967) Utilitarianism and New Generations, Mind 76, 62–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinberg, Rivka (2008) Identifying and Dissolving the Non-Identity Problem, Philosophical Studies 137, 3–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinberg, Rivka (2015) The Risk of a Lifetime: How, When, and Why Procreation May be Permissible (New York: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar