Concept tag
#future-generations
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Why did Ramsey call discounting future well-being “ethically indefensible”, and do economists still disagree?
This week one lecturer applied a discount rate to future benefits without comment. In another class the same week we read Frank Ramsey's 1928 paper on saving, where he says that discounting later enjoyments in comparison with earlier ones is "ethically indefensible…
Started by Ethan Mercer4 replies -
What is longtermism, and what’s the main objection to it?
Everyone in tech talks about longtermism. I know it's connected to effective altruism and William MacAskill's What We Owe the Future (2022). But I've never seen a clear explanation of the core argument and the best objections. Can someone help?
Started by Rohan Desai2 replies -
Do future generations have rights over the climate we leave them?
Around Hyderabad's lakes you can see the long-term effects of decisions made decades ago: dams, drained wetlands, groundwater extraction. The people most affected weren't born when the decisions were made. Derek Parfit's "non-identity problem" (Reasons and Persons, 1984) makes this hard. Our…
Started by Anand Kurup3 replies -
My son says our choices can’t harm people who don’t exist yet. What is the non-identity problem?
There is a famous puzzle, my son tells me, the "non-identity problem", which shows that we cannot make future people worse off by damaging the environment, because different choices would mean different people being born. This makes no sense to me. My…
Started by Akosua Mensah3 replies -
Reading group: Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility, the first two chapters
Jonas published Das Prinzip Verantwortung in 1979 and the English version, which he prepared with David Herr, came out in 1984 as The Imperative of Responsibility. I taught ethics for years without reading it properly, and now that I have time I…
Started by Henrike Vogel5 replies