Ethics and Existence: The Legacy of Derek Parfit
Ethics and Existence: The Legacy of Derek Parfit
White's Professor of Moral Philosophy
Researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies
PhD student in philosophy
JD candidate
Cite
Abstract
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 (OUP, 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. It is no exaggeration to say that there is a broad range of practical moral issues that cannot be adequately understood until fundamental problems in population ethics are resolved. These issues include abortion, prenatal injury, preconception and prenatal screening for disability, genetic enhancement and eugenics generally, meat eating, climate change, reparations for historical injustice, the threat of human extinction, and even proportionality in war. Although the essays in this book address foundational problems in population ethics that were discovered and first discussed by Parfit, they are not, for the most part, commentaries on his work but instead build on that work in advancing our understanding of the problems themselves. The contributors include many of the most important and influential writers in this burgeoning area of philosophy.
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Front Matter
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Introduction
Jeff McMahan
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Part I Causing People to Existand the Non-Identity Problem
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1
The Asymmetry
Ralf M. Bader
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2
The Value and Probabilities of Existence
M. A. Roberts
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3
Comparing Existence and Non-Existence
Hilary Greaves andJohn Cusbert
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4
The Impure Non-Identity Problem
Patrick Tomlin
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5
Abortion and the Non-Identity Problem
Elizabeth Harman
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6
A Partial Solution to the Non-Identity Problem: Regretting One Was Born and Having a Life Not Subjectively Worth Living
Andrew McGee andJulian Savulescu
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1
The Asymmetry
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PART II The Repugnant Conclusion, Future Generations, And Extinction
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7
Population Ethics Forty Years On: Some Lessons Learned from “Box Ethics”
Larry Temkin
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8
Totalism without Repugnance
Jacob M. Nebel
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9
Context-Dependent Betterness and the Mere Addition Paradox
Johann Frick
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10
Saving Posterity from a Worse Fate
Niko Kolodny
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11
Against Large Number Scepticism
Andreas L. Mogensen
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12
Are We Living at the Hinge of History?
William MacAskill
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13
On Theory X and What Matters Most
S. J. Beard andPatrick Kaczmarek
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7
Population Ethics Forty Years On: Some Lessons Learned from “Box Ethics”
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PART III Evaluative Imprecision, Incommensurability, and Vagueness in Value
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14
How to Avoid the Repugnant Conclusion
Ruth Chang
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15
Can Parfit’s Appeal to Incommensurabilities in Value Block the Continuum Argument for the Repugnant Conclusion?
Wlodek Rabinowicz
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16
Population Ethics and Conflict-of-Value Imprecision
Gustaf Arrhenius
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17
On Evaluative Imprecision
Teruji Thomas
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18
Sorites on What Matters
Theron Pummer
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14
How to Avoid the Repugnant Conclusion
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Part IV Prioritarianism In Population Ethics
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End Matter
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