Contingent Future Persons

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Nick Fotion

   Pages 1-8

3. When Does Potentiality Count? A Comment on Lockwood

   • R. M. Hare

   Pages 9-18

4. Hare on Potentiality: A Rejoinder

   • Michael Lockwood

   Pages 19-26

5. The Morality of Knowingly Conceiving Children with Serious Conditions: An Expanded “Wrongful Life” Standard

   • Cynthia B. Cohen

   Pages 27-40

6. Person-Affecting Principles and Beyond

   • Ingmar Persson

   Pages 41-56

7. Divine Creation and Human Procreation: Reflections on Genesis in the Light of Genesis

   • David Heyd

   Pages 57-70

8. Deciding the Timing of Children: An Ethical Challenge Only Indirectly Addressed by the Christian Tradition

   • Jan C. Heller

   Pages 71-84

9. Repugnant Thoughts about the Repugnant Conclusion Argument

   • Nick Fotion

   Pages 85-97

10. Person-Affecting Utilitarianism and Population Policy; or, Sissy Jupe’s Theory of Social Choice

    • Clark Wolf

    Pages 99-122

11. Down to Earth Environmentalism: Sustainability and Future Persons

    • Avner de-Shalit

    Pages 123-135

12. More Than They Have a Right to: Future People and Our Future-Oriented Projects

    • Lukas H. Meyer

    Pages 137-156

13. Contingency, Community and Intergenerational Justice

    • Robert Elliot

    Pages 157-170

14. Bringing Embryos into Existence for Research Purposes

    • Carol A. Tauer

    Pages 171-189

15. Anticipating Posterity: A Lonerganian Approach to the Problem of Contingent Future Persons

    • William P. George

    Pages 191-208

16. Back Matter

    Pages 209-216

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How ought we evaluate the individual and collective actions on which the existence, numbers and identities of future people depend? In the briefest of terms, this question poses what is addressed here as the problem of contingent future persons, and as such it poses relatively novel challenges for philosophical and theological ethicists. For though it may be counter-intuitive, it seems that those contingent future persons who are actually brought into existence by such actions cannot benefit from or be harmed by these actions in any conventional sense of the terms. This intriguing problem was defined almost three decades ago by Jan Narveson [2], and to date its implications have been explored most exhaustively by Derek Parfit [3] and David Heyd [1]. Nevertheless, as yet there is simply no consensus on how we ought to evaluate such actions or, indeed, on whether we can. Still, the pursuit of a solution to the problem has been interestingly employed by moral philosophers to press the limits of ethics and to urge a reconsideration of the nature and source of value at its most fundamental level. It is thus proving to be a very fruitful investigation, with far-reaching theoretical and practical implications.

• Orient
• Utilitarianism
• comment
• embryo
• environment
• ethics
• individual
• morality
• nature
• oral discourse
• policy
• project
• projects
• tradition
• will

• Department of Philosophy, Emory University, Atlanta, USA

  Nick Fotion

• Center for Ethics in Health Care, Saint Joseph’s Health System, Atlanta, USA

  Jan C. Heller

Policies and ethics