Description
The Oxford Handbook of Population Ethics presents up-to-date theoretical analyses of various problems associated with the moral standing of future people and animals in current decision-making. Future people pose an especially hard problem for our current decision-making, since their number and their identities are not fixed but depend on the choices the present generation makes. Do we make the world better by creating more people with good lives? What do we owe future generations in terms of justice? How should burdens and benefits be shared across generations so that justice prevails? These questions are philosophically difficult and important, but also directly relevant to many practical decisions and policies. Climate change policy provides an example, as the increasing global temperature will kill some people and prevent many others from ever existing. Many other policies also influence the size and make-up of future populations both directly and indirectly, for example those concerning family planning, child support, and prioritization in health-care. If we are to adequately assess these policies, we must be able to determine the value of differently sized populations.The essays in this handbook shed light on the value of population change and the nature of our obligations to future generations. It brings together world-leading philosophers to introduce readers to some of the paradoxes of population ethics, challenge some fundamental assumptions that may be taken for granted in the debate about the value of population change, and apply these problems and assumptions to real-world decisions.
Table of Contents
Introduction Gustaf Arrhenius, Krister Bykvist, Tim Campbell, Elizabeth Finneron-BurnsPart I: Ways Out of the Paradoxes1. Ruth Chang - How Not to Avoid the Repugnant Conclusion2. Nils Holtug - Prioritarianism and Population Ethics3. Walter Bossert - Anonymous Welfarism, Critical-level Principles,and the Repugnant and Sadistic Conclusions4. Geir Asheim & Stéphane Zuber - Rank-Discounting as a Resolution to a Dilemma of Population Ethics5. Wlodek Rabinowicz - Getting Personal: The Intuition of Neutrality Re-Interpreted6. John Broome - Loosening the Betterness Ordering of Lives: a Response to RabinowiczPart II: Philosophical and Methodological Assumptions7. Larry S. Temkin - Population Ethics: Lessons Learned, Some Implications, and Problems Remaining8. Gustaf Arrhenius - Population Paradoxes Without Transitivity9. Erik Carlson - On Some Impossibility Theorems in Population Ethics10. Melinda A. Roberts - The Non-Identity Problem, the Better Chance Puzzle, and the Value of Existence11. Ralf M. Bader - Person-Affecting Utilitarianism12. Teru Thomas - Separability and Population Ethics13. Krister Bykvist - Evaluative Uncertainty and Population Ethics14. Matthew Adler - Claims Across Outcomes and Population Ethics15. Dean Spears and Marc Budolfson - Does the Repugnant Conclusion Have Important Implications for Axiology or for Public Policy?16. Johan Gustafsson - The Repugnant Conclusion and Our Intuitive Grasp of Large NumbersPart III: Applications17. John Broome - Climate Change and Population Ethics18. Serena Olsaretti - Egalitarian Justice and Population Size19. Sarah Conly - Overpopulation and Individual Responsibility20. Hilary Greaves - Optimum Population Size21. Martin Kolk - Demographic Theory and Population Ethics22. Partha Dasgupta & Aisha Dasgupta - Population Overshoot23. Jeff McMahan - Having Children and Saving Lives24. Axel Gosseries & Tim Meijers - Animal Population Ethics25. Elizabeth Harman - Gamete Donation as a Laudable Moral Mistake26. Julia Mosquera - Disability and Population Ethics
